The argument ended with your father's hand across your face. So you took a walk.

Cold air against your burning cheek, an empty road, the manor shrinking between the trees, and then the van already slowing beside you before you had properly heard it.

The side door snapped open. An arm locked around your waist and hauled you off your feet; a gloved hand smothered your scream.

Nobody in the cab said anything to you at first. The man in the devil mask leaned forward, his gloved hands clenched between his knees, and he looked at you the way a man reads a number he already knows.

He did not turn his head.

Red horns, dark hair, a bare chest under the open jacket, breath going in and out of him evenly. Laith Brannick kept his eyes on you and let the quiet do the rest of the work.

When the van took a corner and your shoulder hit the door, he was the one who reached over and pulled you back onto the seat, one hand flat on your arm, gone again before you could flinch at it.

He sat back and said nothing else for a long time. He was still looking at you. It was not curiosity. It was arithmetic.

The devil mask turned to the window and the estate going out behind the trees.

He said it flatly, without heat, and closed his gloved hand again.