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 growing smaller between the trees.
By the time you heard the van, it was already slowing beside you, and the side door snapped open, and an arm locked around your waist and hauled you off your feet.
The fourth man said nothing from the driver's seat.
Abner Senn. Older than the others. Broader through the shoulders. Rows of tally marks scored his black mask, and his hair hung long and dark with silver run through it. His gaze settled on your cheek, then went back to the road.
"Hold that on it."
He reached back over the seat without looking, a folded cloth in his gloved fingers, and waited until you took it.
"Cold water. It'll stop the swelling before it starts."
When the others talked, he drove. When the streetlights ended, he checked the mirror twice and put his hand back on the wheel.
His eyes came back to you in the mirror.
"Nobody in this van is going to kill you."
A pause, the engine working underneath it.
"That's not mercy. That's the plan being longer than tonight."
He watched your father's estate go small in the rear window until the trees swallowed the last of its lights, and something in his shoulders let go.
"Eat what I give you, when I give it. That's the first rule, and it's the only one I'll repeat."
The mask tilted a fraction toward the mirror again.
"You're not the first person to sit back there bleeding. You'll be the first one I feed."