Chapter 128 Boring sounds perfect

Chapter 128 Boring sounds perfect
Quin's POV
Tyler woke up screaming three nights after Aiden died.
It wasn’t the quiet kind of nightmare where you surface slowly and lie there breathing until the images fade. One moment the room was silent and the next he was upright and gasping, staring at the wall like something was still standing there. And it wasn't the first time.
I had him before he finished the sound. Arms around him, pulling him back against my chest, speaking into his hair until his breathing slowed. It took a while. Longer than it should have. When he finally stopped shaking he didn’t say anything about what he had seen. He just sat there in the dark with my arms around him and looked at the wall.
I looked at it too.
In the morning I called an estate agent as fast as I could.
Tyler found out two weeks later when I told him to pack what he wanted to keep and leave the rest.
He stared at me across the kitchen. “You sold it.”
“I sold it.”
“The whole mansion.”
“Yes. The whole thing.”
He looked around the kitchen. The familiar counters. The island where we had eaten breakfast more times than I could count. The window Cooper liked to sit beneath when the afternoon light came through at a specific angle.
“Because of a nightmare,” Tyler said.
“Because of several nightmares,” I said. “And because I wanted to.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved through his expression that he didn’t try to manage or control.
“Okay,” he said finally.
The new place was in the heart of the city. High floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean lines and no hallways that held memories of men with guns. Cooper explored every room within the first hour like he was conducting an official inspection. He approved of the living room. He was uncertain about the second bedroom. He decided the kitchen was acceptable primarily because the floors were easier to slide on. Tyler interpreted what Cooper accepted and what he did.
Tyler stood at the window the first evening and looked at the city below.
“It’s smaller,” he said.
“You don't like it, ” I said.
He turned and looked at me. The city lights behind him. “I love it,” he said. “ It feels more cozy than the mansion had.” I nodded and smiled.
Even my father won't have a say in the selling of the mansion.
The investigation closed six weeks after Aiden’s death.
Jake brought the final report in person. He sat across from us at the new kitchen table with the folder in front of him and went through it the way he went through everything. Methodically. Without unnecessary commentary. Hitting the points that mattered.
Aiden had been behind all of it.
Every text message, the messages that appeared after Tyler’s mother died. The ones that arrived while we were still processing things we hadn’t finished processing. All of it traced back to Aiden through various channels that Jake had been following for months. The investigation had simply taken time to confirm what we had already suspected.
Lucas had been on his payroll. Not romantically connected to Aiden in any meaningful way. Just useful. A person with an existing grievance that Aiden had identified and funded and occasionally directed when it served his purposes. The kidnapping had been partially Aiden’s suggestion, acting through intermediaries who kept enough distance that the connection had taken time to trace.
Tyler’s mother had been the same. Aiden had found her years before she became relevant to him, helping with her addiction. He had kept the connection warm and had given her information and occasionally money and let her paranoia do the rest. When she became useful he had used her. When she became a liability he had done nothing to protect her.
Tyler listened to all of it without interruption. His face stayed controlled throughout. When Jake finished he nodded once and looked at the table.
“So it was always him,” he said.
“From the very beginning,” Jake confirmed.
Tyler was quiet for a moment.
“And now he’s dead,” Tyler said.
“Yes. No more Aiden.” Jake said.
Another silence. Cooper, who had been asleep under the table, shifted and put his head on Tyler’s foot without waking up. Tyler looked down at him. Then back at Jake.
“Good,” Tyler said simply.
I looked at the folder. Everything Aiden had built over years of careful calculation and patient planning. The business grievance. The network of people. The monitoring. The timing. All of it ending in a hallway in a house we no longer owned with blood on the floor and silence replacing whatever he had planned to say.
“Julian?” I asked.
“Cooperating fully with authorities,” Jake said. “He’s looking at several charges. What he told you in the warehouse is being corroborated by the communications we already had. It won’t be a short process but it will be a thorough one.”
“And Billie’s name stays out of it,” I said.
“As much as possible,” Jake said carefully. “She’ll be referenced in the context of what Julian was instructed to do. But she doesn’t become the story. You have my word on that.”
I nodded.
The folder closed. Jake picked it up. And just like that, the formal portion of the conversation was done. The investigation that had been running alongside everything else was finished. Everything that could be answered had been answered.
We sat at the table for another few minutes without speaking. Cooper snored quietly under it. The little guy sleeps like he's pregnant.
“Come to the office tomorrow,” I said to Jake finally. “There’s a distribution matter I need your eyes on.”
“I’ll be there at ten,” Jake said.

I arrived at the office at nine.
By nine forty-five I had cleared the priority items from my desk and was moving through the building. My executive floor had not fallen apart without me, which was professionally satisfying and mildly irritating.
I crossed toward Jake’s office at ten to ten.
The door was not fully closed.
I pushed it open without knocking because I never knocked on Jake’s office door and he had never once in six years suggested I should start.
Jake was sitting in his chair while Dylan was sitting on him.
They were kissing with the complete lack of self-consciousness of two people who were very used to being alone in a space and had not expected that to change in the next thirty seconds.
I stopped in the doorway.
For approximately three seconds nobody moved.
Then Dylan made a sound that made Jake open his eyes. A sequence of expressions crossed his face that I found enormously entertaining and took a moment to appreciate before he found his voice.
“Quin.”
“Hey man.”
Dylan was already standing, smoothly, like he had simply been sitting on a chair and the previous three seconds had not existed. He straightened his jacket. He was good at composure. I had always liked that about him.
“Mr McKenzie,” he said pleasantly.
“Dylan,” I said. “Don’t leave on my account.”
“I have a call,” he said, which was either true or the most efficient exit strategy I had witnessed recently. He moved past me with a brief smile, pulled the door closed behind him, and was gone.
I looked at Jake who was already looking at me.
“Not a word,” Jake said.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re smiling. So I know you will.”
“Am I?”
I crossed to the chair across from his desk and sat down. I waited. Jake rearranged several things on his desk that didn’t need rearranging. Then he exhaled and gave up.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“I’m not going to say anything.”
“You’re going to say something.”
“Only that your door was open. You should keep it locked.”
“It wasn’t fully open,” he said, rubbing his face. I waited again.
“He wasn’t supposed to be here until lunch,” Jake said finally. “He finished his morning early. He does that.”
“Does he?”
“Shows up early.” Jake looked at the desk. “Brings coffee and knows my order. He knew about it for two months without being told.” He paused again. “Remembered that I don’t eat before eleven. Started bringing food at eleven without saying anything about it.”
I said nothing.
“He’s different,” Jake said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what the word is for it. Different doesn’t cover it.” He tapped his fingers on the desk once. “Since I met him, everyone else became difficult to look at for too long.” He almost laughed at himself. “I know how that sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound bad,” I said.
He glanced at me. “It sounds like something Tyler would say.”
“Tyler says a lot of accurate things.”
Jake was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I think he might be it.”
The words landed simply. No dramatics. Just Jake saying something true in the way he said most things. Directly and without softening it.
“Then tell him that,” I said.
Jake looked at me. “Not all of us walk into our feelings by accidentally getting married in Vegas.”
I almost laughed. “No. Some of us have to do it the harder way. So do it.”
He shook his head. But something in his expression had shifted. “He wants us to go somewhere,” Jake said. “All four of us. He brought it up last week.”
“A double date,” I said.
Jake looked pained by the phrase. “He used those words.”
“And?”
“And I said I’d ask.”
I nodded. “Tyler will definitely want to go.”
“Obviously.” Jake looked at the desk again. “Dylan’s already researching restaurants.”
“Tell him Tyler doesn’t eat anything he can’t pronounce.”
Jake almost smiled. “I’ll let him know.”
I stood up. “Saturday works for me.”
Jake looked up. “I haven’t even confirmed yet.” He held my gaze for a second. Then exhaled. “Saturday works fine.”
I moved to the door. Then turned back.
“For what it’s worth,” I said. “He looks at you the same way.”
Jake didn’t say anything. But the look on his face before I closed the door behind me was one I recognized.
It was the same one I had spent months trying not to show whenever Tyler walked into a room.

Tyler already knew when I told him that evening.
He looked up from where he was sitting on the floor letting Cooper use his leg as a pillow and said, “ I think I know about Jake and Dylan already. It's kinda obvious.” before I finished the sentence.
“You know everything.”
“I may or may not have Dylan's contact,” he agreed. “ So we're going out Saturday?”
“Apparently so.”
Tyler smiled. “Jake’s going to pretend he doesn’t want to be there.”
“He’s already researching venues through Dylan.”
Tyler looked delighted. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.”
I sat down beside him on the floor. Cooper immediately redistributed himself to include my leg as an additional pillow. Tyler leaned against my shoulder.
“It’s really over,” he said quietly. Not a question.
“It’s really over,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Can we just have boring for a while?”
I looked at him.
“Boring sounds perfect. We've had too much action and drama already.” I said.
He smiled. Life just keeps getting better. Jake having someone to care for him was the best news of the week. He spent so much time solving my problems I almost thought he forgot about himself.