Eris is making breakfast when she gets a call from Caledon. She puts the avocado down and picks up the phone. Answers.

"Hi, Eris," Caledon says. "I heard something."

"What's that?" Eris says. She turns her back to Adam, who's on the couch.

"Heard you've been hooking up with a cop."

"You have a wife, Caledon. Don't think it should matter to you." She puts the phone in between her shoulder and ear.

"Come on, Eris. Don't you think it's a dangerous game?"

Eris chops the avocado, glancing at Adam, who spins a cracker on the coffee table, watching the bottle of gin that still hasn't gone down.

"No," she says. "Why are you calling?"

"I'm calling because I'm nervous. You're playing games with our stability here."

Eris has never known Caledon to act like this. "Hang up, Caledon. There's nothing for you to worry about."

"I want to see the stores, Eris."

Eris barks out a laugh. Adam looks up from his cracker to her.

"I'm serious. Stores, so I know you're not leaving me dry when you go to prison."

Eris sighs, abandoning her avocado. She taps her finger on the counter. Caledon, asking for the stores. He's a good man. Has a wife. He's probably not up to anything but what he says he's up to. But then again, Eris doesn't eat eggs.

Eris sighs. Caledon is just being nervous. "I'll take you to the stores, Caledon," she says. Her gut has never been wrong before.

At her words, Adam looks over at her again.

Caledon lets out a long sigh. "When?"

"Next week."

"That's too far away."

"Don't get jumpy now. Stores next week, final offer."

Caledon glances over at his wife, making a batch of soy-milk cookies because she knows regular milk hurts his stomach. "Fine," he says.

"Fine," Eris replies. Hangs up the phone. Caledon wants to see the stores. Eris doesn't eat eggs.

Adam reaches for the gin.

"Wilkes called your phone yesterday while you were asleep," Eris says. She stabs a piece of avocado with her fork. Adam takes his hand away from the gin.

"Figured I shouldn't answer it," Eris says.

Adam is glad she didn't. He's on a month-long hiatus. Mental health. Wilkes thinks Adam is staying with Sarah and Daphne at home.

"He's going to want to talk about you going back," Eris says.

Adam eyes the gin. He can't live with Eris once he goes back to work. One step at a time.

"Eris," he says.

"Adam," she answers. She cleans the knife in the sink.

"Can you..." He trails off. She dries the knife. Glances at him.

"I mean, have you spoken to Sarah?" he asks.

Eris puts the knife away. "Yes," she lies. Sarah still thinks Eris is luring and holding Adam hostage. Sarah doesn't understand the long game. Doesn't understand that people don't get sober until they decide they want to get sober.

"Daphne—"

"Daphne doesn't want to see you," Eris says. She fills a glass with water. "She said you scared her when you yelled that night."

Adam sits on the floor, glances back at the gin. Don't think about that. It's too far away.

"Do you want me to stop drinking?" he asks her.

Eris takes a sip of water. "Does it matter?"

"Shouldn't it?"

"No."

Adam spins the cracker. "I just wish that—" He stops spinning the cracker. "I guess I just want to be your thrill. Like I was before."

"You're not very thrilling when you're drunk," Eris says.

"But—" Adam pauses. "Do you want me to be sober?"

"Who cares?"

Adam can't look at her, so poised and collect over there in her organized kitchen while he lazes around in her living room. "I do," he says. "I don't want you to fake it because I'm drunk and don't know which way is up." I don't want to never see my daughter again.

"Then don't get so drunk you don't know which way is up," Eris replies.

"It's not that easy." But seeing her again means so much work. It means having to think about what happened.

"Actually, it is," she says. "Don't pick up the glass. Don't swallow."

Adam watches the city as it thrives. "Can you—will you help me?"

"With what?"

Long, gruelling pause. Then, "To stop drinking."

Eris puts down the glass. There it is. Three and a half damn weeks of this hell and there it finally is.

"Yes, Adam," she replies. "I can help you with that."

Adam closes his eyes. Takes a long, deep sigh. His eyes are still closed when Eris takes the bottle of gin off the coffee table and pours it out in the sink. She takes the other bottles and puts them in a box. Puts it near the door. Texts Peter and tells him to come get them.

"How do I—" Adam gestures with his hand. "How do I stop thinking about it?"

Eris glances at him. Goes to sit on the couch with him. "I'm not sure, but I can tell you what I do."

"You don't have an addiction."

"I have my own problems," she replies. "Sometimes things aren't enough for me. My mind starts to wander, think about bigger things that give me anxiety."

"So you have tricks to stop?"

"Sure. My first trick is to mess with this cop. I like to seek him out so I can get into a chase. Sue him, occasionally. Drug him, take his car hostage."

Adam cracks open one of his eyes. "Funny."

"Distractions work," Eris says. "You just have to figure out what distractions aren't addictions. Other things that you like that you can get lost in."

"Well, I like being with you," Adam says. "That distracts me."

"It's also an addiction," Eris says. "It can't be that. It has to be something that doesn't alter your mental state if you don't get to do it."

"What do you do?"

"I go downstairs and I watch people. I guess where they're from, what their story is, what kind of lover they'd be. Then I go up to them and see if I'm right."

Adam raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really. But if it's not during pit hours, then I'll run or I'll read a book and recite it."

Adam slides his finger across the coffee table. "Genius solutions for genius problems," he says.

"I have a bunch of real-life court cases," Eris says. "I'll give you one of them, and you can work through it. Try to figure out what angle either attorney should take." She gets to her feet, goes up the stairs. Calls as she sifts through for an easy one, "I have to go downstairs and ask about something. I'll be back in a few hours." She comes down the stairs, hands him the folder. "When I get back, tell me what you have."

"You think solving court cases is my distraction?"

"I think it's what you're good at. That's all." She takes her keys from the bowl. "It's a start."

Adam watches the folder, closed. He listens to her shut the door.

Eris walks down the hall, down to the restaurant. She glances at the timesheet, then finds Peter accepting a delivery in the back.

"Peter?" she asks.

He looks back at her, searches her face. "Boss? I got the bottles."

"I saw. Is Kayla late?"

Peter looks over at the parking lot. Kayla owns a baby blue Porsche that sticks out like a sore thumb, but it's not there right now. She spent nine months saving up for it by eating noodles out of a box in the staff room and crashing on Eris' couch. In the end, she didn't have enough to get the custom paint, so she just got the black. For her birthday, while the staff had a party for Kayla, Eris had the Porsche towed away and the paint job done. Kayla had tears in her eyes when she saw it.

"Must be," Peter says.

Eris walks back into Nyx. Kayla has never been late a day in her life. She runs her fingers down the staff timesheets. Kayla wasn't here yesterday, either. Or the day before. Eris hasn't been down here much, so she didn't notice.

Eris calls her, and she doesn't answer. Her voicemail is full. On a whim, Eris drives over to Kayla's apartment, just a few minutes from Nyx. She gets into the underground lot, sees the blue Porsche in its spot.

Eris asks the clerk at the apartment if she's been there lately. They say she hasn't.

Kayla doesn't have a family, really. Nyx was her family. Eris knocks on her apartment door, calls through the wood. She's not there.

As Eris gives up and heads back to Nyx, Kayla knocks her head repeatedly into the concrete wall of the basement. She closes her eyes, coughs up the blood from her throat.

Nikolas watches her. Leonardo hasn't fed them in days. He tossed a few bottles of water in the basement, but that's it.

"He's gonna kill us, you know," Kayla says.

Nikolas looks up. "He won't kill us," he replies.

"Of course he will. When Eris is in jail, he's not just gonna let us go. He knows we'll talk."

"It won't get that far," Nikolas insists, his voice dry. "Eris won't let it get that far."

"She's not a damn god, Nikolas," Kayla snaps. "She won't have any clue what's happening."

Nikolas closes his eyes. Eris doesn't eat eggs. "She'll notice you're gone," he points out.

"Probably not," Kayla says. "She doesn't come down much anymore. It's just her babysitting the cop all the time. She's not paying attention to anything but him."

Nikolas shakes his head. He refuses to believe that. He's seen Eris do math in her head, seen her switch from language to language with ease. He's seen Eris' brilliance more than Kayla has. Eris doesn't eat eggs, and she has to know that Nikolas knows that.

"God knows she won't come looking for you," Kayla snorts. Her distaste of Nikolas runs a lot deeper than it appears. "Maybe if you hadn't beat the shit out of her, she'd care more that you're gone. And we'd both be out."

Kayla was unconscious for Nikolas and Eris' phone call. She doesn't know that Nikolas was getting on a plane.

"Why did you do it?" Kayla asks, since there's nothing better to do than wonder about things. Since there's nothing to do but act on this awful feeling she gets around Nikolas.

"Do what?" Nikolas asks. He draws a little circle on the basement floor.

"Beat her like that."

Nikolas shrugs. "She cheated."

Kayla knew that. Knew that Eris cheated on Nikolas rather frequently. "Lots of people do shit like that. Doesn't mean you hit them."

Nikolas purses his lips. Eris threatened him with jail. Threatened to tell the police all the things she made him do. It had felt like the ultimate knife to the gut.

"You're just an asshole, I guess," Kayla concludes. "Nasty, cocaine-addicted little fucker."

Nikolas looks away from her. She has shreds of Nikolas' shirt packed into the wound on her leg that he ripped off. She has black eyes and a broken finger.

"Eris just pitied you," Kayla says. "You and your fucking eyes, since they look like her brother's. She didn't break up with you sooner because she was just so damn terrified of the blood. You ain't shit, Nikolas. The fact that you talked because he's beating the shit out of me doesn't change any of that."

Nikolas clears his throat. "Okay," he says. "It's enough."

She laughs, and it echoes off the basement walls. "What are you going to do? Hit me? Do it." She picks at her fingernails. "I ain't scared of blood."

Nikolas wishes he was eating egg truffles in rehab. Wishes he'd gotten on the plane.

The basement is silent after Kayla's words. She seems to have dropped it. Nikolas knows Leonardo isn't going to let them live, and if Eris is in jail, there's no one else that will come looking for them.

Nikolas can hear the birds chirping outside, the sunlight wavering. He glances at Kayla, the slope of her nose, the soft line of her jaw.

"I think I was jealous," Nikolas says. "Eris did everything better than me, and the only thing I could do better was fight."

Kayla raises her brows. "Some excuse."

Nikolas gives her a broken smile. She looks at him but doesn't return it. Goes back to picking at her fingernails.

"I was going back to Greece," Nikolas says. "To rehab. I was about to get on a plane. I wanted to make it better."

"Don't believe shit like that unless I see it," Kayla says.

Nikolas watches her. Now he'll never get the chance. Proud of you, Niky. He just wishes he got the chance to prove it. To deserve those words.

Kayla heard the words, processed them, but she really doesn't believe it. Eris rarely went three days without bruises on her neck. Kayla doesn't let people trick her into thinking they'll be better.

"Pass me the water, Kayla," Nikolas says. It's a broken request. He's cuffed; Kayla isn't. She takes the water, uncaps it, and passes it to him.

Nikolas tries to bring it to his mouth. But he's in the worst kind of withdrawal. He can't sleep, can't eat, can't get better. It's the worst kind of rehab, and all it does is make him want cocaine. He tries to lift the water, tries to drink, but his fingers have no strength, no dexterity. He drops the bottle into his lap, and some of it spills.

"For god's sake Nikolas," Kayla snaps, righting the water bottle. "That's all we have."

Nikolas' lips are chapped. Cocaine, water. He wants the water so badly. It took him long enough just to get the nerve to ask Kayla to give it to him. He knows he can't get the water into his mouth without help. He knows that damn well, but he won't ask.

Kayla watches him rest his head on the wall. Kayla tried a line a few times, even put a dot of fentanyl on her tongue. It was fun, sure, but she didn't need it. When she was younger, and all the popular kids told her to try it, try it, she felt an obsessive need to do it. When she started to work for Eris, the pressure was off. You could do it if you wanted; no one would care. But you wouldn't have to. The most powerful person in the room didn't do it, so you didn't have to either. That's how Kayla made sure she didn't get addicted. Nikolas did it a few times more than Kayla did, but he never really got addicted until Eris broke up with him.

Nikolas looks at the water. He's so broken and weak that he hasn't even bothered to think about that thing with Kayla. That night when they got way too high, Eris was up in the penthouse, and Kayla leaned forward to kiss him. Nikolas had sobered almost immediately and pushed her away.

These days, locked with Nikolas in the basement, it's all Kayla can think about. Getting rejected was one bundle of embarrassment, but getting rejected by a man that was getting cheated on over and over just seemed to worsen it.

Kayla had a crush on Nikolas the moment he'd walked through the staff doors. He'd had that European aura, mysterious, exotic. Kayla had jumped on him, flirted a little and introduced herself. He'd replied politely, introduced himself as Eris' boyfriend. She got over it eventually.

But that night, with the cocaine, Kayla had leaned over because the lights were glinting in his eyes, warming his smile. It made him more attractive than ever.

Kayla never told Eris, but she wasn't sure if Nikolas did. He might not even remember it.

"Kayla," Nikolas says, interrupting her thoughts. "I'm just—I'm really thirsty."

While Kayla goes through that horribly embarrassing moment over and over again, Nikolas has finally thrown away his pride and asked.

"Then drink, dumbass," Kayla says mindlessly. Maybe she hates Nikolas because she wanted him. Maybe she hates Nikolas because she just desperately wished he'd been better to Eris.

Nikolas doesn't answer. He reaches for the water again, and it warbles in his hand. Kayla glances over, realizes why he told her he wanted water. He wanted help.

She reaches over to take it from him, sighing. "Open up," she says.

Nikolas does. It's demeaning—it's unmanly, it's all the things he hates about himself, but it tastes amazing. He swallows, nods his head. Mutters a thank you.

Kayla sits back and puts the cap back on. He watches her, with his icy blue eyes, and Kayla decides to stand. She walks around the room, refuses to look at him. He must remember. Maybe if she mentions it, the awkwardness of the moment will stop eating at her.

"Do you remember when we got high?" Kayla asks, mindlessly trying the locked door again.

"Yes."

She doesn't look back at him. "Did you ever tell Eris?"

"No."

Kayla raises her brows. "Why not?"

"I got the feeling she wouldn't have cared. You two shared everything."

Kayla barks out a laugh. Eris and Kayla did share a lot, but not Nikolas. For the first year, Eris had been all over him. Then it started to meander away.

"I was just high," Kayla says. "That's all."

Nikolas desperately wants an egg truffle. "Whatever," he says. He's not entirely sure what Kayla is talking about. He's so weak.

Kayla bangs on the door. Once, twice. She glances back at Nikolas. "If you didn't think she would care, then why did you do what you did?"

Nikolas grimaces, trying to move his knee to a better spot. "What?"

Kayla looks away from him. "You said you didn't think she would care. Then why did you act like you did?"

"How did I act?" Nikolas asks. He remembers the incident in question, but he doesn't entirely know what she's referring to.

"Like I burned you," Kayla says.

Nikolas raises his eyebrows at her. He looks awful—frail, dirty—but he's still got that charm. "I had a girl."

"A girl that had ten other boys," Kayla says.

Nikolas shrugs.

Kayla looks at the hinges on the door. Her thigh is starting to hurt again. She glances up at the window. It's glass, just a small little thing. It's covered from the outside with wood. Kayla doesn't even know where it goes. She probably can't fit through it anyway.

"Do you think I'll fit through that?" she asks.

Nikolas glances up. "It doesn't open."

"Well you've got a good punch. Eris told me so."

Nikolas doesn't laugh. "Can't lift a water bottle, Kayla. Can't punch anything."

Kayla glances at him. "The handcuffs are metal," she says.

Nikolas shrugs.

Kayla watches him. It's an old crush, but it's still there, a little bit. She just always liked that obsessive loyalty he had to Eris. That, and his face. Nikolas isn't going to get over Eris in the next few months—if they even escape this—so she knows it's futile. But maybe it would be fun to be honest.

"Had a crush on you," Kayla says. "When you first came to America." He'd met Eris in Greece, followed her to America a few weeks later.

"I know," Nikolas says.

Kayla looks at the window. "I'm over it now," she says.

"I know," Nikolas says.

Kayla lets out a sigh. Sits back on the floor across from him. "We're going to get out. And here's how we're going to do it."