"How much?"
The kid hesitated. "Two hundred. His brother borrowed it."
Blake slowly reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and counted out two hundred dollars. He held it out.
"Here's the deal," he said. "You take this. And you never come near this building again. Not for Marcus. Not for anybody. Because next time, I won't be the one who shows up. The police will."
The three boys looked at each other. Then the big one snatched the money and they disappeared down the alley.
When he walked back inside, Marcus was sitting on the floor by the door, crying silently with his arms around his knees.
"Why didn't you fight them?" Marcus asked. "I saw you. You could've wrecked them."
Blake sat down on the floor next to him, wincing a little at his swollen cheek.
"Because if I'd fought them, they would've come back angrier. And next time, maybe I wouldn't be here. Maybe it'd just be you." He bumped Marcus's shoulder gently. "My job wasn't to win. My job was to make sure you got home."
Marcus wiped his face with his sleeve.
"That's still corny," he whispered.
Blake laughed, and it hurt his lip, and he didn't care.
That night, Richard Bennett was waiting in the front hall of the mansion when his son came home.
He saw the bruise immediately.
"Blake. What happened? Who did this?"
For a moment, Blake almost gave the old answer. "Nothing. Don't worry about it." The answer he'd given his whole life, every time his father asked a question and wasn't really there to hear it.
Instead, he sat down on the bottom step of the grand staircase and told the truth. All of it.
Richard listened without interrupting. When Blake finished, the older man was quiet for a long time.
Then he did something he hadn't done since Blake was a little boy.
He sat down on the step next to his son.