Thanks for all the lovely reviews (and for all the update demands) - it's all more than I or this fic deserve. Hopefully this will satisfy you for a few days while I make some decisions about the next couple of chapters.

Ste must have fallen asleep eventually, because when he woke it was to the smell of burning and loud aggressive laughing and cheering.

'Look at how it burns,' was the first sentence he picked out of the slumber-blurred white noise.

'Expensive stuff,' another voice said. 'Always burns better than the cheap crap.'

'Spanish too,' agreed another.

'Ooo la la.'

'That's French, you burke.'

Ste coughed a little as the smoke began to clog up his breathing. He brought his sleeves up over his nose and mouth and slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw were the arsonists crowded around a mental bin, poking at the flames with long metal pokers. Nothing unusual about that. Then he saw what they were using as fuel; the fancy checked blue blazer Brendan had bought him in Barcelona.

'Here y'are!' Ste yelled getting to his feet. 'That's mine that.'

'Is it?' asked one of the blokes. He had an Irish accent and dirty smirk.

'Give it back!' Ste demanded, trying to make a grab for a pair of chinos that looked set to follow the blazer.

'Here you are wee man,' said a smaller guy with an accent that was weird hybrid between Irish and German, as he used the metal poker to fling a burning rag towards him. Ste had to dodge it and it hit the pavement where he'd just been standing, and he found himself jumping back again when another guy squirted the garment with lighter fluid, causing the flames to jump high off the cracked tarmac.

'Put it on, wee man,' the German insisted. 'You look hot!'

It was a crappy joke, but that didn't stop the men laughing like it was the funniest thing anyone had said before emptying the rest of Ste's clothes into the bin.

Ste could do nothing but watch as all his possessions went up in smoke; the tracksuits he'd brought with him to The Estate, the clothes he'd been bought in Barcelona, even the sheets from his bed. It was all gone. All he had left were the clothes on his back, which were already smelling a bit stale after the long night of sleeping on the filthy street.

He could feel tears brimming in his eyes. He wasn't crying, it was the smoke pricking at his eyes and, in true Irish fashion, that was when the mizzle started.

The rain didn't stop for the rest of the day and Ste had no way of keeping dry and no one to turn to in Blue Zone.

Ste went to Central Square eventually, when the muttered comments, spitting and imaginative death threats from other Blue Zoners became too much. He knew about the rules of keeping Central Square clear until dinner time. There were an endless stream of rumours around that rule, the most likely being that Brendan didn't want the place to get damaged, the least likely being that Brendan held an all-male orgy there every day. Ste was pleased to find the second wasn't true as he trudged through the rain and under the gazebo-shelter into relative safety.

But, without the constant search for shelter and the persistent fear that someone might kill him to distract him, Ste now had time to think. That was almost worse. He found himself reliving the past 48 hours over and over in his head, trying to piece together the key events and pick out the clues as to how it had all turned so bad so fast. And then of course, there was the knowledge that, sooner or later, Brendan, Warren or Walker would show up with a truck full of food and he would be expected to cook a meal for the entire estate with no help and no oven.

He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin in the valley created between them. He closed his eyes tightly and tried not to think about how much he wished Brendan was with him, how much he wished the older man would hold him and make him feel safe and special and worth something more than this.

But Brendan had never thought of Ste as being worth anything more than – what had been his words – a: "nice body for me to break in." Ste was stupid to have let himself believe that Brendan might have cared. It was obvious now, if Brendan had cared, even the tiniest bit, Ste would have been living in Brendan's house, eating dinner in Macca's old chair and had a certain kind of influence over The Estate. He certainly wouldn't be folded into a ball with no shelter, no possessions and no friends.

Anne was here … again. It wasn't particularly unusual, but Brendan had a sneaking suspicion that she was after something. She hadn't said anything significant yet though, and he sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up.

So far, all she'd done was sit on the stool in the corner of his office staring at the screen of her fancy smartphone. Occasionally she'd start giggling to herself. She was probably on Twitface or Spoti-tube or whatever the latest internet fad was. Brendan couldn't wrap his head around social networking. The Estate was a place that existed purely on secrecy and flying below the radar. Social networking was a way of telling your personal information to everyone. You could let criminals know when you weren't home, you could tell them your address, mobile number, email address, interests and date of birth without even trying. It was madness. Besides, what would someone like him even put on one of these sites:

"Still looking for Chez's birthday gift. #desperate"?

" Mitzeee…x still annoying me with endless nonsensical laughter. #NeedNewFriends" ?

Or would the anonymity of an online profile give him the freedom of honesty:

"Can't stop thinking about Steven. #UnfamiliarFeelings. #Revenge"

There was a knock at the door and it began to open before he'd welcomed them in. There were only three people on The Estate who were brave, or was it stupid, enough to do that; Anne was already in the office, Warren was off somewhere watching the Man United game so that left….

'Walker,' he greeted his henchman as he poked his greasy head around the door, 'what can I do you for?'

'Just curious whether you know why Steven from Blue Zone is sleeping in Central Square?'

'Steven?' Anne perked up immediately and looked meaningfully at Brendan. 'Your Steven?'

'No, not my Steven,' Brendan sighed. He doesn't belong to me.

'You care about him though,' she shrugged, returning to her phone.

'No,' Brendan said, with practised boredom. He almost believed himself. 'I'm done with him.'

'So you don't know why he's at the square?' Walker clarified.

Brendan shook his head just slightly.

'It hasn't got anything to do with being thrown out of his house or the Blue Zoners burning his stuff then?'

And there it was; the real purpose of Walker's visit. He'd just wanted to disguise the news of Steven's exile from Blue Zone as mild curiosity. He was obviously attempting gage Brendan's reaction. The Irishman refused to react. Anne wasn't so cool:

'They burned his stuff?' she cried, but she was glaring at Brendan not Walker. She always expected him to have answers.

'It was caught on security camera,' Walker told her. He was smirking a little. 'Warren got Dennis Savage from Yellow Zone to capture the footage. It makes some pretty funny viewing. You should get Brendan to show you.' Walker gestured vaguely at the computer. 'It's in Warren's folder, he's put it in the folder called: "funny stuff".'

'Oh, I'll make sure Brendan shows me exactly what went on,' Anne said firmly, which was the kind of threat Brendan didn't want to hear. He'd rather pick another fight with O'Shaughnessy or the dealers in Spain or even be on the end of a vicious double-crossing manoeuvre from Walker and Warren than suffer Anne's interrogation tactics.

He refused to look at her. He just clicked into "funny stuff" and saw a video file called "Rat Boy on Fire". It began to play, a grainy, black and white image of Steven leaping out of the way as a white blob, which must have been some of his burning clothes were thrown in his direction. Brendan felt a strange kind of angry to see that Steven wasn't waving his arms around or stropping. He looked defiant in the video. He was just watching the flames destroy his life, but he wasn't given them the satisfaction of looking like he cared. The lad was tougher than he looked, and he wasn't nearly broken enough yet.

'Do you want me to move him on?' Walker asked.

'Don't bother,' Brendan waved a hand and shut the video, opening up the security camera of Central Square. Steven was curled up just at the platform, sleeping awkwardly, with his neck and back bent out of shape. 'He'll have to start cooking soon, won't he?' Brendan pointed out. 'We'll move him on then.'

'You're the boss,' Walker gave a weird sort of salute as he ducked out of the office.

As soon as the door shut, Brendan was made painfully aware of Anne glaring at him from her stool. He silently wished Walker would burst back into the office, maybe there was a crisis for Brendan to deal with; perhaps the Violet and Indigo Zones could attempt a riot again like they had in 2009. That had been distractingly entertaining for almost an entire afternoon.

Anne cleared her throat.

Brendan ignored her.

She just coughed even louder and tapped her long nails against the metal edge of the stool. The noise was irritating, but he could probably have ignored it, if it wasn't for the angry tension pouring out of her and flooding the room.

'What?' he asked, not taking his eyes off the computer.

'What are you planning?' she asked.

'There's a job in Russia that could be important. I'm sending a few guys over to Romania for something and there's some online scam that's going well in Australia right now and….'

'With Steven,' she clarified angrily. He glanced up at her, she was just staring at him. Her phone temporarily forgotten in her hand – this must be important to her.

'I'm taking back something that belongs to me,' he shrugged.

'I thought he wasn't your Steven.'

He ignored her and looked at the screen again. Steven looked broken right now, a homeless little street rat with no one outside The Estate and no one inside it.

He gazed to the other programmes open on his computer. All shopping websites. He still hadn't found that bloody gift for sister.

'It shouldn't bother me,' he thought aloud.

'Huh?' Mitzeee asked, she'd gone back to her phone. Hilarious memes to repeatedly cackle at … or something equally as nonsensical.

'She bought me that tasteless vase you smashed over Warren's head, so why should I worry about getting the right gift.'

'What?' She had the same expression she'd had that time when, in their early twenties, they'd decided to eat cake mix straight from the bowl: sick. 'What did you just say?'

'That it doesn't really matter what I get Chez for her birthday.'

'No, about the vase and Warren. How did you know?'

'I didn't,' he shrugged. 'It was an educated guess.' A correct one too, obviously.

'But how….' She'd put her phone into her bag. Brendan Brady; more interesting than a meme. That probably meant something to young people who understood the internet. It might even mean something to Steven, he glanced just briefly back to his screen as he explained:

'I did some research. According to Walker's bio on Riley, he was strictly non-violent. He came here as a runaway and was in the 5% who actually stuck it out. Barely even able to steal a wallet without freaking out, certainly not the type to smash one of the big players at The Estate over the head with a vase.' Mitzeee looked mildly impressed and Brendan went on: 'I bet he'd take the blame for someone else in some kind of misguided attempt at chivalry, for a woman he thought he loved for example.'

'You knew,' was all she said. The whisper was strangled by the tears that were welling up in her eyes. 'You knew and you said nothing.'

'You lied to me Anne,' he said coolly. 'I knew you wouldn't do that without a good reason.'

'I'm sorry,' she whispered. There wasn't an ounce of "Mitzeee" visible in the person he was talking to now. This was just Anne. The Anne he'd known before she became Mitzeee and before he'd become "The Boss".

'The walls are closing in now, Anne,' he said carefully. There are cracks appearing in The Estate, cracks that are being painted over before I really see them. We have to be completely honest with each other from now on.'

She walked around the desk and marched to his chair, pulling his head against her stomach in a weird kind of half-hug. He accepted it, he accepted all of Anne. She was his family, always would be.

When she released him, he noticed she was looking at the computer screen.

She was probably working those gossip-cogs in her head into a frenzy over the fact he still had the image of Steven on his screen. She'd think it was something it wasn't.

'So,' she nodded to the screen, 'what did young Steven do to end up there?'

Brendan shrugged noncommittally and leaned back on his chair.

'I can't be sure, but I can only assume Rhys got the wrong end of a very, very long stick.'

'And with Rae out of the picture….' She trailed off. She almost sounded shaming, when she added: 'They always come back to you in the end, don't they?'

'Always,' he smirked. He had no shame.

'Do you know the saddest thing, Brendan?'

Brendan said nothing. It was a stupid question. No one has ever voluntarily asked to be told something sad and he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of proving to her that he respected and appreciated her wisdom.

'You'll never know if they'd have come back without a push from you,' she sighed.

He just rolled his eyes to show he didn't care, because … he didn't care. Anne carried on anyway. She was misreading all the sign, or she was blind, or being righteously idiotic.

'You need to be careful, Brendan.'

'Do I, Anne?' he sounded bored. He was bored. She was boring him.

'You're becoming obsessed,' she accused.

Brendan swore sharply under his breath.

Not because of any of the nonsense Anne was spouting. He'd stopped listening to her as soon as she'd told him to be careful. He was always careful. The thing that bothered him was the other figure creeping into the picture on his screen. Someone edging predatorily towards Steven. Someone who could quite easily ruin everything. Steven was vulnerable and Brendan had to stop that man from getting to him.

Thanks for reading! x