I leaned back just far enough to meet her gaze. “Before I became the dull office husband your family liked to laugh at, I spent eight years as a lead financial crimes investigator for the State Attorney General.”

“One thing that job taught me,” I said, “is that men like him almost never lean on fear alone. They lean on money, on leverage, and on the certainty that no one is ever going to look under the hood at how their power actually works.”

Sophia crossed to her old laptop and opened an encrypted folder. Inside was a whole record of his cruelty—voice messages, bank transfers, photos of things he’d smashed, emails signed Mason Fletcher.

One email flat-out threatened to cut off her mother’s medical care if Sophia so much as breathed a word to anyone. At midnight, her phone buzzed with a text from Mason.

Enjoy the marriage, it read. And don’t forget what happens when you decide to embarrass me.

The color left Sophia’s face as she read it. I kissed her forehead, stepped out onto the balcony, and made one very important call.

“Preston?” answered Karen Silva, the woman who used to be my supervisor at the agency.

“I need an emergency evidence hold, right now,” I said. “We’re looking at domestic abuse, witness intimidation, likely tax fraud, and a lot of hidden assets.”

There was a long silence on her end. “And whose name goes on the request?”

“Mason Fletcher,” I said.

Karen’s tone snapped into focus. “The construction guy? The developer?”

“That’s the one,” I confirmed.

Downstairs, Mason was working through expensive champagne with Sophia’s mother, telling the guests I was far too soft to ever manage a family as powerful as theirs. As far as he was concerned, the whole night belonged to him.

He had no idea I’d just cracked open every dark thing he’d spent decades burying. When I stepped back into the suite, he was waiting by the staircase, grinning like the game was already his.

He dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder with fake warmth. “Take good care of her, son,” he said with a wink. “Sophia can get a little dramatic when she’s after attention.”