The medic took one look at Dominic’s approaching shadow and stepped back, lowering his instruments.

Dominic’s massive hands—hands I knew for a fact had dismantled rival empires and ended careers without a tremor—shook just once as he hovered over her bruised, ruined skin.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t curse the heavens or scream for vengeance. His silence was infinitely more dangerous than any threat he could have uttered.

He leaned down, his lips brushing against her unbruised forehead, a kiss of absolute, terrifying devotion. When he stood and turned his back to her, the gentle father was gone.

What remained was the machine. He looked at his lead operative, a ghost of a man named Silas whose face was a map of old violence. “I want everything,” Dominic said.

His voice was a low, gravelly whisper that seemed to drop the ambient temperature of the library by ten degrees. “Every account, every loan, every offshore shell, every creditor they’ve ever run from.

I want the hotel’s own camera feeds pulled before their people can touch them. I want that deed-transfer document in our hands, not shredded.