"The woman's operatives engaged Skyfire directly tonight." Marcus lowered a second finger. "Not through proxies. Not through the Ridge family. Her people fired weapons at Skyfire positions and Skyfire fired back. That creates a defined enemy for both sides that is not Marcus Steel. Before tonight, the Saint Heir was hunting shadows. Now he has a face to point his anger at. And that face belongs to the woman who hung up on him after saying a word he didn't recognize.""You wanted them fighting each other." Lucas nodded slowly."I wanted them too busy fighting each other to notice the man sitting in a bar three blocks from the waterfront." Marcus's lip twitched. "Third. Skinny Monkey's unit reinforced Skyfire's defenses at the critical moment. The Saint Heir's people were losing. His east wing was collapsing. His ground floor positions had gone dark. And then, from a direction he didn't expect, help arrived.""Help he didn't ask for." Lucas's eyes narrowed."The most dangerous kind of g

The moment his eyes landed on Marcus Steel's face, his legs went out from under him. His right hand shot sideways and caught the door frame. His face turned the color of wet paper. Sweat appeared on his forehead in the time it took the nearest guard to finish his sentence.Three years. Three years of running this place without hearing a single word from the man who owned it. Three years of managing staff and handling problems and maintaining the kind of establishment that powerful people trusted with their privacy. And the man was standing in front of him. In the hallway. While three guards bragged about how the manager was more important than the boss."Sir." Finn Carmichael's voice came out in a whisper that didn't match his suit or his reputation or the authority the guards had just spent two minutes celebrating. "I didn't know you were coming. Nobody told me. I would have prepared everything. I would have cleared the building.""Mr. Carmichael?" The first guard's smirk was melting

Finn Carmichael's knees buckled and he dropped to the floor again. His forehead hit the tile with a sound that made Marcus wince."Stop doing that." Marcus pointed at Finn and then pointed at the chair across from the desk. "Sit down. I didn't come here to watch you ruin your forehead on my floor. I came here because I need something this bar was built to provide."Finn sat down. His back was straight enough to qualify as furniture."Drunken Gold was never just a bar." Marcus leaned forward. "I built this place years before the Mount Everest incident. A bar with mixed clientele in a busy city is the best possible place to collect information without attracting attention. Businessmen talk over drinks. Politicians relax in private rooms. Criminals meet in back hallways. And the staff hears everything.""The intelligence network." Finn's eyes widened. "You designed it yourself. Every hire I made followed the criteria you set before you disappeared.""I lost my memory three years ago." Ma

Preston Hartford’s eyes went wide for one second, then narrow. A grin crawled across his face like something unpleasant surfacing from mud.“Well, well, well.” Preston squeezed Simeon’s arm tighter and leaned forward. “The famous live in son in law. Quinn’s little pet dog wandered all the way out here without his leash.” His tongue ran across his teeth. “You are not in Grayson City anymore, Marcus. You cannot perform the same tricks here. Nobody in this room owes you anything, and nobody in this room is afraid of a man whose greatest accomplishment is mopping his wife’s kitchen floor.”Marcus walked forward.A bodyguard stepped into his path and extended a thick arm across his chest. The arm was the size of a normal man’s thigh. The bodyguard looked down at Marcus with the practiced intimidation of someone who had never been told no by anyone smaller than himself.Marcus hit him once.The bodyguard left the floor. His body traveled sideways across the bar and crashed into a booth fift

"I will take that as a yes." Marcus pulled out his phone, scrolled through his call history with his thumb, and pressed a name. The bar was quiet enough that everyone heard the line connect."It is me." Marcus leaned against the bar counter like he was ordering a coffee. "Someone named Sterling Fairbanks wants to break my legs tonight. You think you can smooth it over? I will cover dinner sometime."He listened for three seconds. His face did not change."Thanks." He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket.Sterling Fairbanks burst out laughing. A real laugh, the kind that comes from genuine amusement at someone's stupidity. His men laughed with him. The sound bounced off the walls of Drunken Gold like a bad song."You just called your girlfriend to save you?" Sterling wiped his eye with one knuckle. "What are you going to do next, call your mother? Should I wait while you dial your kindergarten teacher? A maggot with a phone is still a maggot, friend."Marcus looked at him wi