The warehouse turned into a circus the second AJ's knees hit the floor. His sobbing echoed off the metal walls and his fingers dug into the fabric of Ethan's pant leg with the grip of a man who had not felt safe in years.Nathan stood frozen with his mouth wide open, looking like someone had just told him the earth was flat and handed him proof. Old Joe had backed himself against a stack of timber and was blinking so fast it looked like he was having a seizure.Victoria stared at the scene with her arms crossed. Her expression was composed, but behind her eyes something sharp and uncomfortable was forming. She glanced at Mrs. Hayes, and the older woman returned the look with raised eyebrows and a slight tilt of the head that said everything without a single word.A foreign prince was kneeling at Ethan Cole's feet and calling him brother in law. That meant Ethan had a connection to a royal family. That meant there was possibly a sister. That meant there might have been a marriage, or s

Gary's mouth moved but no sound came out. His face cycled through three different shades of red before settling on a color that resembled a boiled beet. He looked at Richard for support, but Richard was already shifting to a different strategy.Richard straightened his collar and cleared his throat. He had anticipated that people might be skeptical about AJ's identity, so he had prepared evidence. He nudged Gary with his elbow and muttered something under his breath.Gary fumbled his phone out of his back pocket with shaking hands and pulled up a photograph. He turned the screen around so everyone in the warehouse could see it.The image was seven years old. It showed members of the Sha Kingdom royal family attending a military parade on a wide boulevard in New York City. The royal family stood on a raised platform draped in white and gold cloth. Among the white robed figures was a younger, cleaner, better fed version of AJ, standing with his hands clasped in front of him and his chin

Ethan felt the weight of every pair of eyes in the room pressing against him. The photograph had cracked open a door he had spent seven years sealing shut. Behind that door were memories he carried in his body like shrapnel, too deep to remove and too sharp to ignore.Seven years ago he had been assigned as captain of the guard for a member of the Sha Kingdom royal family during a diplomatic military parade in New York. He was twenty one years old, already one of the most dangerous men in any room he entered, and the organization trusted him with the highest tier of protective detail. That assignment was how he met AJ and his older sister Adele.Shortly after, everything fell apart. The Ingram family fabricated charges against his mother Helen Cole, forcing her to fake her own death and disappear. In the chaos that followed, a mysterious attacker poisoned Ethan with the Seven Core Lotus Toxin, a substance so lethal that survival alone was considered a medical impossibility. He changed

The private dining room on the fourteenth floor of the Chicago Hilton International Hotel glowed with warm amber light.A long mahogany table had been set with white linen, crystal glasses, and silver cutlery that reflected the chandelier overhead.The room smelled of fresh flowers and expensive cologne, and every detail screamed money that the Morgan family did not actually have.Tyler sat at the far end of the table in his wheelchair, wrapped in so many bandages he looked like a poorly assembled Halloween costume.His broken arm was propped on a cushion and his swollen face poked out from between layers of gauze like a bruised peach."So when Dad gets here," Tyler said, leaning forward with the excitement of a child waiting for Christmas morning, "is he going to settle things with Ethan and the Thompson family right away? Because I have a list. A long list."Diane sat across from him, her hair freshly styled and her nails painted dark red for the occasion. She waved her hand dismiss

The room turned to stone. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.Diane stared at her husband with her mouth hanging open. The red handprint on her cheek was already swelling. She had spent four years imagining the moment Gary returned, and in every version of that fantasy, he walked through the door, took her side, and helped her punish the people who had hurt her family. Instead he had slapped her across the face to protect the one man she hated more than anyone on earth."You hit me," Diane whispered. Her voice shook with disbelief. "You hit me for him?""I hit you because you are too stupid to recognize your own destruction," Gary snapped. He pointed toward the elevator where Ethan and AJ had disappeared. "That man stands next to the Prince of Sha Kingdom. If the prince decides we are enemies, we are finished. Not just in Chicago. Everywhere."Sophia's vision went dark at the edges. Her fingers curled into the linen tablecloth so tightly her knuckles turned white.She had been counting the