The café didn't move for a full three seconds. Coffee dripped steadily off Darius's jaw, soaking into the collar of his shirt, and for those three seconds the entire room seemed to hold its breath. A dozen phones had already risen into the air, screens glowing, thumbs poised to record. Nobody said a word. Even the barista behind the counter froze mid-pour, the pitcher tilted at an angle that sent a thin, forgotten stream of milk spilling over the side of a cup. Darius blinked against the sting of the dark roast in his eyes. Darius exhaled slowly as he wiped the dripping liquid from his face with the back of his hand, as though this were an inconvenience rather than a humiliation. He turned his gaze toward the counter, his voice far too calm for the moment, cutting through the heavy silence. "I'll cover the tab," Darius said evenly, his eyes flicking to the shattered porcelain and spilled drinks littering the floor. "And whatever else she broke

By midmorning, the three of them — minus Holt, who insisted someone needed to "supervise from a respectable distance" — made their way to the estate's private golf course, an emerald stretch of manicured green that rolled out toward the horizon like something lifted from a postcard. The grandmaster, it turned out, was a menace with a golf club, sinking shot after shot with an ease that made Darius's competitive instincts flare to life. "Grandpa, you're hustling me," Darius accused after his third badly overcorrected swing sent the ball careening into the rough. "There's no way a man your age has this good a form. I can't believe it." "Fifty years of practice will do that," the grandmaster said smugly, lining up his next shot. "Your father, on the other hand, was terrible. Absolutely dreadful. Nearly put a ball through the clubhouse window once trying to impress a girl he was courting that year." Darius barked out a laugh. "Please tell me that story." Th

The porch light Darius had been watching belonged to a narrow house at the end of the cul-de-sac, its paint peeling in long strips, a rusted mailbox leaning drunkenly against a fence post that had given up holding it upright years ago. Natasha killed the engine and sat for a moment with her hands still curled around the wheel, watching Darius study the house like it owed him something. "You're sure about this," she said. It wasn't really a question anymore, not after the drive, but she needed to hear him say it out loud one more time before they did whatever it was he intended to do. Darius stared through the windshield, his jaw tight. "No," Darius admitted, low. "But sure enough." He stepped out of the car before she could argue the point, and the night air hit him — cold, damp, carrying the faint tang of woodsmoke. He turned toward the source of it and saw, past a sagging chain-link fence, the flicker of a small fire crackling in a clearing behind the

"Natasha, stay with me," Darius said, glancing sideways every few seconds, torn between the road and the woman bleeding out in his passenger seat. "I'm fine," she muttered through gritted teeth, though her voice had thinned to something brittle, stretched too tight over pain. Her hand pressed hard against her shoulder, blood welling between her fingers despite the pressure, soaking dark into the fabric of her jacket and dripping onto the leather seat in slow, steady drops. The city lights bled into streaks of amber and white as Darius took the curves too fast, one hand locked on the wheel, the other braced against the center console as if he could hold the car together through will. In the rearview mirror, Red Valley shrank into a smear of darkness and distant sirens, but the real danger wasn't behind them anymore. It was sitting beside him, growing paler by the second. "You are not fine," Darius snapped, harder than he meant to. Fear did that to him

The week had folded itself into something dangerously close to normal. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Darius had enjoyed a stretch of relative normalcy. Darius moved through his days on autopilot — clinical rounds in the morning, group project meetings that bled into the afternoon, the quiet hours after midnight when he became someone else entirely, signing off on shipments, rerouting funds, deciding which whispers from the Argent's rivals were worth acting on. His grandfather had not called. Not once. No update on Neptune, no mention of what "handling it the way the Argent does" actually meant. But the silence spoke its own language, the proof was written in the market. The Bentleys had gone quiet on their end too, their once-steady stream of insider information drying up overnight, business tipping visibly, in the Argent's favor. It was Friday evening when he and Charlie jogged off the practice field, cleats caked in mud, jerseys soaked throug