Luther’s apartment door was unlocked. Rhys pushed it open without knocking. Luther stood by the window, drink in hand, already turning with a smile halfway formed, clearly rehearsed for a very different visitor. “That was fast, Reyes. I wasn’t expecting you so soon—“ The smile died the instant he saw who was actually standing in his doorway. “Rhys!.” Luther’s glass slipped from his fingers, shattering against the hardwood. “How did you—” “Reyes is dead.” Rhys said, closing the door behind him with a soft, deliberate click. “He talked first. Said some interesting things about who hired him.” Luther’s face twisted. He started backing toward the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out now!” Rhys crossed the room and hit him once, hard enough to send Luther sprawling over the coffee table, scattering a decanter and a stack of papers across the floor. Luther coughed harshly. “Don’t waste what’s left of your dignity lying to me.” Luther scrambled backwar

“Kira! Open this fucking door!” Luther yelled. Kira opened the door to find Luther barely standing, face still swollen, one eye nearly shut, his usually immaculate clothes stiff with dried blood. “Oh my God.” She pulled him inside before the hallway neighbors could get a good look. “What happened to you?” “Rhys happened.” Luther spat, collapsing onto her couch, wincing as the motion jarred something still tender beneath his ribs. “And then Adam. And then Anna, who apparently decided I meant nothing the second I became ambitious.” “They cast you out?” Kira knelt in front of him, dabbing carefully at the cut above his eye with a damp cloth. “Stripped my shares. Revoked everything. Threw me out like I was the fucking help.” Luther’s hands curled into fists against his knees, fury bleeding through every word. “Years, Kira. Years of positioning myself, of playing the perfect fiancé, the perfect future son-in-law, and they discard me in one night because some nobody from a fucking

The moment the chamber doors sealed shut behind them, Mera gasped, fury and fear fighting for control of her. “Do you have any idea what you just agreed to?” She asked as she pulled him to the torchlit yard.“I agreed to a fight.” Rhys simply said to her.Mera sighed, exasperated.“This is not a fight. It’s a trial.” Mera’s hands came up, like she wanted to shake him and stopped herself just short of it. “Elder Kraven is an A-rank mage, Rhys. He has been battle-tested for over two hundred years. Fire is his strongest element. His only element, honed until there’s nothing wasted in it. Do you understand what that means?”“Enlighten me.”Rhys said, bored already.“It means he’s killed people far more trained than you for far smaller insults. My lord. You have no training. I’m sorry but that’s the truth. You cannot possibly stand against someone as powerful as Kraven. Not right now anyway.”She sighed. “We have to find a way to make peace. Let us see if he will listen to reason.”Rhys

Alisha nearly dropped her wine glass laughing when the headline scrolled across her television screen.“Mom, look at this.” She called out, already pulling up the clip on her phone for a second viewing, delight spreading across her face like she’d just been handed a gift. “Longwater Holdings. Scandal of the year. And guess whose precious little heiress is caught right in the middle of it.”Fiona drifted in from the kitchen, reading glasses perched on her nose, peering at the screen with open satisfaction. “Oh, this is delicious. The Longwater girl? The one your ex-husband’s been parading around like some kind of trophy?”“That’s the one.” Alisha said, grinning. “I told you, Mom. Didn’t I tell you? Rhys doesn’t bring anything but ruin wherever he goes. Took him one month to drag an entire empire into the mud.”“Poor girl has no idea what she’s gotten herself into.” Fiona said, settling onto the couch, clearly enjoying herself. “Falling for a man straight out of prison. What did she exp

When Rhys got downstairs, it was Adam who had drove in.He didn’t look up right away. Instead, he stared at his own hands, like the words he was about to utter had to pass through them before it could reach his mouth.“I killed him. The man in the footage. But it wasn’t murder, Rhys. He came to that warehouse to kill me.”Rhys didn’t move.“It was six years ago.” Adam continued. “I’d gone to meet a supplier, alone, against my own security’s advice. The meeting was a setup. The man pulled a gun the moment the doors closed, and it was him or me. I still remember the sound the gun made when it hit the floor after I got it away from him. I still remember his face.”“So it was Self-defense.” Rhys said.He asked as Adam settled into a chair.“Legally, probably. I never reported it. I buriedthe body, paid the right people to make the warehouse disappear from every record, and told myself it was over. I thought it was over.”“Until someone found the footage.”“Until someone found the footage