The God of war They Burned Is Back

Unworthy Hands

The ballroom had become a theater of tension. Thirty guards in tactical formation, weapons at the ready. Rowan Thorne being helped away, cradling his shattered wrist. Elite guests pressed against the walls, champagne forgotten, phones out to capture the spectacle.

And in the center—Callum Reed, seated at his table like a king at court, wine glass in hand.

The murmurs grew louder, anxious and confused.

Then the crowd parted.

A woman glided into the ballroom with practiced grace. She wore a silver evening gown that caught the light, diamonds at her throat and wrists. Her blonde hair was swept into an elegant twist. Her smile was warm and professional—the smile of someone trained to smooth over disasters.

Lady Cordelia. Octavia’s director of public relations. The face the Mercer empire showed the world.

She approached Callum’s table with measured steps, hands spread in a gesture of peace. The guards shifted to let her pass.

“Good evening.” Her voice was cultured, pleasant. “I’m Lady Cordelia, Mrs. Mercer’s representative. There seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

Callum took a sip of wine.

“I apologize for the aggressive response from our security.” She gestured delicately toward where Rowan had been. “They’re trained to be cautious. I’m sure we can resolve this civilly.”

“Where is she?” Callum asked quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Octavia. Where is she?”

Cordelia’s smile didn’t falter. “Mrs. Mercer will arrive shortly. She’s the guest of honor, after all. In the meantime, perhaps I could help? If you have a message or concern, I’d be happy to relay—”

“No.”

The word hung in the air.

Cordelia’s smile tightened slightly. “I understand you wish to speak with Mrs. Mercer personally. I can certainly arrange—”

“I’ll wait.”

“Of course.” Cordelia’s eyes drifted to the leather folio beside Callum’s wine glass. “What is that, if I may ask? It seems quite precious to you.”

“You may not ask.”

Her professional composure cracked for just a moment—a flash of irritation quickly masked. She extended her hand toward the folio, reaching slowly, carefully, as if approaching something fragile.

“If I could just see what—”

Callum’s hand moved.

The backhand was sudden, brutal. It caught Cordelia across the face with enough force to spin her halfway around. She stumbled in her heels and fell, crashing onto the marble floor in a tangle of silver fabric and scattered diamonds.

The ballroom gasped collectively.

Cordelia pressed a hand to her face, stunned. Blood trickled from her split lip. She looked up at Callum with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“You’re unworthy,” Callum said, his voice flat, “to touch my father’s work.”

Cordelia’s shock transformed into fury. She struggled to her feet, one hand still on her bleeding mouth.

“He struck me!” Her voice was shrill, all polish gone. “This man assaulted me! In front of everyone!”

The guards tensed, fingers tightening on weapons.

Then came heavy footsteps and angry voices.

The ballroom doors crashed open.

Desmond Mercer entered like a storm, flanked by six personal bodyguards in expensive suits. He was thirty-two, tall and well-built, with his mother’s sharp features and his father’s weak chin. His tuxedo was impeccable.

His eyes swept the scene—Cordelia with blood on her face, Rowan being treated by paramedics in the corner, his security forces surrounding a single man at a table.

But it was the folio on the table that made Desmond stop.

Just for a fraction of a second. One beat too long.

His eyes moved from the folio to Callum’s face, and something passed across his expression that wasn’t quite fury and wasn’t quite fear.

It was recognition.

Not of Callum’s face—he couldn’t know that. But of the situation. Of what it meant that someone had walked in here carrying what appeared to be Julian Reed’s final score, on the night of the Maestro’s Ball, in the building erected on the Reed estate’s grave.

He recovered quickly. His jaw set, his expression hardened into performance.

“What the hell is this?” His voice carried across the ballroom. “Someone explain why my event is in shambles!”

One of the tactical guards stepped forward. “Sir, this man forced entry without invitation. He assaulted Mr. Thorne and Lady Cordelia. We’re attempting to—”

“Attempting?” Desmond’s face flushed. “You’re attempting to handle one intruder? With thirty armed guards?”

“He’s dangerous, sir.”

“Dangerous.” Desmond’s laugh was bitter. He turned toward Callum’s table, his bodyguards moving with him. “You. Stand up.”

Callum swirled his wine.

“I said stand up!”

Callum took a slow sip.

Desmond’s jaw clenched. He moved closer, stopping just beyond arm’s reach. His bodyguards positioned themselves strategically.

“Do you have any idea who I am? Do you understand where you are?”

“Yes,” Callum set down his glass. “I know exactly where I am.”

“Then you know you’ve made a terrible mistake.” Desmond gestured to Cordelia, who’d retreated to the edge of the ballroom, still clutching her face. “You assaulted a member of my staff. You injured my head of security. You disrupted my event.”

“Your event,” Callum’s voice was soft. “In your tower. Built on stolen ground.”

Desmond blinked. “What?”

“This tower sits where my family’s estate once stood. Where my father composed. Where my sister played. Your mother bought the land after she burned it all down.”

Something happened to Desmond’s face when Callum said your mother.

It was subtle. The kind of thing that only registered if you were watching for it, and Callum was always watching for it. A tightening around the eyes. A muscle pulling at the corner of his mouth. Not anger at the accusation—something older than that. Something that had been sitting behind his expression for a long time.

“You’re insane,” Desmond said.

“Am I?”

Desmond’s face darkened. “I don’t care about your delusions. You’re going to stand up, walk over to Lady Cordelia, and apologize on your knees. Then my security will escort you out, and if you’re very lucky, we won’t press charges.”

Callum didn’t move. His gaze had settled on Desmond with a new quality—not dismissal, but examination.

Rowan’s words had been sitting at the back of his mind since the wrist broke.

Someone else ordered the explosion. Someone who had their own reasons.

Callum looked at Desmond Mercer—the heir, the son, the man who’d grown up inside Octavia’s empire—and for the first time asked himself a question he hadn’t thought to ask before.

What does it feel like to grow up knowing your inheritance is built on a grave?

“Sit down,” Callum said.

Desmond blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Sit down. I’m not going to ask twice.”

“You don’t give orders in my—”

“Rowan Thorne told me something interesting before I broke his wrist.” Callum’s voice dropped low enough that only Desmond could hear. “He told me the explosion wasn’t your mother’s order. That she was used. Set up to take the blame by someone else.”

The color left Desmond’s face.

Not gradually. All at once, like a light switched off.

His bodyguards noticed and shifted forward. Desmond raised one hand slightly—a small, controlled gesture—and they stilled.

That was interesting too. The reflex of a man used to managing information carefully.

“I don’t know what Rowan told you,” Desmond said. His voice was quieter now, the performance thinning at the edges.

“You do,” Callum said. “And more than that—you’ve been trying to find the same answer I have.”

Silence stretched between them.

Desmond’s eyes moved to the folio. Then back to Callum’s face.

“Who are you?” he asked. Not the way he’d demanded it before, loud and staged. This was quieter. Genuine.

“Callum Reed. Julian’s son.”

Something broke open in Desmond’s expression—grief, or guilt, or the specific exhaustion of someone who has been carrying a secret weight for years without anyone to help hold it.

He sat down.

Not because Callum had told him to. Because his legs appeared to decide for him.

He sat across from Callum at the ruined table, his bodyguards confused behind him, the ballroom frozen around them, and pressed both hands flat against the white silk tablecloth.

“I’ve known for four years,” Desmond said quietly. “That something was wrong. That the catalog—that the way she acquired it—” He stopped. Looked at the folio. “I hired a private investigator. He found three witnesses to the original recordings. People Julian had trusted. I had documentation showing the collaborative credits were fabricated.” His jaw worked. “Six months ago that investigator stopped returning my calls. A week later I was told he’d relocated abroad. No forwarding address.”

Callum studied him.

“I was building a case,” Desmond said. “Carefully. Quietly. Because if I moved too fast she would know, and everything would disappear. Every document, every witness. She has people everywhere.” He looked up, and his eyes were raw. “And then you walked in tonight like a bomb going off, and in three hours you’ve destroyed every piece of quiet ground I was standing on.”

The ballroom remained frozen around them.

Callum looked at Desmond Mercer—the man he’d come here to break—and felt the shape of the night shift under his feet.

“Your investigation,” Callum said. “Does it touch the explosion? The concert hall?”

Desmond hesitated. “The financial trail does. There’s money that moved in the weeks before the premiere. Payments that don’t connect to Octavia’s accounts—they connect to a third party she was in contact with but never publicly acknowledged.”

“A name.”

“Not yet. That’s what I was still working toward.”

Callum was quiet for a long moment.

Then Desmond’s grief curdled back into something harder. His voice dropped to something sharp and bitter.

“You’ve been gone for fourteen years. Building yourself into whatever you are now. And I’ve been here. Inside it. Trying to do this the right way, quietly, without burning everything down.” He looked at the scattered guards, the broken furniture, Cordelia’s blood on the marble. “And you walked in tonight and set fire to four years of careful work in a single evening.”

His rage was real. That much was clear.

But it wasn’t the simple rage of a man defending his family’s empire.

It was the rage of someone watching their only plan collapse.

Callum held his gaze. “The right way hasn’t worked.”

“It wasn’t finished.”

“It would never be finished. You know that.” Callum leaned forward slightly. “Whoever moved that money—whoever ordered the explosion and let your mother take the shape of the crime—they’ve had fourteen years to bury every thread you could pull. Your investigator didn’t relocate. You know that too.”

Desmond said nothing.

But his silence was its own kind of answer.

Callum sat back.

“ANSWER ME!” Desmond’s control finally snapped—but it was different now. Not the fury of an heir protecting his estate. The desperation of a man watching his last option burn. His voice cracked on the last word, raw in a way the ballroom could hear.

He turned to his guards, his bodyguards, the tactical teams.

“Break him! I want him on his knees! Do it now!”