Conrad looks like he’s been carved sharper in the last twenty-four hours—jaw set, shirt open at the throat, eyes flat and furious. Atticus’s hands are empty but it feels like he’s holding something heavy. Storm is stillness with a center. Maverick’s mouth is a hard line; his sunglasses hide his eyes and make him look even more dangerous.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Conrad bites out.
I lean back, slow. Flip the ring into the pool. “Relaxing?” I answer, closing my eyes like he’s an inconvenience and not a tectonic plate under my feet. “I just finished talking to the employees and laying out the way things will be, and now I’m giving Zeus his exercise.”
He doesn’t argue. He moves. In two steps he’s at my side, and then I’m up and over his shoulder, the world swinging, his arm an iron bar at the backs of my thighs. He turns that stare on my bodyguards, and men who would walk into gunfire for me decide to take a beat and put their hands where he can see them.
“Put me down,” I say, palms braced on his back. I slap between his shoulder blades. It’s like striking a door.
Atticus steps close enough that I can smell expensive soap. He doesn’t touch me at first—not until my hands slide like I might shove or punch. Then his fingers close around my wrists—firm, not cruel, a warning and a promise. “Don’t make him drop you,” he says, voice even.
“This is bullshit.”
“I can gag you,” Maverick offers, conversational and filthy. “I’ve got a tie in my pocket.”
“Try it,” I snap.
“Please don’t,” Spencer says dryly from his chaise. “The staff will have to write three reports.”
No one listens to Spencer. Conrad carries me past the pool, past the towel station, through a hall that smells like eucalyptus and money. Zeus trots beside us happily, oblivious to the war while he shakes water off him. My guards fall in because of course they do; Jace gives me a look that’s all apology andyou’re not actually in danger so I’m not going to do anything.
I flip him the bird and roll my eyes.
The penthouse elevator opens without waiting for a key card. Atticus has already made the building love him more than the fire code. Conrad doesn’t set me down until he drops me on the sofa in the main room and plants his hands on either side of my hips, caging me in place. The sea spreads itself across the windows like it wants to listen.
“We have a lot to talk about,” he says.
“I tried that,” I shoot back. “Somebody ran.”
“I’m here now.”
Atticus takes the chair opposite like a therapist whose treatment plan includes arson.
Storm leans against a column, arms folded, knives hidden and absolutely not.
Maverick settles on the arm of the sofa and eats another cherry tomato. “Since everyone is feeling balanced and reasonable,” he says, voice pleasant, “this is an excellent time for facts.”
“Fine,” I say, chin up.
Atticus lifts his phone, not to read so much as to anchor us. “Final results came in. Full panel. Chain of custody we trust.” He looks at me first. “You are a Masterson by blood.”
My stomach doesn’t drop this time. It already did that yesterday. I nod. “I’m aware.”
He looks at Conrad. “You’re not.”
Conrad’s jaw works. He never takes his gaze off me.
Atticus keeps going because that’s what he does. “Storm’s a Carrow. Maverick’s a Locke. I’m a Vale. The paper matches the faces we’ve been staring at our whole lives.”
“So the part of all this that matters,” Maverick says, cutting through, “is the part we already knew.” He gestures at me, at all of us. “She’s ours.”
“She’s always been one of us,” Conrad says quietly. He shifts his weight like he’s making room for something he should’ve said sooner. Then he looks at me, and the fury drains out enough toshow something rawer underneath. “Phoenix,” he says, like it’s a prayer he’s finally allowed to say in daylight. “I love you. I will always love you. I’ll share you with them.” He tips his head to the others, the line of his mouth fierce. “But no one else. You are ours.”
It punches the air out of me. Not the claim—God knows they’ve been staking claims since the first time I spilled coffee on one of their shoes. It’s thewewrapped around it. The fact that they said the quiet part together, out loud, where it can’t be taken back.
“Say it back,” Maverick says, too soft for his mouth, rough anyway.
I swallow. The room is big and suddenly not big enough at all. “I choose you,” I say. “All of you. I don’t want a crown. I just want the four of you and a key to the corner office.”
