He turns to me. “You will call a Board session within seventy-two hours. I will not be made a fool of by a son who believes a woman’s dramatic rescue is a line item.”
“You already were made a fool,” I say evenly. “Just not by me. You took care of that by yourself.”
He steps closer, crowding my space. I don’t step back. I lift my chin.
“You are wasting my money,” he says, softer. “And when she leaves—and she will—you will find that you built this entire mess on the foundation of a girl who liked your attention and your touch and then liked her freedom more.”
Phoenix lets out a sound I can’t classify—half laugh, half snarl, and all rage. “I don’t like anyone’s attention,” she says. “I like my rules. Not the house rules. And like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”
He turns that empty gaze on her again, the one that makes grown men feel like paperwork. “Then take your rules and leave. You’re free. A million dollars richer. You can go buy an apartment and a dog bed and an idea of yourself that doesn’t require our sons or dynasty to hold it up.”
He loves it. He loves the part where he gets to say “free” and mean “free to prove me right.”
The silence after is ugly and fragile. I can hear the ocean beyond the marsh. I can hear the house. I can hear the muscle in my jaw chewing on something that will not swallow.
“Get out,” I say.
He looks genuinely surprised, which is theater. “Pardon?”
“You came. You saw. You postured. Now you can leave.”
“Or what?”
“Or I remember how to be your son out loud,” I say. “And I don’t think you’ll like the version of me.”
He weighs it. He likes games where the pieces bleed. He also likes his name. He touches a cufflink. “Seventy-two hours,” he reminds me, as if I needed the math. Then, to Phoenix, one last twist: “When you go—and you will—be kind to them. They don’t know how to lose without breaking everything in their world.”
He walks out with the same control he carried. The door closes. The car hums to life. The gate opens and spits him out.
The room stays standing. So do I. That’s the impressive part. I am not a man who shakes, but the floor…the floor felt like it was moving beneath me for a minute.
Atticus puts the file down like it weighs the same as a glass. Maverick blows out a breath like he’s been underwater. Storm looks at the door for a count of five, waiting to see if he comes back; when he doesn’t, he sinks onto the couch.
Phoenix hasn’t moved. She’s still in the doorway with Zeus pressed into her leg, two spots of red in her cheeks.
“You’re free,” I say, before I can stop the shape of the words.
She looks at me like I just translated a language wrong on purpose. “I was always free, you dick,” she says. “You’re just now realizing that?”
She turns and goes back to the room without closing the door. That should calm me. It doesn’t. Her shoulders are stiff and then they aren’t when she sits on the edge of the bed and puts her facein her hands for a beat. I watch as she lies back and stares at the ceiling.
Maverick touches my elbow, gentle. “Con,” he says.
“I know.”
Atticus’s mouth thins into a line. “You need to tell her about that chip.”
“Iknow.”
I stand there like a man who forgot what gravity is. My father’s voice still clings to the walls like smoke. He saidwhen you go,like it was a foregone conclusion. He’s not a prophet. He’s a businessman with a taste for pain. That’s fine. So am I.
I should go to her. I don’t know if I’m the last face she wants to see or the only one she can stand. I don’t know if the wordfreetastes like honey or poison in her mouth when it came from him.
Or from me.
I am not allowed fear. That’s what I was taught. Fear is for men who don’t own something worth losing.
My hands shake, the tremor small, but there. I put them in my pockets so no one has to know what my body decided without asking me.
