“Yeah. I’m good.”
Her voice is tight, almost smug. Not shaken like a kid her age should be but laced with the raw edge of a girl ready to rip someone’s head off.
Alina steps around us, eyes wide at the sight of them. “Should I get some towels?”
“When that’s done, tell the staff downstairs they’re not to go home tonight until I say.” My order is flat.
She hesitates, gaze darting between us, lingering longer than necessary. Her lips part as if to say something, then close again. “Of course,” she finally murmurs, and disappears down the hallway.
By the time we’re back in my office and Valentina is relaying the rest, I’m already standing. Casper. Fucking Casper. The bastard I should have killed the night we met.
“Where is he?” I bark.
“We left him chained in his office. He’s still alive.”
Not for long. My boots take me to the door before my brain catches up. “Stay here.”
I’m moving before she can stop me, adrenaline and the urge to spill blood overriding everything.
“Maksim, wait.” Her voice pins me mid-step. She’s the only one who can make me listen, and I stop long enough to hear her out.
“Valentina, he’s a dead man walking. That won’t change.”
“No—that’s not it.” She throws a protective arm around AJ while unfolding something with her free hand. “He deserves to die for what he did to me. Especially for what could’ve happened to her. But this…this is bigger than Casper.”
She opens her palm. A signet ring gleams there, the same Ares emblem as her father’s. As my parents.
My jaw tightens as I pinch it between my fingers.
“There was a woman,” she adds. “She tried to kill us. And she was wearing this.” Valentina digs into her pocket and produces two more rings. “They all were.”
Everyone is talking at once, voices overlapping, and crashing into each other until it’s all just noise, pounding behind my eyes. Every person in this room has a different theory, a different fucking opinion.
Derek is pacing with his phone pressed to his ear, speaking to old colleagues who still owe him favors. Mom and Silas are on their own calls, comparing intel and trading names.
The rest of them—Kai, Amalia, Santino, Athena—are gathered, arguing possibilities.
And then there’s Eva, who hasn’t let Valentina or AJ get more than five feet from her since they walked in. She’s got one hand on each of them as if she lets go, they’ll disappear.
But I understand her, because through the chaos and tension, my gaze keeps finding my girl. She’s standing across the room beside her sister, cheeks still streaked with dried blood. My hands itch to hold her, to pull her into me, and reassure myself that she’s whole, breathing,here.
Every time our eyes meet, something in my chest squeezes. Like the entire room is spinning around her.
I know that coming here and gathering everyone was the smart move. The safe move. The people in this room know the organization better than I ever will. Their experience, their connections…it’s what will keep Valentina alive. But it fucking kills me that we have to hide from the very people we were raisedto trust. As if the danger is coming from inside these walls, not outside them.
It’s bullshit.
I push off and meet her eyes across the room. My jaw is locked, my fists tight at my sides, every muscle fighting the need to cross the space between us. To touch her and ground myself in her. But this isn’t about me.
It’s for her.
Always her.
When I lean against the wall again, I exhale and look away in an attempt to compose myself.
“Maksim.”
Her voice pulls my head up instantly. Valentina is no longer at her mother’s side. She’s right in front of me, looking up, a soft smile on her lips, and her eyes full of something that makes my breath catch.
