I will not let her be collateral on someone else’s chessboard. No matter what her father thinks.
And she has no idea.
That ignorance—God, that ignorance is a kind of mercy I don’t think I deserve.
It gives me a sliver of time to get clever, to make promises in ink and build a cage she’ll never resent.
Because once I decide she’s mine, there’s no turning it back.
“You got that prenup like she said?” Nico Volkov asks, his voice all razor edges and steel.
Luc Batiste doesn’t answer right away.
He just clenches his jaw so tight the veins in his neck pulse with restrained fury. Finally, he gives a single, clipped nod.
That’s the second time tonight I’ve watched a man choke on his pride for his daughter.
Good.
“Good,” Angel Fury says. Then he turns those storm-blue eyes on me like a goddamn thunderbolt. “You do understand that if you hurt her, we will bury you, son?”
He means it.
They all do.
Luc. Nico. Angel. Adrik. The entire Volkov Batiste Fury war council.
It doesn’t matter that I’m a Stavros. A prince. A billionaire in my own right.
None of that means shit when it comes to her.
Cecilia.
They’re not posturing. These are the kind of men who will keep their promise, even if it means starting a war just to dig my grave.
I meet his glare head-on.
“I understand.”
What I don’t say is that I don’t care.
Because they don’t scare me.
She does.
The way she looks at me like she knows I’m lying—even when I’m telling the truth.
The way she moves like fire and fights like a queen.
The way she didn’t flinch when I threw her name at the target like a fucking dagger, even though I hate myself for doing it.
I should have asked her first.
Told her I wanted to marry her, and not for these reasons.
Fuck. I can’t afford to think those thoughts.
My heart is a jackhammer in my chest.
