It was protecting The Vanguard.
Byron Dane wanted my intel. He’d asked for it bluntly through Levi, and I’d hesitated, because giving a shadow billionaire patriarch my sources felt like handing a lit match to a man standing over a gas leak.
But Derek showing up in my hallway, talking like a man with a gun to his head—I didn’t know the whole story yet, but I knew enough:
The situation had escalated.
So, would I.
I crossed to the desk, grabbed my phone, and scrolled to the number the driver had given me when he dropped me off earlier.
“Ms. Emerson?” the driver answered after two rings, his voice as composed as it had been earlier.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s Amelia. I—I could use a ride back to Dominion Hall.”
“I was already on the way,” he said, as if I’d asked him to run to the corner store. “Be there in three minutes.”
“Thre minutes is perfect,” I said.
I hung up before I could talk myself out of it.
Then I opened my suitcase.
If I was going to walk into Byron Dane’s fortress and hand him my threads, I wasn’t doing it in leggings and a T-shirt that smelled faintly of airplane.
I pulled out jeans, a soft button-down shirt in a peachy color my mother said made my eyes look less tired, and the blazer I’d brought in case someone insisted on interviewing me on camera.
In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face, twisted my hair into something vaguely intentional, and swiped on concealer and mascara. It didn’t turn me into one of the glossy women at the Promenade lunch, but it made me look like a version of myself I recognized.
Back in the main room, I slid my laptop into its sleeve and into my bag. Alongside it went my notebook, my recorder, my charger, and a handful of printouts I’d been marking up—the tip email, background clippings, a jotted map of how the names might connect.
At the last second, I snagged the cheap little compass off the nightstand and slipped it into my pocket.
This wasn’t about geography. But I had a feeling I was about to walk deeper into the maze, and a symbolic north felt better than nothing.
In the mirror by the door, I caught my own gaze. My eyes looked … different. Still wary. Still tired. But there was a steadiness there I hadn’t seen a few days ago.
“You’re walking into a house full of billionaires and ex–special forces with a laptop and a five-dollar compass,” I told my reflection. “Sure. Why not?”
Downstairs, somewhere out front, a car with tinted windows would be pulling up, ready to carry me back into the center of everything.
Back to the man who would break someone’s face for putting a hand on me.
Back to the family whose secrets had started this whole thing.
Back to the truth, wherever it led.
29
LEVI
We pulled up to Dominion Hall, and there were men waiting.
A lot of men.
Seven of them stood on the front steps and veranda like a firing squad, arms crossed, jaws set, eyes cold and assessing. They had the look—the one that said they'd seen combat, survived it, and were ready to go back in.
They'd been mobilized.
