Not while he had blood left to spill.
?
The marble bar gleamed beneath the sconces’ soft glow: elegance cloaked in tension that hadn’t yet spoken aloud.
Gideon stood behind it, fingers trailing the chilled marble, smudges vanishing as fast as they appeared. A low jazz melody drifted through the room, its calm too smooth, too smug, against the chaos he carried.
Colton’s smirk.
The old woman’s trembling grip.
A pair of scuffed sneakers belonging to a boy who didn’t yet know the world could shift under his feet.
Power should protect, not devour.
Footsteps interrupted the quiet.
Marco emerged from the back with a bucket of ice, rolling his shoulders like he was trying to shake the night off.
He saw Gideon. Registered everything in a single look.
He set the bucket down and braced a hand on the counter. Relaxed in posture. Alert in every other way.
“What demon’s got you tonight?” he asked, voice low. Ice clinked softly as he filled the wells with mechanical precision.
“Colton.” The name landed like a blade hitting marble. “He was at one of my grandfather’s buildings. Threatening tenants.”
Marco’s hands paused. The calm in his eyes evaporated on impact.
“Same playbook?”
Gideon nodded, reaching for the Blanton’s out of habit more than want. “Bolder than usual. Evelyn’s fingerprints are all over it.”
Marco exhaled slow, arms folding. “Your grandfather wouldn’t have stood for this.”
“Rich built legacy with roots,” he added. “Not wreckage.”
Those words hit hard.
Richard II had left something sturdy. Enduring.
Richard III hollowed it from the inside and dressed the ruin in progress.
Now Gideon was left to hold the line in a war he hadn’t declared, but couldn’t abandon.
Marco reached across the counter and plucked the bottle from Gideon’s grip, setting it aside.
“You carry his name now. So tell me. What are you going to do with it?”
The question lingered like a match struck but not yet burning.
Something in Gideon locked into place. The weight in his chest solidified.
“I won’t let it stand.”
Marco studied him, then nodded, sharp and approving.
“Good.” He returned to the wells. “Someone’s gotta remind them what a real Blackwell looks like.”
