“This is a boundary,” I snapped. “You don’t get to micromanage that part of me.”
He stood abruptly, pacing once between the bed and the wall like the space was too small for how wound up he was. “My girl collapsing in public because her body gave out isn’t a boundary, it’s a crisis.”
“Vince—”
“No. You fainted. I need to know what’s happening to you. I need to know how bad it is.”
“It’s not like that,” I whispered.
“Then tell me what itislike.”
My jaw locked. There weren’t words for the way my stomach shut down around my mother’s presence, the way food transformed into math problems and bargaining chips the moment she entered a room.
Silence stretched between us and it turned ugly.
He dragged a hand through his hair. “You think I want control for the sake of it? I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
Years of dynasty conditioning lined up in my head, all the voices that had praised restraint and discipline and a small body as proof of worth. Nobody had called it sickness. No one had asked if I was okay. They’d just saidwell donewhen I picked at my plate.
No one had ever been close enough to notice when it went too far.
Until now.
“You can’t fix this for me,” I slid my hand across the blanket.
He came back to the bed and dropped to one knee, bringing his eyes level with mine. “Maybe not. But I can stand between you and whatever’s doing this to you. That’s my job.”
“You already are,” I whispered.
His forehead lowered until it rested lightly against my thigh. “Then let me do it properly.”
Fingers threaded into his hair on instinct, nails grazing his scalp. “You’re doing enough. More than anyone ever has.”
He looked up, and the fear in his eyes almost undid me more than the fainting had. No witty comeback came to save either of us.
He didn’t push again.
21
Vince
The war room was quiet when I walked in. Screens humming, Villain glowed along the walls in grids of blue and red, club feeds, street cams, dock trackers. Half the city pulsing on monitors, every heartbeat a potential problem.
Bastion was slouched in his chair like it had personally offended him. One eye already darkening, fresh split along his cheekbone, knuckles scraped raw.
Rome had his boots on the table, leaned back, spinning a pen between his fingers like he was auditioning to be punched.
Luca sat at the head of the table. Nikolai paced by the main screen with a datapad and the expression of a man who had lost sleep because of his family, again.
So, normal.
Rome glanced up when I walked in. “Look who remembered passwords. Nik, call the press. Vincent Crow has entered the digital age.”
“Shut up.” I dropped into the empty chair beside Bastion. “Somebody had to actually touch the problems today instead of watching them in HD.”
Bastion scoffed, winced when it pulled his cut. “I touched them.”
“You put a bottle in a man’s face because he brushed your shoulder,” Nikolai muttered, flicking through footage.
