I looked away first.
I hated that hemademe look away because in this room, he wasn’t mine. He wasn’t my Dom. He was the Crow heir in his element, and he terrified me like this.
Bastion and Rome didn’t help. They flanked him like wolves. Black suits, undone shirts, visible ink, nothing dynasty-civilized about them. They acted like syndicate and they intended to remind everyone of it.
Every offer from the Thornes was dismissed.
The DuPonts was sliced apart.
Any attempt to soften terms met cold Crow refusal.
Atticus typed gently on our linked datapad:
This could have been an email.
I had to hold back a laugh. I refreshed the document and wrote beneath it:
We should have skipped the meeting and gone straight to drinks.
A second later, his reply appeared:
Strong ones. To nurse bruised egos.
That was when Vince hit the table. I jumped, and Atticus’s attention flicked toward me in concern.
“Gentlemen,” the Thorne representative snapped, “this is meant to be civilised.”
Civilised.
With Crows in the room. Even I wanted to scoff.
I kept my expression composed the way dynasty daughters are trained to, soft, pleasant, untouchable. But inside, my pulse was climbing my throat.
In the end, the meeting ended exactly how any Crow negotiation ends. On their terms. No matter how long the room fought to slow them.
My father left muttered something under his breath about “barbaric syndicate boys.”
And Vince didn’t look away from me once the entire time people were shuffling out. His jaw tight, his eyes unreadable. He ignored me. I might as of been a pillar in the building.
Atticus hovered near my shoulder the entire walk out, close enough that anyone watching could assume he had been assigned as my shadow. He wasn’t subtle about it either, standing at just the right angle to intercept any wandering syndicate man who might attempt conversation.
“Are you… guarding me?” I murmured.
“What kind of heir would I be if I left you wandering the halls of a syndicate building alone?”
“The Crows are dynasty.”
He lifted one brow. “Elizabeth. You were in that room.”
I hated that he was right. I hated that one meeting had cracked every academy-taught notion of dynasty politics I’d been raised on. Every house was supposed to be united in structure, tone, decorum.
The foyer of the Crow Dynasty Hall was filled with tense heirs and irritated fathers pretending they weren’t shaken. Everything about this estate screamed power. Black marble, cascading light fixtures, crest banners that seemed to stare back.
Atticus and I stood slightly apart from them while our fathers continued some post-meeting analysis. I tried to tune them out. My mind was loud enough.
My gaze drifted, and that was when I saw him.
Vince stood across the foyer, beneath a sculpted iron archway. Shoulder braced against the wall. Hands in his pockets. Watching.
