"Sorry for the late call." His voice is too careful. Too measured. "But I just got off the phone with a contact at the hospital. The lab flagged something in Mila's blood work. They're running additional tests."
Izzy's hand finds mine in the darkness, squeezing hard enough to hurt. "Flagged what?"
"The markers don't match standard food contaminants. They're testing for specific toxins." A pause that stretches too long. "The kind that don't end up in school lunches by accident."
The room tilts.
I'm sitting up before I register moving, Izzy's hand still locked in mine. "You're saying someone poisoned my daughter."
"I'm saying the hospital's testing for it. Results should be back tomorrow, maybe the day after." Wesley exhales. "I don't want tojump to conclusions. Could be nothing. Could be some unusual reaction they haven't identified. But given everything?—"
"Given that Matthew's been trying to kill my wife for weeks."
"Yeah. Given that."
Izzy's breathing too fast beside me. I can feel her pulse hammering where our hands connect, can see the terror in her eyes that she's trying to swallow down.
"Call me the second you know something," I tell Wesley. "And I need you to expedite those results. I know people. Use them. Money's not an object."
"Already working on it. I'll be in touch."
The line goes dead.
Silence fills the bedroom like a held breath. Outside, the city continues—traffic, sirens, life moving forward without knowing that my world just cracked down the middle.
"Sergei." Izzy's voice is small. Fractured. "If Matthew did this. If he touched her, hurt her?—"
"Then he's dead." The words are rough. Cold. The Wolf waking up beneath my skin. "I don't care about evidence. Don't care about trials. Don't care if it takes the rest of my life. He's dead."
"We don't know for certain?—"
"We know enough." I turn to face her, cupping her jaw in my palm. Her eyes are wet with tears she's refusing to let fall. "My daughter was in that hospital vomiting blood. Your uncle's been trying to kill you for weeks. If this is connected—if he used Mila to send a message?—"
"Then we end him." Her voice hardens, the fear crystallizing into something sharper. Something I recognize because I see it in my own reflection. "Together. We end him."
"Together."
She reaches for the nightstand. For a second, I think she's going for her phone again, but her fingers close around something else.
The lighter.
Gold and scorched and the only piece of her father she has left.
She doesn't flip it open. Just holds it against her chest, metal warm from sitting near the lamp, and I watch something shift in her expression. Grief becoming resolve. Fear becoming fury.
"He poisoned my daughter." The words come out quiet. Lethal. Nothisdaughter. NotSergei'sdaughter.
Mydaughter.
"We don't know?—"
"I know." She meets my eyes, and the woman looking back isn't the polished heiress I fake-married. Isn't the grieving daughter still learning to aim? This is something else. Something dangerous. "I know, and tomorrow we'll have proof, and then Matthew Ashford finds out what happens when you hurt what's mine."
I pull her against me, her back to my chest, the lighter still clutched in her fist. My arms wrap around her like armor. Like a promise.
Outside, Brooklyn sleeps.
Inside, we lie awake, planning violence.
