"My father." Her voice is flat. A fact. My stomach goes cold anyway.
Her focus directs me. I follow it to the far right of the ballroom. He's moved from his table to the edge of the room near the private corridor entrance.
A man in a dark suit, perfectly still while the room burns around him. Watching exits, security, buyers scrambling. Calculating.
He lifts his head and looks at the mirrored wall. He can't see through it. He sees his own reflection. But he knows this building. He built half the infrastructure in it. His chin tilts, eyes fixed on the glass, and the look on his face says he knows exactly who is behind it.
Sloane's hand tightens on my wrist.
"He's looking," she says.
"He can't see you."
"He doesn't need to. He knows I'm here." She lifts her chin, locks her face into stone, and stays against my chest. "Don't move me," she says.
"Wasn't planning on it."
Below, the host's smile has dissolved. The music cuts. The scrolling ledger keeps running.
McKenzie cuts in. "Amelia, corridor status."
Amelia responds from the service exit. "Clear. Girls on the prep floor are secured."
Felix follows, clipped. "Movement on the east side. Buyers trying to force the sealed doors."
On the floor, Victor and Olivia move through the chaos. Victor's hand is at Olivia's back, the other inside his jacket. Olivia's posture has squared, gaze tracking the armed security guards moving toward the stage.
Felix relays from the floor. "Her father is moving toward the private corridor."
Sloane's fingers curl around my wrist, nails digging in. "He's going for the private elevator."
Nash mutters from his chair. "Of course he is."
Malachi's voice, stripped to bedrock. "He thinks he runs this building."
Candace, beside him. "He thinks he runs her."
"Knox," Phoenix says.
"Yeah."
"He doesn't leave this building."
The words settle into my chest and lock. I've been waiting for them. "Copy."
Phoenix continues. "Basement level. Service room C. Felix prepped it."
"Copy."
Sloane looks at me. She heard it through her earpiece, same channel, same words. Her eyes search my face. "I'm going with you."
"Sloane."
"I'm going with you. I need to see it end."
My jaw works. Every instinct says shield her from this. Put her somewhere safe, somewhere clean, somewhere this can't touch. But she grew up inside the machine her father built. She patched up the girls he sold. Sloane ran because he tried to sell her too.
She's earned this.
