Isaac kept his voice low. “Sir, I need to see your invitation.”
“I don’t need an invitation. I have a right to be here.”
“This is a private event. If you’ll come with me to the registration table, we can sort this out.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I need to talk to David Endicott. He owes me a conversation.” The man’s voice was climbing. A woman at a nearby table glanced over.
Isaac shifted his weight, closing the angle between the man and Endicott’s table. “That’s not going to happen tonight. Whatever your concern is, this isn’t the place.”
“You can’t say that. Of course it is. This is exactly the place. You don’t know what he did.” The tendons in the man’s neckstood out. “He destroyed my company. My life’s work. And he’s sitting over there drinking champagne like none of it matters.”
“I understand you’re upset. But I need you to come with me.”
The man lunged. A clumsy, adrenaline-fueled shove with more desperation than technique. Isaac read it before it arrived. He caught the man’s wrist, pivoted, and used the momentum to turn him. One step, one rotation, and the man’s arm was locked behind his back and his chest was against the column.
Less than two seconds.
Ryder was there. He’d crossed the distance during the turn, arriving at Isaac’s left flank with his body positioned to block any secondary angle.
“I’ve got his right side.”
Isaac held the man against the stone. The fight had gone out of him—body slack, breathing ragged, forehead pressed against the column. No weapon. Isaac’s hand had swept the jacket during the takedown, and the thing he’d been touching was a phone. Just a phone.
“We’re going to walk you out. Hands where I can see them. Nod if you understand.”
The man nodded. His eyes were wet.
They flanked him and moved him toward the service corridor behind the kitchen. Quick, clean, no disruption to the room. The jazz trio kept playing. They held him until two uniformed officers arrived. Isaac gave the summary—no weapon, no invitation, verbal threats, minor physical altercation. The man went quietly. He looked small between the two officers. Defeated.
Isaac watched them lead him away and turned to Ryder.
“Endicott?”
“Hasn’t moved. Primary says he didn’t even notice.”
“Good. Tighten the perimeter for the rest of the evening. Everyone pulled in ten feet. Nobody gets within twenty feet of that table without being vetted.”
“On it.” Ryder paused. “Clean takedown.”
Isaac shrugged. “He made it easy.”
“They always do when they’re angry instead of thinking.”
Ryder headed back to the floor. Isaac stood in the service corridor for a moment. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flat and industrial. Through the swinging doors, the distant murmur of the ballroom carried on without interruption.
This hadn’t been the email guy. Isaac felt it in the quiet after the adrenaline. Too young, too disorganized, too reactive. The emails targeting Endicott were calculated—each one building on the last, escalating in specificity, deploying personal details with precision. Whoever wrote those emails was patient and methodical.
The man who’d just been led away was neither. Maybe a legitimate grievance but no impulse control. Isaac filed it—something to run past Peter in the morning, pull the man’s identity from the police report and cross-reference it against the email metadata.
He pushed through the doors back into the ballroom. The crowd had absorbed the incident completely. Endicott was standing now, shaking hands with someone, Laura beside him with her public smile in place.
The adrenaline was fading. He could feel it draining from his arms and chest, leaving the hollowed-out clarity that always followed a physical engagement. The takedown had been instinct—read the threat, close the distance, end it. Clean, fast, exactly right. This was where he belonged, doing work that mattered, protecting people who needed protecting.
And the moment it settled, the moment the operational part of his brain released its grip, Fallon was right there again.Behind the gate, face pale as death, holding his gaze through the iron bars with an expression that wasn’t defiance and wasn’t apology. Just pain.
The sharpest thing in his head wasn’t the man he’d put against a column. It was a woman who’d rather dislocate her own shoulder than trust him with a conversation.
And there was nothing he could do about. He wasn’t sure he would ever see her again. Fuck, he wasn’t sure hewantedto see her again if it meant she might put herself through so much pain.
