Page 60 of Mane Rival in Store

“Since when?”

“This morning. She closed it. She’s not answering calls or texts.”

Dekel leaned against the shelving. “Did the dinner go wrong? After I left?”

“Nothing went wrong. The dinner was—” He stopped. The dinner had been good. Better than good. She’d handled Yara. Earned the single tap. Raised her glass across the room and he’d raised his and the exchange had carried more weight than any words he’d managed in thirty-four years of speaking three languages. “The dinner was successful.”

“And this morning?”

“I left a gift. The Sade poster. She—” His hand went to his hair. Pressed it flat. A futile gesture; the strands rose immediately. “She hasn’t acknowledged it.”

“You wrote a note this time.”

“How do you⁠—”

“I know you wrote a note because I’ve been watching you draft notes on your desk blotter for a week and throw them away. The handwriting practice alone has consumed four legal pads.” Dekel pulled out his phone. Typed. Waited. The response came in twelve seconds.

“Breezy.”

“You have Breezy’s number?”

“We exchanged contacts during the forgery investigation. She’s efficient. I respect efficiency.” Dekel read the screen. The amusement drained from his face like water through sand. “Sit down.”

“I don’t⁠—”

“Rune. Sit.”

He sat. On a packing crate in the stockroom of his own store.

“Fallon Creed bought the building.”

The words took a moment to arrange themselves. Then the arrangement completed and his vision contracted.

“Through a shell company called A.C. Holdings. He’s tripling her rent. Ninety-day notice.” Dekel pocketed the phone. “Breezy read the filing this morning. Lark traced it to Creed Capital within the hour. The forgery operation runs through the same capital structure—same payment channels, same shell layer. The name has to be mixed in there somewhere. We’re pulling the full financial thread now.”

He stood. The packing crate scraped concrete. His body was already moving—toward the wall, toward her, toward the threat that had materialized in a lease letter and aimed itself at the woman who’d earned the single tap and the cape and the handwritten note and every unguarded minute he’d spent showing her who he was behind the crown.

“Rune.” Dekel stepped into his path. Six-one blocking six-three, which would have been comical in any context that didn’t involve the low, sub-audible vibration currently emanating from Rune’s sternum and making the inventory on the lower shelves rattle.

“He’s targeting her.”

“Yes,” Dekel said.

“He bought the building she operates in and he’s using the lease to force her out.”

“Yes,” Dekel repeated.

“I can end him.” The words came from a place that predated boardrooms and negotiations and twelve years of performed restraint. The predator in him was coiled and the growl pressing through his ribs was the kind that preceded decisions that couldn’t be undone. “Three phone calls. I call the Sterling legal team, I call our real estate division, I call the Scandinavian consortium. We buy the building from under him. We outbid whatever he paid. We void the shell and we void the renegotiation and Creed Capital dissolves its position in this property before the end of the week.”

Dekel didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Stood in the narrow aisle and held his ground with the calm he’d been practicing since they were eight and Rune had lost a chess match and shifted for the first time in rage.

“You can do all of that. You’re right. Three calls. Maybe four. By Friday, the building is yours and Fallon Creed is a footnote.”

“Then—”

“And then she leaves you.”

The words landed like a slap.