For Luke — Trust No One

That was the exact moment Marco's phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked down, read whatever was on that screen twice, and slowly raised his eyes to meet mine. I had only seen that particular expression on his face on the worst nights of my career, the nights where the mission stopped being a mission and became personal.

"Boss," he said quietly, "I think we know who's been cutting off Elena's money, canceling her doctor's appointments, and feeding Dominic Vale her location every week for the last three months." He turned the phone toward me. "And the person doing it has your last name."

I looked at the screen. Bank transfer logs. Deleted appointment confirmations rerouted through a shared family assistant account. A weekly text thread to Vale's private number.

Sent from my younger brother, Ethan Mercer.

I had put Ethan on Elena's household accounts myself, back when I still trusted blood over instinct, back before I understood that Vale had been grooming my brother for two years, feeding him a taste of the empire he thought he deserved and I'd been hoarding. Ethan hadn't just watched Elena suffer. He had engineered it, month by month, appointment by appointment, dollar by dollar, so that when Vale's people finally moved on her, there would be no one left checking in, no doctor flagging the weight loss, no money left for her to run.

I stood up from that hospital bed with the envelope still in my hand, and for the first time in ninety-three days, I let the mask come all the way off.

"Get the car," I told Marco. "And get me everything Ethan has touched in the last two years. Every account, every message, every meeting. I want it on my desk by morning."

"And Vale?"

"Vale thinks I'm a broken man who signed away his wife to save his own skin." I looked back at Elena, at her hand still curled protectively over our child, and something in my chest went cold and precise, the way it used to before an operation, the way it hadn't gone in three long months of grief I'd manufactured for an audience of one. "Let him keep thinking that for one more week. Then I want him to understand exactly what it costs to touch what's mine."

Dr. Bennett cleared her throat gently. "Mr. Mercer, she's stable for now, but she needs rest and monitoring. I'd ask you to keep any conflict away from this room."

"Doctor," I said, "the only thing walking through that door from now on is people who love her, and people who answer to me." I sat back down beside the bed and took Elena's hand, careful of the IV line, and pressed my lips to her knuckles the way I used to every night before either of us knew what a lie could cost. "Elena," I whispered, "I'm here. I'm not leaving again. And whatever you were protecting me from, it's over. Now it's my turn to protect you."

Marco's phone buzzed again in the doorway. He read it, and his jaw tightened in a way I recognized as the last calm second before a storm.