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And then—so soft I almost didn’t catch it—her lips parted, and she murmured: “You have no idea what you’ve stirred up.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
She wasn’t warning me. She was informing me. Like I’d already stepped into something I wasn’t crawling out of.
Marcus let out a slow exhale, the kind that sent a very clear message—he was five seconds away from losing his patience, and Hart wouldn’t like what happened when he did.
Her gaze flicked to him then.
And something shifted. A hint of recognition. A calculating gleam. She leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers.
“You look just like him,” she said softly.
I felt Marcus go still beside me, but Hart wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was studying him.
“You all do,” she mused, tilting her head. “Every one of you Dane boys carries his face. But you …” Her gaze sharpened, mouth curving in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You wear it the way he did.”
I swallowed hard, a slow chill creeping up my spine.
She wasn’t wrong.
I hadn’t seen a picture of Byron Dane until I met Marcus. Not in any of my research, not in any of the articles that whispered about Dominion Hall like it was some kind of myth. The Dane patriarch didn’t do press. He didn’t pose for cameras. He existed in shadows, in power plays written in blood and contracts.
But at Dominion Hall, I’d seen him. A framed photograph. A younger version of Marcus stood beside him, posture rigid, expression unreadable.
All seven Dane brothers carried their father’s presence—the sharp jaw, the unreadable eyes, the quiet, unshakable weight that made people tread carefully around them. But Marcus?
Marcus wasn’t just his father’s son. He was his father’s legacy.
The same quiet, controlled power. The same lethal, unwavering edge. His brothers had inherited pieces of their father. Marcus had inherited the whole damn war. And Evelyn Hart knew it.
The air in the room went razor-sharp.
Marcus didn’t move, but I felt the change in him, the sudden, almost imperceptible tightening of his muscles.
Hart tilted her head.
“Your father should have known better.”
The room tilted.
Marcus’s father.
Hart knew him.
Marcus’s jaw flexed, his shoulders going rigid. His voice, when he finally spoke, was deadly quiet.
“What did you just say?”
Hart’s lips quirked at the corner, a ghost of amusement. But she didn’t get the chance to answer. Because the door behind us opened—without a knock, without hesitation.
I turned just as two men in dark suits stepped inside.
Private security. Not police. Not city officials. Hart’s own men.
Bigger than me. Maybe even bigger than Marcus. Armed. And standing like they had orders.
Hart sighed, like she was bored. “I’d love to stay and chat,” she said, glancing at a gold watch on her wrist. “But I have a press conference in twenty minutes, and I don’t have time for … conspiracy theories.”