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Not now. Not yet.
For a long second, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then, after an agonizing pause, he inhaled slow and deep, his knuckles cracking as he flexed his fingers open. Reining himself back in.
Hart let out a soft laugh. “Good boy.”
I clenched my teeth.
Marcus? He just stared at her.
“You’re going to regret this,” I told her instead, my voice steady.
Hart just smiled.
“I doubt that.”
And then, with a flick of her finger, she gestured to the two men in dark suits.
“Escort them out.”
The security stepped forward.
Dismissal.
Marcus didn’t look at them. Didn’t even glance their way.
He was still staring at Hart.
26
MARCUS
We drove back to Dominion Hall in silence, the Bugatti’s engine a low growl beneath the weight of everything Hart had said. Claire sat beside me, her hands folded tight in her lap, her jaw set, staring out at the blur of Charleston’s streets like she could will the answers out of the humid air.
I didn’t speak either. Didn’t trust myself to. My mind was a roiling mess, Hart’s words looping like a sniper’s scope I couldn’t shake—“Do you even know why your father died?”—each syllable a bullet I didn’t know how to dodge.
Evelyn Hart was a snake in Little Bo Peep’s clothing, all blond bob and polished smiles, the perfect goddamn disguise. I’d seen it the second we walked into her office—those sharp blue eyes cutting through the room, the way she’d leaned back in her chair like a queen on a throne, daring us to take a swing.
She’d played us, pushed me right to the edge, and I’d almost fallen. If Claire hadn’t grabbed my wrist, hadn’tanchored me with that quiet“Marcus,”I’d have torn Hart’s throat out right there, security be damned.
But it wasn’t just her taunts about me that had my blood simmering. It was my father. Byron Dane. The man who’d raised us—me and my six brothers—on grit and silence, who’d never once talked about his work.
Ever.
Sure, he’d spin a story now and then about his Army days, dumb shit like the time he and his buddies rigged a latrine with firecrackers just to watch the new guy jump. Laughs, nothing more. Never a word about missions, about what he’d done before he died. We’d suspected there was more after he died—after that call from some slick attorney in the Bahamas telling us we’d inherited billions we didn’t even know he had. Billions tied to shadows we couldn’t name.
Now Hart had cracked that open wider. Department 77. The ghost we’d been chasing, the blade at our throats, and somehow, our father had been tangled up in it. We’d always figured he’d been more than just a soldier turned businessman—Ryker, Atlas, Charlie, all of us had felt it—but this? This was a punch to the gut I hadn’t seen coming.
The gates of Dominion Hall loomed ahead, iron teeth glinting under the sun, and I pulled through slow, gravel crunching under the tires. Claire didn’t move, didn’t look at me, just kept her eyes on the horizon like she was piecing it together, too.
I parked out front, killed the engine, and sat there for a beat, my hands still gripping the wheel.
“We need to talk to Ryker,” I said finally, voice rough, breaking the quiet.
She nodded, short and sharp, and climbed out. Ifollowed, the weight of Hart’s words pressing down like a hundred-pound pack.
Ryker was in the ops room—where else?—leaning over the steel table, maps and monitors spread out like a battlefield. He looked up when we walked in, his eyes narrowing as he clocked the tension rolling off me.