Page 82 of Filthy Rich Daddies

The room is dead silent when the video ends.

Marcus clears his throat. “This doesn’t prove anything. That’s circumstantial?—”

He’s interrupted by another knock. This one’s sharper. More official. The door opens, and two people walk in.

FBI.

They don’t say much. Just flash badges and ask Marcus to come with them. He sputters. Demands answers. Protests. Accuses.

Nobody moves.

Nobody speaks.

And then he’s escorted out, still ranting. The silence that follows is deafening.

I exhale slowly, only realizing now that I’d been holding my breath.

Holy shit. That just happened.

Colin straightens his cuffs. Tic smooths his lapel. Dean presses a palm to the table like he’s grounding himself.

The board looks shell-shocked. One of the older guys, red-faced and sweaty, finally speaks. “We—we owe you an apology. To all of you.”

“No kidding,” I mutter, too low for most of them to hear. I think Dean does, though. His lips twitch.

Another board member clears his throat. “We understand now that you were targeted. That this wasn’t mismanagement, but sabotage. We need your leadership to recover from this. Please. Whatever capacity you’re willing to return in—we’ll make it work.”

Colin leans back against his desk and smiles like a man who just ate a five-course meal made entirely of poetic justice.

Dean is the first to answer. “I’ll return. But only temporarily. Limited oversight. My priority is elsewhere now.”

His eyes flick to me for a half second. My heart skips.

Tic nods next. “Same. Consultant capacity only.”

Colin shrugs. “I’m in. But I won’t be killing myself over it again. You want brilliance, you give me breathing room.”

They nod like they’ll agree to anything. And they probably will. Because the Copeland brothers just played them like a fiddle.

Hands are shaken. Promises are made. Gratitude is gushed a little too quickly from a lot of men who were ready to feed Colin to the wolves twenty minutes ago.

The three brothers take it all in stride. They don’t gloat. They don’t smirk. Well, Colin kind of smirks, but that’s just his face. Tic and Dean handle it with the kind of cold, contained professionalism that makes you remember these men were born into power and have learned how to wield it with surgical precision.

And me? I just sit in the corner and try to make sense of what I just watched. It was like a heist movie. Or a courtroom drama. Or one of those Netflix limited series with too much soft lighting and British accents. Except it was real. And I was in the room. And no British accents.

I look at Colin and remember the version of him I met that first night—the one who made jokes and smiled like he had nothing to prove. Then I look at Tic, standing tall and still near the window, and Dean, slipping his tablet back into his briefcase with practiced grace, and it hits me all over again.

These men are dangerous. Not in the violent sense. In thethey get things done and everyone else just gets out of the waysense. And they care about me.

Not as an accessory. Not as a shiny distraction.

As something they want to protect. Build with. Belong to. It should be more terrifying than it is. And maybe itisterrifying. But it’s also comforting in a way I don’t know how to articulate.

Even with the weirdness. Even with the stalking and the unsolicited life upgrades and the larger-than-life gestures—I’ve never felt more seen. Or more taken seriously.

I get it now. I get why people follow power. Why people want it. Why they cling to those who have it and know how to use it. And I also get why these men want to use it for good.

They could have destroyed Marcus in a back room. Quietly. They could’ve settled for a warning or a payout or some ugly internal memo.