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And tracked the alerts straight to the guy.

Denver rocked back in his seat, eyes fixed on the screen. One of his headaches was growing behind his eyes. Before long, it would spread to his vision and wipe it out in a blinding migraine, and the low ringing he always heard in his ears would increase.

That fucker was trying to find her, and recently too. The latest search alert was dated two weeks before.

Thank god Rhae never revealed her location.

The fact that she managed to hide herself without a trace filled him with a sense of pride. She’d always impressed the hell out of him with her quick brain and knowledge of people and the world, but this was next level.

One question continued popping up in his mind when they had their discussion about who she was running from. She said Robert Ravencroft sold the business. So where did her father’s portion go?

Ten minutes turned into twenty as he fell down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. He searched records of sale and tax records related to the business connected to Ravencroft.

“Ah.” He sat back in his chair again, staring at the words on the screen.

Rhae received an inheritance following her parents’ deaths. A sizable one.

No one could accuse her of being with him for money…not that she knew what his family had either.

After their old man died, he and his siblings sold the ranch in Texas and made a killing off it. That they then dumped into several lucrative investments and sank more into the ranch in Wyoming.

Carson took a portion of his dividends to start the security company, while Oaks funded the therapy program. Colt and Gray were busy working with government contracts to train military personnel on the ranch, and Willow had her horses and horse therapy.

Their money compounded so damn fast that they left it up to their financial advisor to tell them what they could or couldn’t spend when it came to high-priced items, such as the family jet that benefitted the security company.

He tapped a fingertip on the desk.

Rhae’s account was locked to her. But she wasn’t accessing it—at all.

Because Ravencroft was the trustee.

The minute she put in a request for a withdrawal, he would find her.

The fucker was financially abusing her.

Denver ground his molars until they ached. On one hand, if she hadn’t felt she was in danger, she might not have ended up at the ranch. But she’d been living in fear for so long.

His whole body locked as fury rolled through him, a crack of thunder that reverberated to his core.

He’d devoted his life to keeping people from living in fear.

This ends today.

He started typing, hacking into the trust account. Once he was in, he changed the name of the trustee to himself.

Yeah, it was a taunt.

Let the bastard come for me.

Yeah, he was also technically still dead, but by the time Ravencroft discovered the change, his paperwork might have come through.

He wouldn’t underestimate anybody let alone when it came to Rhae and Navy. He would put together a plan with his brothers as soon as he could gather them together.

A tap at the door brought his head up. He met Carson’s gaze.

“What are you doing?” He walked right over to the desk.

“Protecting Rhae.”

Carson’s expression shadowed. “What does Rhae need protection from?” he asked slowly.

Denver filled him in. All the while, he worked, backing out of the account after saving the change he made.

“Denver, you realize this looks like you’re in a testosterone-fueled rage, right? Have you thought this through completely?” He waved at the screen.

“Actually, yeah. I did. Rhae’s name and photo were on the website for almost forty-eight hours, plenty of time to send a hit to Ravencroft.

He already knows where she is. I can either let him think that he’s winning…

or I can show him she’s fully supported with the might of the Malones and the Black Heart. ”

Their gazes locked.

“I went with support.”

His brother drew a deep breath. “How do you think he’s going to take that?”

“Hard to say.”

The screen blinked once. Then again.

Then the sound filled the room—a beep alerting him of a request for intel he just placed.

Denver leaned forward, jaw tight as the archived thread loaded in layers of gritty, encrypted text. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, eyes narrowing at the string of characters that had just come to life from the dark web’s depths.

There it was.

An old post, timestamped five years ago. A vetted escrow contract. An encrypted conversation chain.

Payment terms.

His gut twisted.

Carson stood behind him, arms crossed. “What is that?”

Denver scrolled, highlighting the transaction record. “Looks like Robert hired a hitman to kill Rhae’s parents.”

The silence snapped tight like an electrical storm between them.

“You’re fucking serious ?”

“Yeah.” Denver’s voice was low, cold. “I had a hunch. Took some digging, but I started piecing things together once I saw how the money moved. Escrow on his new business venture was funded the same week her parents died. That part alone wouldn’t be enough—but the payout went to a wallet I found mentioned in another forum post, bragging about a successful ‘job’ that paid out in full. ”

Carson rubbed a hand down his face. “Okay, I don’t understand half of what you just said, but I think you might’ve just poked the bear.”

Denver turned, expression hard. “Look around, Carson. We’re the bigger bears.”

He clicked again, tracing the transaction path. “See this?” He pointed. “That’s the original wallet where the payment went. The coin gets washed through mixers, but a sloppy move left a chunk routed to a secondary wallet.”

“And that matters because…?”

Denver’s mouth quirked grimly. “Because that secondary wallet made a deposit to an exchange account…tied to an email address I’ve already seen linked to Ravencroft’s shell company.” The spa chain Rhae had mentioned.

Denver clicked again, revealing the email. There was no doubt now. A digital fingerprint, one Robert Ravencroft hadn’t wiped clean.

He didn’t want to be right, for Rhae’s sake. More fury pounded through his system.

Carson exhaled slowly, shifting his stance. “You know this isn’t something we can fail at, right?”

“Who said anything about failing?”

“We either execute this perfectly, and everything works in our favor, or the guy’s going to take us apart with lawsuits.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t fail.”

“I was coming in here to make you an official offer for a position on the team,” Carson muttered, shaking his head. “And damn, we could use someone with your skills. But I need to know—seriously—that you can take direction. I can’t have you going rogue on us, no matter how righteous your reason.”

Denver straightened and swiveled his chair toward him. “I’d accept, but I need to know that you’ll let me help organize this team. Based on the looks of that office and how you run things, the agency is all over the place. I can’t work like that.”

Carson gave him a flat look. “You saying my leadership’s sloppy?”

“I’m saying the team’s good—but there’s no structure, no command flow. If I’m going to be part of this, I want to make it better. Sharper. More lethal when it counts.”

Carson eyed him for a beat. “What do you have in mind?”

Denver turned back to the monitor, eyes scanning the intel he’d compiled—wallets, timestamps, IP addresses, a digital exhaust plume no one but a predator could follow.

Exactly what Ravencroft was going for…and the thing Denver was skilled at ripping apart.

The bastard went after the wrong woman.

“First, someone needs to take charge of logistics—off the field and on. Comms, coordination, fallback plans. Second, we need layers—intel, operations, extraction. Third, we build profiles on threats like Ravencroft before they hurt people, not after.”

“You sound like a guy already halfway to running the show.”

“I sound like a guy who’s tired of cleaning up messes that never should’ve happened.”

Carson cracked a faint grin. “Fine. You want to be my second?”

Denver’s gaze darkened. “I want to be the last name a man like Ravencroft ever hears.”

Carson nodded once. “Then we do it right.”

Denver’s jaw flexed. “Damn right we do. We’re Malones.”