Daggermouth (The Heart, #1) — Chapter no 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I Didn’t Know

Greyson checked his watch for the third time in as many minutes, the silver face gleaming under the apartment’s soft lighting. His fingers moved to his cufflinks, adjusting them needlessly as he stood by the door. The dinner would be a nightmare—it always was with his father—but tonight carried an additional weight of dread. Tonight, a Daggermouth would sit at his father’s table. He ran a finger between his collar and neck, fighting the sensation of being slowly strangled.

What would my father do? The question circled his mind like a vulture.

Maximus never did anything without calculation, without purpose. The dinner invitation hadn’t been a courtesy; it was a move in whatever game he was playing. Shadera was the wild card neither of them could fully predict.

He was bringing her into the serpent’s nest. Throwing her to his father like raw meat to a predator, knowing he would use every weapon at his disposal to break her, to prove his dominance over both of them.

Greyson checked his watch again, then adjusted his mask. Five minutes until they needed to leave. Five minutes to mentally prepare for whatever psychological warfare his father had planned.

“Should I go retrieve her?” Chapman asked from the kitchen doorway, his posture rigid even in this private setting.

“No.” Greyson felt the word come out more sharply than intended. “She’ll be ready.”

He could still hear the echoes of their conversation in the car. That moment of honesty that had evolved between them.

No, I don’t believe in it.

A single sentence that could get him killed.

He hadn’t meant to reveal so much, but something about her directness had pulled the truth from him before he could think of a lie.

The soft click of a door opening pulled him from his thoughts. He turned toward the sound, expecting the worst—jeans, perhaps, or whatever other form of rebellion she might have concocted from Lira’s carefully selected wardrobe.

What he saw first were the boots. Heavy black combat boots, scarred from use and utterly inappropriate for a Heart dinner. His eyes tracked upward, a

reprimand already forming on his lips.

It died there.

The dress was black, simple in its design but devastating in its effect. It hugged curves he’d been trying very hard not to notice, the fabric clinging to her body before falling in a soft line at the center of her inked and scarred thighs.

The contrast between the delicate dress and those battle-worn boots should have been jarring, but somehow it worked—a visual representation of the contradiction that she was.

His gaze continued upward, past the cinched waist to the neckline that dipped lower than Heart fashion typically allowed. It exposed the hollow of her throat, the jagged line of her bruised collarbone, and a constellation of scars that marked her skin like stars on a map of violence. One particularly vicious scar ran along her right shoulder, disappearing beneath the thin strap of the dress.

She’d done nothing to conceal the marks of her life, of her profession. They were displayed openly, almost defiantly. As were the tattoos—prison numbers across her knuckles, patterns wrapping around her arms, script cascading down the side of her neck, and others he couldn’t fully see but glimpsed as she shifted her weight.

“Turn around,” he said, the words escaping before he could stop them.

She stared at him for a moment, hesitating before complying. She pivoted slowly to reveal the back of the dress, or rather, the absence of it. The fabric plunged low, exposing the entire plane of her back. More scars, more tattoos.

These ones brutal and deep. Bullet wounds and gashes that puckered white against her dark skin.

The dress didn’t just reveal flesh, but history—pain and survival written in scar tissue and ink. It was beautiful in its brutality, and the honest reflection of their world that could not be erased even if the Heart tried.

She was beautiful, and he hated himself for thinking it. She was everything he was never allowed to be—wild and untamed chaos.

Greyson swallowed hard, suddenly aware that he’d been staring. He turned away abruptly.

“You can’t wear those boots,” he said, focusing on the easiest problem to address.

“I’m not wearing those death traps your sister sent,” Shadera replied, her voice steady but with an edge he’d come to recognize as nervousness. “I need to be able to run if things go bad.”

Another similarity between them. An exit strategy always lingering in the back of their minds.

“Things won’t go bad.” Even to his own ears, the reassurance sounded hollow.

Shadera snorted. “Sure. And I’m marrying the Executioner by choice.”

The contempt in her voice when she said “Executioner” was familiar, almost comforting in its consistency. At least that hadn’t changed, even if everything else between them seemed to be shifting into uncertain territory.

“Besides,” she continued, moving past him to the entryway table where her mask lay, “I need a place to hide my butter knife in case your father gives me an opportunity to put it in his throat.”

The crude words contrasted so sharply with her appearance that Greyson couldn’t help the small dark smirk that twisted his lips.

“You should probably keep those thoughts to yourself tonight, if you plan to make it out alive,” he said, watching her reflection in the mirror.

She turned back to face him, and he was struck again by the transformation.

The dress didn’t make her soft—nothing could do that—but it revealed a different facet of her, like a blade catching the light from a new angle.

“Do I make you nervous, little heir?” Her voice held a challenge, but beneath it, he caught the genuine question. She was asking something else entirely.

“No,” he answered, meeting her eyes directly. “But he should make you nervous. Everything you’ve seen, everything you think you know about the Heart, about my family—it’s surface level. Tonight, you might just have a glimpse at what’s beneath.”

Something in his tone must have reached her because the mockery faded from her expression, replaced by a wariness that was far more appropriate for what lay ahead.

“How bad will it be?” she asked as she placed her mask over her face.

“You never know with him.”

They left the apartment in silence, the air between them heavy with unspoken concerns. The elevator ascended smoothly, carrying them toward an evening neither was fully prepared for. Greyson found himself studying her reflection in the polished doors—the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her fingers flexed at her sides as if reaching for weapons that weren’t there.

She was afraid, he realized. Not of his father specifically, but of stepping into the unknown territory of Heart society. Of being so deep in enemy territory with no clear exit strategy, no clear allies. The recognition of her fear made her suddenly more human to him, more than just some emotionless assassin with murder in her eyes.

“Breathe,” he whispered as the elevator slowed. “Just follow my lead, and we’ll get through this.”

She didn’t answer, but he saw her shoulders drop slightly, saw her chest rise with a deep breath before she straightened again, steeling herself.

The doors slid open to reveal the antechamber of his father’s penthouse. Two housekeepers stood waiting. Their posture was perfect, their greeting rehearsed to the syllable.

“Sir,” the older one intoned, dipping into a precise bow. “The Patriarch awaits you and your”—a fractional pause as she struggled for the right word for Shadera. Prisoner? Bride?—“fiancée in the dining room.”

Greyson felt Shadera tense beside him, felt the shift in her weight that suggested she was calculating how quickly she could cross the space and neutralize the perceived threat. He placed a hand at the small of her back, the gesture both restraint and reassurance, his fingers brushing against her exposed skin.

He let it linger there, unsure if he did it for himself, or for her.

“Thank you, Quinn,” he said. “We’ll join him.”

The housekeeper’s eyes widened slightly at the use of her name, then she nodded, stepping aside to let them pass. Greyson guided Shadera forward with the lightest pressure against her back, feeling the heat of her skin against his fingers, the tension in her muscles as they approached the dining-room archway.

“Remember,” he murmured, his lips barely moving beneath his mask.

“Nothing he says is without purpose. Nothing he does is without calculation.

Don’t react.”

Her only response was a slight nod, her throat working as she swallowed.

Then the doors were opening, and they were stepping into the lion’s den, where Maximus Serel sat waiting like a predator with infinite patience, confident that sooner or later, everyone who entered his domain would bleed.

His father sat at the head of the table like a king holding court, his golden mask catching the light from the chandelier overhead. His mother and sister on either side of him, looking equally nervous. Greyson felt Shadera’s subtle hesitation beside him, a fractional pause that only he would notice, before she straightened her spine and followed him into the room.

“Ah, my son arrives,” Maximus’s voice cut through the silence, measured and cold.

Maximus’s gaze fixed on Shadera, taking in the dress, the boots, her mask. His silence stretched long enough to become uncomfortable, a deliberate tactic Greyson had seen him employ countless times. Finally, he spoke.

“How fascinating.” Two words, dripping with disdain. “Please, sit.”

They took their places at the table, Greyson pulling out Shadera’s chair before seating himself between her and Lira.

Servants materialized from alcoves, silent and efficient as they poured wine and placed the first course. He sat back and watched Shadera from the corner of his eye, noting how she mirrored Lira’s movements, taking her cues on which

utensils to use.

Smart. Adaptable. Dangerous.

“Your bride’s transformation is quite remarkable,” his father started, speaking as if Shadera wasn’t sitting next to him. “One would almost forget she tried to put a bullet in your head less than a week ago. Almost.”

Shadera’s hand tightened around her fork, and Greyson felt rather than saw her preparing a retort. He pressed his knee against hers beneath the table—a warning, a plea for caution.

“So, Miss Kael,” Maximus began, swirling wine in his glass, “I understand you’re quite accomplished in your field. Fourteen confirmed kills of Heart officials, if my intelligence is correct. Quite the résumé.”

Shadera’s knife paused above her plate. “It’s not, actually.” Her voice was cold, measured. “My numbers are much higher.”

Greyson tensed, but Maximus merely chuckled—a sound entirely devoid of humor. “A flaw in my system. I’ll have to investigate that.” He took a careful bite, chewed it thoroughly then swallowed. “Tell me, how are you finding Heart hospitality compared to your accommodation in the Boundary?”

“It’s cleaner I’ll admit,” Shadera replied casually. “The knives are sharper. The people, less so.”

Lira coughed quietly into her napkin, and Greyson caught the flash of what might have been amusement in her eyes. Maximus, however, didn’t react beyond a slight tilt of his head.

“Amusing,” he said, his tone suggesting it was anything but. “How do you think your lover is doing in your absence? Jameson Vine, I believe his name is?”

Greyson felt Shadera go perfectly still beside him, the name silencing her. He hadn’t known that name—hadn’t known there was someone specific in her life.

The thought shouldn’t have bothered him. It did.

His father continued. “Ghost is what they call him, isn’t it?”

Greyson’s stomach hollowed.

Ghost.

He hadn’t even considered the connection. He’d never seen his face when they traded information, only ever received a name. Ghost—the rebel leader. His contact in the Boundary.

The tremor in his hand flared to life and he pushed his hand under the table to hide it as Shadera’s eyes slowly dragged toward his father.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Shadera said, but the lie was transparent, her voice too controlled, too careful.

“Come now.” Maximus set down his fork with precision. “Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence.”

The servers returned, clearing plates silently. Greyson watched Shadera’s profile, saw the muscle in her jaw flex and release, flex and release. Her own hand had disappeared beneath the table, and he suspected it was now curled into a fist on her thigh.

He wanted to reach for her. To let her know he was there, that violence here, in this room, would not get them anywhere but the platform. But he stayed still as his heart began to rapidly accelerate.

“I’m curious,” Maximus continued, as the second course was served, “how he will react when he learns you are the Executioner’s whore.”

The slur landed directly in the center of Greyson’s chest as if it was lighting a fuse. Rage ignited outward, searing through his veins as Shadera shifted forward in her seat beside him, preparing to lunge.

But Greyson spoke before she could move. “Show her some respect,” he said, each word edged with warning.

“Respect.” His father tasted the word. “Like the respect you have shown me by letting her parade around the Heart, bringing her to my table in that abomination?” He gestured to the mask.

“I wanted something that would honor both traditions,” Lira spoke up smoothly. “The Heart’s masking laws and Shadera’s background.”

Maximus’s eyes shifted to Lira, who met his gaze without flinching. “Her background,” Maximus repeated. “Please, Miss Kael, do tell us about your background. I’m sure my wife would be fascinated to hear how the less fortunate manage.”

Elara’s mask turned toward Shadera, but she remained silent, her hands perfectly still on the table. Greyson had long ago stopped trying to interpret his mother’s silence—whether it was agreement, fear, or self-preservation.

“It’s difficult,” Shadera answered carefully. “Resources are limited.”

“By design.” Maximus nodded casually as if that fact would not enrage her.

“Limited resources create dependence. Dependence creates control. Surely, as a Daggermouth, you understand the value of control?”

Greyson watched Shadera’s throat work as she swallowed. “I understand plenty. I understand that while the Boundary starves, while the Cardinal is worked like slaves so the elite don’t have to lift a finger, the Heart bathes in luxury.”

Greyson sucked in a sharp breath. Don’t rise to it, he silently willed her. It’s what he wants.

“Ah, the typical Boundary perspective,” Maximus sighed. “Resources must be managed. Distributed according to contribution. What exactly does the Boundary contribute, beyond violence and discontent?”

“Contribution?” Shadera shot back. “You’ve created an artificial scarcity to —”

“I’ve created order from chaos,” Maximus cut her off, his voice hardening.

“Before the Serel regime, do you know what New Found Haven was? Warring factions. Overpopulation. We brought stability.”

“You brought subjugation.”

Shadera’s fork clattered against her plate as she set it down too forcefully.

Greyson saw his father’s eyes narrow—a predator sensing weakness. Greyson’s fork was in his hand and underneath the table before he realized he was reacting, stabbing its tines into her thigh to stop her from provoking him further.

Her body went rigid, her breath catching but she didn’t cry out. Her eyes flashed to his, murderous behind her mask. She fell silent as she reached down, pulled the fork from her flesh and used it to take her next bite.

“Now,” his father started again. “Back to this mask. Do you understand the position you’ve put me in? Either I publicly support this flagrant disregard for tradition, or I admit I cannot control my own family.”

“We could never have that,” Lira said under her breath, sarcasm thick.

“What did you say to me?” Maximus snarled at her.

“I thought you would like it.” Greyson spoke up quickly, redirecting his father’s rage. “An act of unity, with my soon-to-be wife wearing my mark.”

The air in the room had shifted, a subtle but palpable change that even the servants seemed to notice, their movements becoming more cautious at the threshold between rooms.

Maximus’s hand tightened around his wineglass, and for a moment, Greyson thought it might shatter. “An interesting perspective. Though I wonder if that’s how the general public will perceive it.”

“Isn’t that what Lira is for?” Greyson asked carefully. “To ensure the public perceives exactly what you want them to?”

A flash of something—approval, perhaps, or simply acknowledgment— crossed his father’s eyes. “Indeed. Though I question whether this particular narrative can be shaped to my advantage.”

“It can,” Lira said quietly. “I’ve already begun drafting the announcement.

The mask will be presented as a symbol of Shadera’s new allegiance, her embrace of Heart traditions modified to honor her life in the Boundary. To show that the rings can be unified.”

Maximus considered this, head tilted slightly. Then he turned back to Shadera. “And what of your Boundary allegiances? What of your Daggermouth loyalties? Can they be so easily discarded for a pretty dress and a comfortable apartment?”

Shadera’s back straightened, her chin lifting. “Nothing about my current situation is comfortable.”

“No?” Maximus’s voice took on the deceptively gentle tone that had always preceded his worst cruelties when Greyson was a child. “Not even my son’s bed?”

“Father,” Greyson snapped, unable to contain himself any longer.

“Are you protecting this trash?” Maximus’s laugh was cold, cutting. “The scum that tried to murder you? Whose clan killed your brother, my son? How far you have fallen. How disappointingly weak you’ve become.”

“Treating people with basic dignity isn’t weakness,” Greyson countered, trying to rein in his hatred. “Something you’ve never understood.”

“You presume to tell me what I do and do not understand?” His father rose slightly in his chair, leaning forward. “You, who have accomplished nothing beyond what I have given you? You, who exist at my pleasure, who hold power only because I allow it?”

The familiar litany of inadequacy washed over Greyson like acid rain, burning in old scars, festering in wounds that had never truly healed. He felt

himself shrinking beneath it, felt the child in him wanting to bow his head, to apologize, to do anything to make the criticism stop.

But he wasn’t a child anymore. He was the only person that could stand between his father and his mother, his sister, and now Shadera. He opened his mouth to speak but it was too late.

“That’s not true,” Lira said suddenly, her voice cutting through the tension.

“Greyson has earned everything he has. He’s respected for his own merits, not because of your name.”

Greyson could hear his heart pounding, could feel the blood rising.

She shouldn’t have said that.

Maximus’s head snapped toward her, and the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, temperature dropping as if someone had opened a door to winter.

“Did I ask for your opinion?”

Elara’s hand moved toward Lira’s across the table, a subtle protective gesture.

“Maximus, perhaps we should—”

“Be silent,” Maximus cut her off, not even looking at his wife. His attention remained fixed on Lira. “You forget yourself. You forget who allowed you to have a voice at all.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Lira replied, and Greyson heard the slight tremor in her voice, the fear she was fighting to control. “I wish I could, Father, truly. But there is not a single day that I do not remember the things you have done to me or this family.”

Greyson’s eyes flashed toward her. The accusation in her voice, the pain.

There was something deeper, something haunting in the way she said it, as if she was intimately aware of how cruel Maximus could be. Greyson’s stomach twisted at the thought of his father’s hands on her. He thought he’d kept her safe, had kept her out of the path of his father’s wrath.

The room went so quiet Greyson could hear the subtle tick of the antique clock on the mantelpiece, counting down the seconds to massacre. Shadera had gone still beside him, watching his family unravel before her.

“How dare you,” Maximus said, his voice barely above a whisper. “How dare you speak to me with such contempt in my house.”

One moment he was standing at the head of the table, the next he was at Lira’s side, his hand closing around her throat as he dragged her from her chair.

“Maximus!” Elara cried, reaching for her daughter.

Maximus’s other hand shot out, his fist connecting with her skull as she rushed for her daughter. A sharp wail left her lips as she stumbled to the ground and scurried away from him, clutching the side of her face.

“Stay in your place,” Maximus hissed down at her before turning his eyes back to Lira.

Greyson sprang to his feet, rage propelling him forward. He seethed, fists clenched, ready to strike, but Lira’s eyes—wide and desperate—found his over their father’s shoulder, silently begging him to stop. He stilled, his chest rising and falling frantically as Shadera slowly rose beside him.

Maximus forced Lira to her knees beside the table, his grip on her throat tightening. “You think because I’ve given you responsibilities, because I’ve allowed you some small authority, that you have the right to speak at my table?”

His voice was conversational, almost gentle. “You are a woman with freedoms I let you keep because I’ve not yet required you to take your Vow. But you are still a woman. I can take those freedoms away at any second, I can sell you off to the highest bidder, where you will become another subservient woman whose only purpose is to breed heirs, to take orders.”

“I have no freedom,” Lira spat up at him, the words strangled.

The sound of Maximus’s palm connecting with Lira’s face echoed through the dining room. Her head snapped to the side, the impact hard enough that Greyson heard the distinct crack of her mask against his father’s ring.

Something in Greyson broke. Some final tether of restraint, some last vestige of fear or respect or whatever had kept him in check all these years. He launched himself around the table, blind with rage, deaf to his mother’s sharp scream as she pleaded with him to stop.

“Greyson, don’t!” Shadera yelled as she tried to catch his arm.

But it was too late. It was already in motion.

He was halfway to his father when Maximus released Lira, letting her crumple to the floor as he drew a gun from inside his jacket. The movement was

smooth, practiced—the action of a man who had anticipated this moment, who’d been waiting for it.

“One more step,” Maximus said calmly, “and I’ll add another scar to your

collection.”

Greyson didn’t stop.

The shot rang out, the force of it spinning him half around as the bullet tore through the flesh of his shoulder. He caught himself against the edge of the table, blood already soaking through his jacket, dripping onto the pristine tablecloth. Pain bloomed through his veins but he barely registered it, the familiar sensation just one more data point in a lifetime of his father’s lessons.

“Is that the best you can do?” he asked, his eyes dragging up to meet his father’s. “After everything else, you think a bullet scares me?”

“Predictable,” Maximus said, his voice coldly analytical. “Always so quick to defend the lesser sex, to defend lesser people. It’s why you’ll never be fit to lead.”

Greyson straightened, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep and broken inside him. It spilled out, harsh and genuine, as he pressed his hand against the wound in his shoulder. “Is that what you think I care about? Fitness to lead? Being like you?”

He took a step forward in the silent room, then another, ignoring the gun still pointed at his chest.

“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing at the weapon. “Finish what you started. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Maximus’s eyes shifted behind his mask, a hint of uncertainty there as he reassessed his son. Maximus adjusted his aim, the barrel now pointing directly at Greyson’s heart. “You think I won’t?”

“I know you will,” Greyson replied, still advancing. “Eventually. It’s what you do—eliminate problems. Destroy anything that doesn’t conform to your vision.

So do it. End the disappointment.”

Maximus’s finger tightened on the trigger, hesitating. For a moment, Greyson thought it might truly be the end. A strange calm washed over him at the prospect—not peace, exactly, but acceptance. Freedom, of a sort.

The same sensation he’d felt when Shadera had pointed her gun at him.

Except this time, it was laced with fear. Fear of leaving his family with this man,

fear of leaving her with this man.

Then, in the next breath, Maximus pivoted, squatting down to the floor next to Elara, the gun now aimed at her head. “Perhaps I’ll start with your mother instead. Since you seem to value others’ lives above your own.”

The threat hung in the air, clear and unmistakable. Greyson went still, the calm draining from him as suddenly as it had appeared, replaced by cold, familiar panic. Not for himself but for the collateral damage his father never hesitated to inflict.

“That’s better,” Maximus said, satisfaction evident in his voice. “You see, son? Some lessons do stick, after all.”

For a heartbeat, the tableau held—Maximus with his gun against Elara’s temple, Lira still on the floor, Shadera standing now, waiting for permission to attack. Greyson could feel blood running down his arm, warm and steady, pooling at his fingertips.

“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice flat with suppressed fury.

He moved to Lira’s side, positioning himself between her and their father.

Shadera appeared at his other side, her body tense, ready for action. He could feel the coiled violence in her, the assassin calculating odds, measuring distances.

“You will do as I—” Maximus began.

“No.” Greyson cut him off, the single syllable carrying the weight of years of silent defiance. “Not tonight.”

He helped Lira to her feet, steadying her when she swayed. Her mask had cracked along one side, a thin line running from eye to cheek like a tear frozen in place. He kept his body between her and their father as he guided her toward Shadera.

In this moment, he realized that he trusted her. Not with his life, but with his sister’s. He knew somehow that she’d seen the violence of men, and she would protect Lira just as he would.

“If you walk out that door,” Maximus said, his voice like ice, “there will be consequences.”

Greyson turned back to look at him, at the man who’d shaped his life through fear and pain, who had molded him into a weapon.

“There always are,” he replied. “You will get your Vow. You will destroy my life and I can swallow that. But I will not hesitate to kill you if you ever lay a hand on Lira again.” He paused, knowing the threat would cost him.

But instead of leaving it, instead of walking out the door with the damage that had already been done, he smiled at his father. “A Serel doesn’t hesitate, right, Dad?”

He turned then, ushering Shadera and Lira toward the exit, his hand at Lira’s back, and Shadera supporting her.

“This isn’t over, Greyson,” his father called after them. “It’s barely begun.”

Greyson didn’t look back, didn’t slow his pace as they left the dining room, the evidence of his father’s violence marked in blood on his shirt and the bruises already forming on Lira’s throat. Behind them, he heard the sound of glass shattering against a wall, his father’s rage finding its target after they were beyond his reach.

He couldn’t save his mother, he knew that. Knew that she would never betray his father. That Maximus would have put a bullet in her head before she could take a step out of that room. His soul cracked at the thought, at the knowledge that she would be the one to receive his fury with no way out.

The truth of Maximus’s final words settled in Greyson’s gut like lead.

This isn’t over.

Whatever game his father was playing, whatever trap he was setting—this dinner had been just one move on a board much larger than Greyson could see.

They were all in danger.

He jabbed the button for his floor, leaving a smear of crimson on the polished metal. The elevator doors slid closed, sealing them in silence broken only by Lira’s short, panicked breaths that Greyson recognized all too well—the aftermath of their father’s attention.

“Li.” He kept his voice steady, gentle in a way he reserved only for her. “Focus on my voice.”

Her eyes were wide behind her mask, pupils dilated. Her hand went to her throat where Maximus’s fingers had been.

“I can’t—” she gasped, the words fragmenting.

Lira’s breathing quickened, each inhale shorter than the last, her body trembling visibly now. Greyson moved toward her, but Shadera was faster, stepping in front of his sister as she tore the mask from her face. She placed her hands on Lira’s shoulders, her movements careful but decisive.

“Look at me,” she said, her voice gentler than Greyson had ever heard it.

“Through the mask. Find my eyes.”

Lira’s head jerked up, her chest heaving with the effort to draw breath.

“Good,” Shadera continued, reaching up to adjust Lira’s mask, straightening it softly. “Now breathe with me. In through your nose.” She demonstrated, her own chest rising slowly. “Out through your mouth.”

To Greyson’s amazement, Lira tried to follow, her breath still hitching but gradually slowing as she matched Shadera’s rhythm. The assassin continued the pattern, her attention fully focused on Lira, as if they were the only two people in the elevator.

“That’s it,” Shadera encouraged. “Again. In… and out.”

Greyson pulled his tablet from his jacket, wincing as the movement sent fresh pain lancing through his shoulder. He keyed in a secure code, bypassing the usual communication channels to connect directly to Chapman.

“Sir?” Chapman’s voice came through immediately, alert and concerned.

“We have a situation,” Greyson said, keeping his voice low. “Get to my floor.

Immediately.”

He ended the call without waiting for a response, knowing Chapman would be there. The man had never failed him, not once in ten years of service.

Greyson turned back to the women, watching Shadera care for his sister as something shifted in his chest. The scene felt surreal, disconnected from the reality he thought he understood about Daggermouths.

They were supposed to be emotionless killers.

They were not supposed to care for other people, not supposed to feel empathy, show kindness.

Pain pulsed from his shoulder, but he pushed it aside, compartmentalizing it as he’d been taught. Physical pain was the least of what his father had inflicted tonight. The bullet wound would heal. The sight of his father’s hand around

Lira’s throat, of the gun aimed at his mother’s head—those wounds would fester like all the others, buried but never forgotten.

The elevator slowed, then stopped as rain began to drum against the glass box. Shadera’s gaze moved between them and the city beyond the window, cataloging, assessing, planning—Greyson could almost see the calculations behind her eyes.

The doors slid open to reveal Chapman standing at the threshold between doors, back straight, expression neutral despite the blood on Greyson’s suit, despite Lira’s obvious distress.

Shadera helped Lira to her feet as Chapman used his own key to unlock the door, stepping inside first to verify it was secure. He nodded once to Greyson before he ushered them inside.

“I need you to take Lira to Callum,” Greyson said to Chapman without preamble. “Tell him she doesn’t leave his side until I contact him. Not for any reason. Not for work, not for Father, not for anything. And use the service tunnels, not the main roads.”

Chapman nodded, already moving to retrieve a coat for her from the closet by the door.

“Grey—” Lira began, her voice still unsteady.

“Please.” He heard the desperation in his voice. “You’re not safe at home right now. Callum can protect you until we figure out our next move.”

“Then come with me,” she pressed. “If he can protect me then he can protect all of us.”

Greyson shook his head. “No one is safe around Shadera and me right now.”

He placed his good hand on her uninjured cheek, a rare gesture of physical affection. “I need to know you’re safe, Li. Please.”

“At least let me help you first,” she conceded, leaning into his palm as her eyes flicked to his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” he lied, ignoring the hot blood spreading down his side beneath his jacket. “This isn’t the first time. I doubt it will be the last.”

Something about those words seemed to break her completely. She surged forward, wrapping her arms around him in a fierce embrace that sent pain screaming through his shoulder. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. Instead, he

gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms tightly around her, cradling his little sister against his chest as her tears soaked through his shirt.

“I hate him,” she whispered against him. “I hate what he’s done to us. I want him to die.”

“I know.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I know, Li. Go with Chapman. Stay with Callum. I’ll fix this.”

Another lie, perhaps. But one she needed to hear.

She pulled back, fingers brushing his injured shoulder with butterfly lightness. “Promise me you’ll take care of this,” she said, gesturing to the wound.

“I promise.”

Lira turned to Shadera then, the movement hesitant, uncertain. “Thank you,” she said simply. “For in the elevator.”

Shadera inclined her head, her expression giving nothing away. “It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Lira insisted. Then, more quietly, “Take care of him. At least for tonight, please keep him safe.”

Before Shadera could respond, Lira turned away, moving toward Chapman who waited in the entryway, his patience infinite, his discretion absolute.

Greyson followed her toward the door, opening it and pressing the button to call the elevator, then pulled Chapman back a step.

“No one touches her,” he said, his voice low enough that only he could hear as he withdrew a gun from a drawer in the entryway table and slipped it to Chapman. “If anyone tries, even Father’s men, you have my authorization to use lethal force.”

Chapman’s eyes reflected his understanding. “Yes, sir. With my life.”

The doors to the elevator opened, and in the next breath, they were gone, leaving Greyson alone with Shadera in the suddenly too-quiet apartment. The absence of others made the space feel larger, emptier, the silence pressing in and suffocating him.

Greyson stood motionless, his control maintained by the thinnest of threads.

Now that Lira was gone, now that his focus on her safety no longer anchored him, he could feel something unraveling inside him—a coil of pain and despair that had been wound tight for decades.

Control. Everything in his life had been about control—maintaining it, projecting it, never letting it slip, no matter what his father did, no matter what horrors he witnessed on the execution platform, no matter how much of himself he had to carve away to maintain the facade.

The sound of his own heartbeat thundered in his ears, the wound in his shoulder a distant concern compared to the rage building inside him.

It started in his fingertips, a tremor that traveled up his arms, spreading through his chest until his entire body vibrated with it. That control he maintained—always, always maintained—began to crack, fault lines spreading into gaping voids.

“You should sit,” Shadera said, breaking the silence. “Let me look at your shoulder.”

Her voice penetrated the fog beginning to cloud his thoughts, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond. The sound of his father’s hand striking Lira’s face echoed in his ears. The image of the gun pressed to his mother’s temple burned behind his eyes. The feeling of powerlessness—familiar, suffocating— tightened around his throat.

“Greyson?” Shadera moved closer, her voice sharper now, more insistent.

For the first time in his life, Greyson found himself contemplating not just escape from his father’s control, but something far more permanent. Something that would end his reign once and for all.

Something snapped.

His fist connected with the nearest wall before he consciously decided to move, as a sound more animal than human shredded his lungs. Greyson drove his fist through the wall again. Plaster cracked and gave way, pain shooting up his arm to mingle with the fire in his shoulder. The physical sensation was cleansing, clarifying—a point of focus in the storm.

He tore the mask from his face, hurling it into the mirror above the entryway table. Shards exploded outward like crystalline shrapnel. His hands reached for anything, scrabbled for anything he could destroy. The island stools were next.

He picked them up, one by one, slamming them against the counter, against the walls, the refrigerator, until they were nothing more than twisted metal.

He dragged his suit jacket off his body as his heel connected with the coffee table. It flew across the room flipping and splintering as it connected with the entertainment center and shattered the thin glass television screen. The sound

was like ice breaking on a frozen lake.

It wasn’t enough.

Nowhere near enough to contain the fury boiling through his veins.

“Fuck!” The word tore from him as his fist connected with the marble island, splitting his knuckles.

He tore through the apartment like a force of nature, upending furniture, shattering anything his eyes landed on. Each act of destruction felt like oxygen after too long underwater, like breaking the surface when he’d been drowning his entire life.

He swept everything from the counters with a single arc of his arm, dishes and glassware shattering on the floor. A liquor bottle flying toward the window.

Thirty-three years of obedience. Thirty-three years of swallowing his hatred, of playing the dutiful son, the perfect heir. Thirty-three years of watching his father destroy everything. And for what? For the privilege of living in a cage, of killing on command, of pretending the Heart’s poison hadn’t infected him to the core?

He was dimly aware of Shadera standing at the entryway, watching his rampage with calm eyes. Her presence registered like a distant signal through the static of his rage, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t regain control. Not yet.

Greyson went for the couch next, flipping the large sectional over as another scream ripped from deep inside him. The exertion sent a spike of agony through his injured shoulder, and Greyson stumbled, his vision blurring at the edges. He caught himself against the window, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.

His legs gave out, and he slid down the glass to the floor, chest heaving, the rage finally beginning to ebb, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the pain no longer possible to ignore now that the adrenaline was fading.

The apartment lay in ruins around him, a battlefield of broken possessions, a landscape of destruction that matched the devastation inside him. His ragged breathing sounded obscenely loud in the sudden quiet. Shame crept in at the

seams of his awareness—shame at his loss of control, at the animal violence of his outburst, at the knowledge that Shadera had just witnessed him break.

Another weakness revealed, another vulnerability exposed.

He leaned his head back against the glass, closing his eyes as he sucked in a ragged breath. Time seemed to stretch and contract around him, reality bleeding at the edges. He was pulling away from his body. Inch by inch. Like a tide ebbing from the shore.

A soft sound pulled him back—footsteps approaching, giving him plenty of warning.

He forced himself to look at her, to acknowledge what he had done. He expected to find contempt or satisfaction in her eyes—some vindication at seeing her captor brought low. Instead, she stood a few paces away, holding a first aid kit in her hands, her posture suggesting caution but not fear.

“Are you done?” she asked, her voice steady.

Greyson nodded.

She approached slowly, as if he was a wounded animal that might still be dangerous.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, the words emerging rough and raw. “I would never—” He stopped, killing the lie before it could form. He didn’t have to lie to her, didn’t have to pretend this was something it wasn’t. They would both hurt each other if they had to, but at least, if nothing else, they were honest about that.

A corner of her lips tilted upward and she knelt in front of him, laying the kit

on the floor beside her.

“I know.”

She said it so matter-of-fact, as if she understood him on some fundamental level that others missed. As if the line between his controlled public persona and this private destruction made perfect sense to her.

“I’m going to clean that wound,” she said, nodding toward his shoulder.

“And before you tell me not to bother, remember that if you bleed out, I’m the one who’ll be blamed.” She retrieved antiseptic and bandages without looking up at him. “Can you move your arm well enough to pull it from the sleeve?”

Greyson nodded, complying and wincing as he undid the buttons and pulled his left arm free. The bullet had passed through the meat of his shoulder, missing bone and major arteries—a warning shot, clean and not meant to kill. His father was too precise a marksman to miss at that range if he’d wanted Greyson dead.

Shadera worked in silence, cleaning the wound with clinical detachment. Her fingers were gentle despite the efficiency of her movements, a contradiction that seemed to define her more and more with each passing day.

“I’m sorry,” Greyson said after several minutes of quiet. “That you had to see that. My father. What he really is.”

Her eyes met his, green and steady and unafraid.

“I’ve known what he is for a long time,” she said quietly, then paused. Her mouth quirked upward slightly. “Besides, what you really should be apologizing for, little heir, is stabbing me with that fucking fork. Hurt worse than an actual blade.”

A startled laugh escaped him, quickly cut short by the pain it caused. “Fair enough.”

They fell silent again for a moment as she kept working and the energy in the air between them shifted.

Her hands stilled on his skin, lingering. He swore he imagined it when her thumb traced a soft circle over a scar and his breath hitched.

“I didn’t know,” she finally whispered, so softly he almost missed it.

Greyson looked up, finding her eyes fixed on his face, her expression stripped of its usual defenses. The emotion they held, the pain that seemed to reflect him made his heartbeat stutter.

“Know what?” His voice was so foreign, so soft as it left his lips. He fixated on her eyes. Those beautiful fucking eyes.

She swallowed.

“What it was like. What you…” Her fingers slid down his arm, never leaving his skin. Greyson’s heart rate began to accelerate. “I knew that he was a monster.

But I didn’t know… I never imagined what it was like for you. Living with him.”

He couldn’t have anticipated the severity of the impact those words would hit him with, unexpected and devastating in their simple honesty. He looked away, unable to bear the weight of her gaze.

“No one does,” he said, forcing his eyes back to her face.

Her hand fell away from his skin, slipping into her lap, and the sudden absence of her touch, her warmth, made his throat constrict. He forced himself not to reach for her.

“He killed my parents,” Shadera said, her voice almost a whisper. “Twenty years ago, I watched him kill my parents on that platform because they were from different rings. Because they chose love over law.”

She lifted her eyes back to his, and the pain he saw raging there could have

brought him to his knees.

“I-I’m sorry.” She forced the word out.

“For what?” he asked, genuinely confused.

She cleared her throat, bringing her hands back to his shoulder gently. He sucked in a sharp breath at the contact, not from pain—but comfort.

“For assuming you were just like him.” She secured a bandage over the entrance wound. “For thinking that because you are his son, the Executioner, this was a life you chose. That you wanted to kill innocents—that you enjoyed it.”

The statement from her lips was a blade sliding between his ribs, finding the heart of a truth he rarely acknowledged even to himself.

He hadn’t chosen any of this.

“That doesn’t excuse what I’ve done,” he said, the words thick in his throat.

“The choices I’ve made, the people I’ve—” He cut himself off, unable to finish.

“No,” she agreed, and there was no absolution in her voice, no forgiveness.

“It doesn’t. But it explains more than I understood before.”

Her eyes moved over his face, studying him openly now. He wondered what version of him she saw at that moment—the Executioner, the heir, the broken man? All of them at once? All equally true, equally false.

“Earlier,” she started, changing the subject, “you said something about my mask bearing your mark. What did you mean?”

The question was a lifeline, a shift away from the truth of what he’d done, and he was grateful for it. He exhaled slowly, considering his answer.

“All Executioners have a mark,” he explained. “A symbol that identifies them, that becomes associated with their… work, in the Veyra ranks. Mine is a skull.”

“A tattoo?” she asked, her eyes scanning what she could see of his chest, noting the scars but no visible mark.

“Yes.” He hesitated, then made a decision.

If she was going to understand—truly understand the man they were up

against—she needed to see it.

All of it.

Slowly, he pulled his shirt fully from his body letting it fall to the floor as he turned away from her, presenting his back. The sound of her sharp intake of breath told him she saw it—the skull tattooed across his entire back, identical to the one on her mask. Black ink embedded in skin that was a roadmap of scars and burns and lash marks. Some surgical, most jagged and brutal. Evidence of years of “discipline” at his father’s hands.

“This is my mark,” he said quietly, still facing away from her. “My fucked-up legacy.”

Her fingers brushed his skin, so light he might have imagined it if not for the warmth that followed the path of her touch as she traced one of the scars that crossed the skull.

“And these?” she asked, her voice reverent. “Are they your legacy too?”

Greyson closed his eyes, fighting the unexpected surge of emotion her touch evoked. “No. They’re my education.”

She reached for a pack of gauze and tape without speaking, quickly cleaning the exit wound before packing it and sealing it off. Her fingers took one last dance across his flesh, feeling the ridges of his pain, before her hand stilled against his back, a point of warmth in the cold room. Then it withdrew, leaving him feeling strangely bereft.

“Greyson,” she said, and the sound of his name in her voice, without title or mockery or disdain, made something shift inside him. “Look at me.”

He turned, meeting her eyes. She stared at him for a long moment, emotions raging in her gaze as she lifted her hands then hesitated. It only took a breath for her to make whatever decision she was deciding on as her hands came up to cup

the side of his face.

His breath caught in his lungs.

He’d never been touched like this. The mask prevented it, even before he was required to wear one as a child, no hands had graced his cheeks.

Her thumbs swept over the surface in tandem, stilling on both sides of his nose. He didn’t breathe, didn’t blink for fear that she would pull away, that she would take this comfort away from him.

Shadera searched his face before her lips parted. “For this moment, I’m going to put aside my hate for you. I’m going to forget that you’re my enemy and speak to you survivor to survivor.”

Greyson swallowed then nodded, eyes never leaving hers.

Her hands flexed against his skin. “You deserved—deserve a better father.

Love is not supposed to be cruel and what he’s done to you… it’s not your fault.

You’re a better man than him, Greyson. Now is the time to be that man.” She paused as his pulse pounded in his ears, ringing as if he was hearing for the first time. “Death doesn’t have to be your legacy.”

They stayed there, suspended in silence. Greyson didn’t know how long it’d been when she removed her hands, when she stood in front of him and offered her hand.

“You need to sleep,” she said, her voice still gentle. “You’ve lost blood. You need rest.”

Greyson only nodded again. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t trust any of the words that were begging to be set free.

He took her hand, rising to his feet as he took in the ruin around them.

Tomorrow, he’d have to tell her the truth about the Vow, the core of the Heart.

But tonight, he needed sleep. He needed distance. He needed clarity.

Shadera strode away from him without a word toward her room, and as he watched her go, as those auburn curls swayed with every step she took, he realized the irony of it all.

The woman sent to kill him was the only woman who had ever made him feel safe.