Chapter 29
LEVI
We pulled up to Dominion Hall, and there were men waiting.
A lot of men.
Seven of them stood on the front steps and veranda like a firing squad, arms crossed, jaws set, eyes cold and assessing. They had the look—the one that said they'd seen combat, survived it, and were ready to go back in.
They'd been mobilized.
The look in their eyes said they were ready to take blood.
Behind them, Byron stood with his hands in his pockets, watching us pull up with an expression I couldn't read.
Jacob killed the engine, and we climbed out. Ethan hauled the duffel—Derek still inside—over his shoulder like it was luggage.
The man at the front stepped forward. Tall, broad-shouldered, massive, with the kind of presence that made you instinctively straighten your spine. His hair was dark, and his eyes swept over us with tactical precision.
"Levi," he said, extending a hand.
I shook it. His grip was firm, measured. "Yeah."
"Atlas Dane," he said. "We're your brothers. Charleston side."
Of course, they were.
The others stepped forward in turn.
"Silas." This one had sharp features, calculating eyes, and moved like a predator who'd learned patience.
"Marcus." He looked like a surfer model—blonde hair, easy grin—but his eyes were cold as ice.
"Ryker." Built like a tank, with scars on his knuckles and a face that said he didn't smile much.
"Elias." Lean, watchful, holding a laptop like it was an extension of his body.
"Noah." Quiet. Still. The kind of still that came right before an explosion.
"Charlie." The last one I recognized—the medic who'd met me when I first arrived. He nodded, and there was something softer in his expression. Like he remembered what it felt like to be the new guy walking into this.
The Charleston Danes.
My half-brothers.
I'd known they existed for mere hours, and now here they were, standing shoulder to shoulder with my Montana brothers like they'd been planning for war.
Maybe they had been.
Marcus nodded toward the duffel Ethan was holding. "Want me to make him comfortable?"
"Yeah," I said. "Make sure he doesn't go anywhere."
Marcus's grin sharpened. "My pleasure."
He took the bag from Ethan and disappeared into the house, whistling.
We walked inside, the rest of us trailing behind Dad as he led the way deeper into the mansion.
I'd thought I'd seen most of Dominion Hall by now. The parlor. The sunroom. The kitchen. The yacht.
I was wrong.
"What did you find out?" Dad asked, glancing back at me.
"It can wait," I said.
His jaw tightened. "Was it smart to bring the editor here?"
I stopped walking. The others kept moving for a second before realizing I wasn't with them. They turned, watching.
I looked at my father, heat rising in my chest. "Yeah," I said. "It was necessary. The prick put his hands on Amelia. And he knows more than he thinks. I'm going to squeeze every memory out of the guy."
Dad’s jaw worked. His eyes flicked to the Charleston Danes, then back to me.
For a second, I thought he might push back. Might tell me I'd made a tactical error, brought a liability into the house, compromised operational security.
He didn't.
"All right," he said quietly.
Atlas gave me a small nod. Approval, maybe. Or solidarity. Hard to tell with a man I'd known for less than five minutes.
We kept walking.
The room Dad led us to was unlike anything I'd seen in the house so far. It was huge—fitting for a mansion like this—but it looked like a military command center ripped straight out of the Pentagon.
A massive table dominated the center, large enough to seat twenty.
Screens lined the walls, some dark, some flickering with maps and data streams I didn't have time to process.
There were secure comms stations, filing cabinets that looked like they could survive a direct hit, and a surveillance setup that would make most government agencies jealous.
This was the war room.
I filed it away. Another piece of the puzzle. Another reminder that Dominion Hall wasn't just wealth and real estate. It was infrastructure. Operational capability. The kind of setup you built when you expected to fight wars that never made the news.
Everyone filed in, taking seats around the table. Dad sat at the head. The Charleston Danes filled in on one side, my Montana brothers on the other.
I stayed standing.
The air in the room felt charged. Expectant.
These men—my brothers, all of them now, whether I was ready for that or not—were waiting for intel. Waiting to know what we were up against. Waiting to see how we would take action, together.
I thought about the van. The zip ties. The woman's voice in the dark.
We're always watching.
"Tell them what the editor said," Ethan said, looking at me.
I nodded and started talking.
I told them everything. The staged accident. The abduction. The two men in the van I'd killed. The parking lot ambush. The underground room where they'd tied me to a chair.
And the woman.
Her voice—older, raspy, like she'd smoked her whole life. The way she'd spoken with absolute confidence, like she owned the world and was just letting the rest of us live in it.
The threat she'd made. Amelia. My brothers. All the women. Everyone I cared about, lined up like targets.
The ultimatum: go back to Dominion Hall and tell Byron that The Vanguard wanted a meeting. A truce.
Or watch everyone die.
Then I told them about Derek.
The offer The Vanguard had made to him—save his company, take down a crooked operation, ten years of runway. The appeal to his vanity, his fear, his desperation.
The way he'd cracked under pressure in the hotel room, spilling details he probably didn't even realize mattered.
I didn't sugarcoat it. Didn't leave out the part where I'd beaten Derek bloody, or the part where we'd stuffed him in a duffel bag like cargo. These weren't men who needed things sanitized.
When I finished, the room was silent.
Noah leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. "So, The Vanguard has a face now."
"A voice, at least," I said.
"And leverage," Atlas added, his gaze flicking to Byron. "They threatened everyone. All of us. All the women."
Dad nodded slowly. "That's their play. They don't just want compliance. They want control."
"Which means they're not going away," Ryker said. His voice was low, gravelly. "Not unless we make them."
Elias tapped something on his laptop. "I can start running searches. Older woman. Raspy voice. High level connections. Long shot, but … See what surfaces."
"Do it," Byron said.
I watched the Charleston Danes work, the way they moved through the problem with the same kind of operational rhythm my Montana brothers had. Different training, maybe. Different branches. But the same fundamental wiring.
We were all soldiers. And now we were all targets.
The weight of it pressed down on me—not just my own life on the line, but Amelia's. My brothers'. Women who were family now by virtue of loving the men in this room.
The Vanguard had drawn a circle around all of us and dared us to step outside it.
I wasn't going to let that stand.
The door opened. Amelia walked in. All eyes turned to her.
But the looks weren't angry. Weren't the sharp, guarded expressions of men whose briefing had just been interrupted by a stranger.
They were curious. Assessing, yes. But not hostile.
I filed that away. A mark of family. Or at least, a mark of men who trusted my judgment enough to let her walk into their war room without a challenge.
"I'm here to help," Amelia said.
I looked at her, torn between relief that she was here and frustration that she'd walked into this. "I don't know how you can help," I said. "Unless you know the identity of the mystery woman from The Vanguard."
"I don't," she admitted. "But I'm willing to give up my sources. If you think it'll help."
I looked at Dad.
He nodded. "It definitely couldn't hurt."
But there was something in his eyes. Something he was holding back.
A flicker of something I couldn't name. Dread, maybe. Or recognition waiting to happen.
"How do you think we should start?" I asked Amelia.
She stepped closer to the table, and I saw the shift in her—the way she moved into the room like she belonged there. Like she'd made a decision and wasn't second-guessing it.
"How about I tell you more about my sources," she said, "and we see what the group thinks we should do next. Pay them personal visits. Call them on the phone. Threaten them?"
A few eyebrows raised around the room.
Gideon smirked. Lucas let out a low whistle.
Amelia had changed. There was an edge to her now, a willingness to step into the dark.
It stirred something in me. Something dangerous and inviting.
"Three main sources," she said, pulling out her phone and setting it on the table. "A mid-level agent with the FBI. An analyst with the CIA. And a colonel at the Pentagon."
The room went quiet again.
Charlie exhaled slowly. "That's a hell of a roster."
"It's also a hell of a problem," Silas added. "Those aren't organizations we want sniffing around Dominion Hall."
"They already are," Amelia said. "That's why I'm here."
Caleb leaned forward. "Who do you trust most?"
Amelia didn't hesitate. "The FBI agent. He used to be a field guy, but he got shot in the line of duty. Paralyzed from the waist down. He's a good guy. Wants to do the right thing."
Murmurs rippled around the table. Respect, maybe. Or at least, understanding. Everyone in this room knew what it was like to take a bullet and keep going in whatever way you could.
"Who's the weakest?" Atlas asked.
Again, Amelia didn't hesitate. "The colonel at the Pentagon. He's a ladder climber. Ambitious. Ego the size of Texas. Thinks he's smarter than everyone in the room and doesn't mind telling you about it."
That got a few grim smiles.
Everyone in the room had dealt with officers like that. The kind who cared more about their next promotion than the mission. The kind who'd throw subordinates under the bus if it meant a shinier medal on their chest.
There was back and forth in the room—debate about which source to approach first. Whether to start with the most trustworthy or exploit the weakest link. Whether to go in person or start with a phone call.
The consensus formed quickly.
"We go after the weak link," Noah said.
"Make him think he's getting something out of it," Ryker added. "Stroke the ego. Get him talking."
Amelia nodded. "Exactly."
"Can you patch my phone into this room so everyone can hear?" she asked, looking around the room.
Elias was already moving, fingers flying across his keyboard. "No problem. Give me three minutes."
I watched him work. A few clicks that connected her phone to the room's sound system like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Two minutes and forty seconds later, he gave her the thumbs up.
Amelia picked up her phone, took a breath, and dialed.
The call connected on the third ring.
"Emerson," a voice said through the speakers. Smooth. Confident. Cocky.
The colonel.
I hated him already.
"Hi, Colonel," Amelia said, her voice warm, friendly, with just a hint of deference. "Do you have a minute?"
"For you? Always." His tone dripped with self-satisfaction, like he was doing her a favor just by answering. "What can I do for you?"
My hands curled into fists under the table. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the guy.
But Amelia had it handled.
"I'm working on the Dominion Hall story," she said. "And I think I'm close to something big. But I need more information. Corroboration before I can run it. You know how it is—can't publish without being absolutely sure."
"Smart," the colonel said, like he was grading a student. "Careful reporting. I respect that. What do you need?"
She was playing him perfectly. Stroking the ego. Making him feel important.
"I need to know more about your source," she said.
"The one who tipped you off about Dominion Hall in the first place.
If I can verify their credibility, their track record, I can move forward with confidence.
And if this story breaks the way I think it will, it's going to make waves.
Serious waves. The kind that get people noticed. "
There was a pause on the other end. I could almost hear the gears turning. The colonel calculating what he could get out of this.
"You're talking about career-making stuff," he said finally.
"I'm talking about a general's star," Amelia said.
The room was silent. Every man leaned forward, listening.
The colonel made a sound—half laugh, half exhale. Like he was pretending to think it over but had already decided.
"You drive a hard bargain, Emerson," he said.
"I'm just trying to get it right," she said sweetly. "And I know you want the same thing. Truth. Accountability. Justice."
I almost rolled my eyes. But the colonel ate it up.
He hummed. Hawed. Played like he was being put out, like this was a huge ask and he was doing her a monumental favor.
"All right," he said.
Another pause. Then:
"The only name I have is Victoria."
Around the table, men shifted. Exchanged glances. Elias typed the name into his laptop, already searching.
But my eyes were on Dad.
He'd gone absolutely still. Not the kind of still that came from tactical discipline. The kind that came from shock. His face had drained of color. His hands, flat on the table, trembled.
"Victoria," Amelia repeated, her voice steady even though I could see the slight tremor in her hand as she wrote it down. "Can you give me anything else? How to contact her? A last name?"
"Information goes one way," the colonel said. "She calls me. I don't call her. That's how she operates. Old school tradecraft. Very careful."
"Okay," Amelia said. "That's helpful. Really helpful. Thank you, Colonel. I owe you one."
"You know where to find me, Emerson," he said, his tone sliding into something too warm, too familiar. "Anytime you need help, you just call. I'm always happy to assist a talented journalist."
I wanted to punch him through the phone.
The call ended.
All eyes turned to Dad. He was staring at the table, his face pale, his hands flat against the wood like he needed the support to stay upright.
"Dad?" I said.
He didn't move.
"Byron Dane," Atlas said, his voice careful. Controlled.
The Charleston Danes were watching him with something close to alarm. They'd never seen him like this, I realized. Whatever this was—whoever this woman was—she was a ghost none of them had ever heard of.
Slowly, my father looked up.
There was sadness in his eyes. Deep, old sadness that looked like it had been sitting there for decades, waiting for this moment.
And something else. Resignation.
"I know who she is," he said quietly.
The room held its breath.
No one moved. No one spoke.
"And yes," Byron said, his voice cracking on the last word. "This has become very personal."
He paused, swallowed hard.
"Very."