Chapter 12 Madeline
Madeline
I was halfway through a glass of something sparkling and overpriced when Isla tilted her phone toward me.
“Don’t choke. Guess who’s trending again.” She said, grinning as she held the phone to me.
I didn’t even glance.
“Please not another Thorne heir sex leak,” I muttered, turning the page of the portfolio I’d brought. “I’m trying to keep food down.”
Isla gave a low whistle. “Not Thorne. Crow.”
My pulse actually jumped. I looked and saw Vince was standing in a nightclub hallway, blood on his knuckles, jaw clenched, a metal bat resting across his shoulder like it was normal to walk into a club with one.
“VINCENT CROW GOES FERAL — AGAIN”
The clip started playing automatically.
“Oh my God,” someone gasped, clearly entertained. “He’s actually smiling.”
They passed the phone around. Isla leaned toward me. “You’ve met him, haven’t you? Your father negotiated that weapons clause with the Crows.”
It took me a moment. “Once. Maybe twice.”
“Honestly, he’s gorgeous,” another said. “But I’d never want to be alone with him.”
The video looped again, a different angle this time. Him shouting something I couldn’t hear, but the phrase printed across the bottom of the feed.
Celine laughed nervously. “And they call themselves civilized.”
“They call themselves dynasties,” Isla corrected.
I sat perfectly still, gripping my glass tighter. He looked lethal. Nothing like the man who had smiled, soft and wrecked, when I came against his fingers.
Those same hands had just done this.
“He’s what, thirty?” Isla was saying. “Imagine dating him. You’d have to sign a waiver.”
Celine scoffed. “Imagine surviving it.”
“Imagine the sex, look at those muscles that man could hold you in any position and he clearly has the fitness to make it last.”
Laughter again. The kind of laughter people make when violence is far away and fascinating. I stared at the still frame that froze on his face, eyes black.
“Maddy?” Isla nudged me. “You’re quiet.”
“I was just thinking,” I tapped my nail on the glass. “That it’s… a lot of blood.”
Celine shrugged. “That’s Crows for you. They don’t do moderation.”
Another laugh. I pushed my chair back before anyone could notice my face.
“Excuse me. Call,” I lied.
No one stopped me. They were too busy talking about Vince.
I crossed the terrace. Inside, the hallway was quieter, lined with mirrors and passed a woman flirting with tennis instructors. I slipped into an empty powder room and locked the door.
For a moment, I just stood there, staring at my reflection.
Then I pulled out my own phone. The feed was already waiting on my home screen. I pressed play again. He looked monstrous and heartbreakingly beautiful all at once. I sank down onto the bench.
The man who had told me to sleep, and whispered you’re safe, now looked like the reason no one in this city ever really was.
I turned the phone face-down on the seat beside me.
All I could think, was how a small, shameful part of me still felt safer in his arms than anywhere else in the world.
The day disappeared and I tried not to think of the footage again. Even though everyone was talking about it. Even my driver. And the staff at the family estate. A part of me wished he hadn’t made it so public at least then I could live in denial.
Now, I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the Veil feed again, even though I told myself not to. The clip started instantly, glowing on the screen, Vince. The audio caught the ragged sound of someone begging before he swung the bat.
Crow footage hits 48M views.
Public split: Dynasty protection or unchecked violence?
It played immediately. That same brutal, unshaken calm as Vince stood over bodies. I read the comments.
“He’s a fucking god.”
“Dynasty heirs shouldn’t have to fight like that. Where were the Crow overseers?”
“My dynasty would’ve handled it with a conversation.”
“Syndicate wolves with crowns.”
I turned the volume down, but the clip kept running.
That was the same man who had carried me to bed, kissed the inside of my wrist. And now he was on every screen in the city, drenched in blood, making good on promises that only monsters kept.
The screen was still frozen on Vincent when my father stood just inside the doorway, one hand in his pocket, the other swirling amber liquor in a glass he hadn’t finished downstairs.
My father walked toward me slowly and pointed with two fingers to the screen.
“That,” he said, “looks like Tobias.”
I frowned faintly. “Who?”
“That monster’s father.” He took a sip of scotch and waved his hand dismissively.
“History. But we remember everyone who ran this region when it mattered.” He finally turned toward me.
“Tobias Crow bled the streets red after the South collapsed. Syndicate war, territorial collapse, three factions dying for control. We were weeks from blacklisting them as a dynasty entirely.”
I frowned, never once had I heard my father mention the Crows. In fact it was rare to see an older Crow.
He paused. “And then, one by one, they died. Tobias. His six brothers. His uncles. Damius had no Crows left in this region. For a moment, the problem was over.”
“You celebrated?” I asked quietly.
He shrugged. “Publicly, no. Privately? Absolutely. We thought our quadrant had survived. That the dynasty board would leave the crows to rot in the outer territories.”
“And then?”
“And then less than a month later, I was sitting across a negotiation table from Tobias’s eldest son, Nikolai. And that one—” he nodded to the image of Vincent frozen on screen, “was already on the streets. Dangerous and untouchable.”
I swallowed and pretended not to be bothered when he picked up my phone.
“Every region has Crows,” he said, holding it up. “We just hoped ours had ended when two generations died. But Damius bred more. Point and case—this.”
The screen replayed for a moment. Vince swinging the bat. The sound of bone and blood, crowd gasps, that hollow Crow voice over the footage:
“Fuck the public. You think I care what the city records? All they see is a Crow in his city doing whatever the fuck he wants.”
The video froze again, the dynasty caption still scrolling underneath. I looked down.
“It won’t be long now,” my father watched the footage again. “They’ll start stealing daughters to keep the bloodlines going.”
I looked at him, waiting to see his grin or a laugh. I thought he was joking it was clear by his expression, he wasn’t.
“Dynasties don’t merge with them willingly,” he added. “No one wants to trade blood with a family built on enforcement. They don’t marry. They blackmail. And if they don’t take brides, their blood will vanish.”
He set my phone on the desk and looked at me hard.
“And that terrifies us.”
“You think they’d actually—”
“Yes,” he finished his drink. “I think Damius will demand it. And when he does, it won’t be quiet. You’ll see entire quadrants swallowed. Girls with dynasty titles, married off like bargaining chips to keep peace between war councils.”
He was serious right now and that shocked me.
“Because that’s what the Crows do best. They don’t merge, they absorb. And that’s what terrifies every dynasty father across the map.”
It wasn’t what he said next, it was what he didn’t. That was what made my whole stomach clench. “But not you.” I asked.
“You’re too smart for that. I didn’t raise a girl that would fall into orbit with something like that. You see it for what it is. And I stay far away from them so they have no leverage.”
The shame hit instantly. Because I had fallen for it. I had let Vincent Crow lift me in his arms, kiss me slow. And that made it worse.
“I know your friends fantasize,” my father went on. “Crows are alluring in theory. All that power, danger. But they ruin what they touch.”
He gestured his glass at my phone.
“Three heirs with unmarked blood on the ground, syndicate enforcers executed like animals, and a Crow smiling through it all. This is why their blood should have been extinguished centuries ago.”
Apart of me wanted to stop him. Tell him there was another side to Vince. But I knew when not to share my opinion and this was one of those moments.
“They call themselves a dynasty,” he went on, “but they’re a collection of violent thugs wearing a crest.”
He set his glass on my desk. And smiles at me.
“Your mother’s in one of her moods. One of her friends just announced their daughter’s marriage, apparently the match was perfect. So, for everyone’s sake, stay out of her way tonight. The last thing she needs is to be reminded that I haven’t secured a merger for our daughter.”
The words weren’t cruel. They were factual. In our world, that made them worse.
He finished his drink and looked at me once more, eyes landing on the phone beside me. “Turn that off,” he pointed at my phone. “You don’t need to see what barbarism looks like. You already live in the opposite of it.”
Then he left. The door shut with the same quiet precision he expected from everything else in this house.
I picked the phone back up and pressed play again. The feed resumed mid-sentence. Vince stood in the alley, blood spattered across his throat, eyes steady. He looked like something built for ruin.