Chapter 27 Vince
Vince
I slumped into the backseat. Driver in the front, quiet. Partition up. Exactly how I liked it when my head was loud. I lit a cigarette, took the first drag deep, held it until my lungs burned more than my thoughts.
We pulled away from Rome’s building.
I’d left him on his couch, bottle in his fist. He’d been halfway to the door to the finish what he started at the hotel.
You go to the airport and finish it, Nik’s the one up all night with three dynasties and a sovereign. You get the satisfaction, he gets the fallout.
That stopped him. Every time. Rome would rather rip his own grafted skin open than disappoint Nikolai.
I flicked ash into the crystal tray built into the armrest and hit Nik’s name.
One ring.
“Tell me they’re alive.”
His voice tired. Paper in the background. War room.
“Unfortunately for them. They’re breathing. Won’t be walking properly for a while, but they’ll live long enough to sign whatever apology you put in front of them.”
A rustle. Probably him dragging a hand down his face while reading two reports at once.
“Rome?”
“On his couch. Vodka instead of murder. You’re welcome.” The corner of my mouth kicked up. “He was halfway to the airport. I just reminded him you’d be the one having a hard night if he turned two heirs into meat in a sovereign hangar.”
“You played the ‘you’ll hurt me’ card.”
“He folded fast.”
“Thank you.”
My thumb rolled the Crow ring, feeling the familiar weight of it. Same metal Nik wore, same crest.
Dynasties liked to pretend they were modern. The Codex told the truth.
No biotech before heirs.
The Crow Codex demanded six.
Not “aim for six.”
Six.
In our parents case. Two surrogates at a time.
Two pregnancies stacked, then another set when the first ones took.
Same egg and sperm, different women carrying them.
Embryos transferred in batches, no editing, no pretty designer tweaks—just real-world IVF cycles and hormone charts and our mother sitting in consult rooms.
Nik and I landed in the middle run of that experiment. Six months apart because the doctor got creative with transfer dates and our mother didn’t like all her babies lining up in the same year on paper.
We never had a normal brotherhood.
“He took it personal. It wasn’t about club code. He went at those heirs like they’d laid hands on his girl.” I said, moving in the seat. Suddenly the day got heavy. A moment passed. I was ready to repeat myself when he spoke.
“They did. Touch his girl.”
“You knew.”
Paper slid against paper. “I wondered. The feeds from that club haven’t exactly been subtle. Rome personally escorting her around like a fucking guard dog? I figured it was more than good customer service.”
“Charlotte DuPont,” I muttered.
Another sovereign princess. Of course. Our brothers only ever fell for women whose names came with footnotes.
“She was waiting in that room for him,” I added. “He was late. They weren’t meant to be there at all. He made that very clear.”
“He’ll make it clearer if they come back,” Nik murmured.
I flicked ash, watched the ember flare. “Not if you keep him off flights. He said they had no right to be in that room, you know. Not ‘no right to touch clients.’ Not ‘no right to be in my club.’ That room.”
“Claim,” Nik breathed.
“Yeah.”
He shuffled something. Probably Rome’s file onto the stack labelled immediate problem.
“Charlotte?” he asked.
“Safe. She’s on one of our safe floors now. Refused a hospital. Didn’t want to explain why a Crow doctor was stitching her up.”
“Stubborn,” he said.
“Dynasty.”
Same thing.
I dragged on the cigarette, let the smoke sit in my chest.
“He’s not going to let it go. This isn’t a one-night temper.”
“No,” Nik agreed. “So we don’t put him anywhere near cameras or sovereign property for a few days.”
I tapped ash, watched the city climb higher as we left the lower districts. “Which brings us to tunnels. Friday.”
Guns. Product. One dynasty observer and two syndicates who thought Villain had weak spots.
Rome was supposed to run the line. I was supposed to stand at his shoulder and tilt the room with a look.
“I cleared the weekend,” the words came out on a sigh. “I was going to take Madeline off-grid, cliffside property. No calls. Just the house and the sea.”
“And now you’re wondering if you’ll be babysitting Rome in concrete instead,” Nik’s voice lost some of the war-room edge. More brother, less general.
I rolled the ring Madeline had given me with my thumb. Slimmer, warmer. Not dynasty metal. Her taste. Which mattered more.
“I can’t drag her out there and then leave her alone while I go stand in tunnels hoping our brother doesn’t cave someone’s head in on live feed,” jaw tightened. “Not when Atticus fucking DuPont is circling Harlan and Villain like a well-bred shark.”
“Atticus,” Nik repeated. “So that’s started.”
“In chambers every second day,” I ground the stub out, already reaching for another. “Thorne bringing in DuPont to ‘advise’ on water rights. My girl stuck in the middle smiling politely.”
“How close?”
I clicked lighter open. Close. Open. Closed.
“Too close. He’s always there. Dinners. Briefings. That ‘I understand your burden’ look they all practice in the mirror. She says he’s polite. Smart. Easy to talk to.”
Things I was when I remembered and had enough sleep.
“He can offer her things I can’t,” the thought had been pacing my skull all week; it finally slipped loose. “Clean merger. House Thorne plus House DuPont. A life with the right last name on the invitations.”
Quiet on the other end. Listening, not judging.
“And you’re supposed to stand there and be gracious about that? Shake his hand. Play nice?”
The ring cut into my skin as I twisted it. “I don’t want to play anything where he’s concerned. I don’t want him breathing near her.“
“Can you let her go if they arrange it?”
That was Nik. Straight to the point. Even if that point was as sharp as a knife.
“No.”
“Define no.”
“I mean I don’t know how to stand in a room and watch her walk toward someone else,” smoke burned the back of my throat. “I don’t know how to stay neutral while she calls another man safe.”
“You never wanted a relationship,” Nik sighed,
We both knew why. Same house. Same childhood. Surrogates carrying us in pairs because Damius liked his lineage laid out like a fucking game board. Nik and I split by six months on a clinic calendar.
By the time we were old enough to understand what any of that meant, love already looked like an audit.
“And now?” Nik’s question dragged me back into the car.
“Now I’m fucked,”
The driver took a corner smooth enough I barely felt it.
“She trusts me,” my fingers found Madeline’s ring again, rolling it. “She gave me that word. Sub. Gave me the right to use my worst instincts on purpose. And it feels… good.”
That was the part that terrified me.
“Crow-level good,” Nik murmured.
“Yeah.”
The obsession had been there my whole life. I used it on ports. On brothers. Sisters. On making sure Kingston and the twins and Rome didn’t end up dead in some alley.
Now it had a person.
“I can’t picture anyone else getting Daddy out of her mouth,” the confession scraped on the way out. “I can’t stand the thought of some polished heir hearing it. That word is mine.”
Nik was silent. No judgement. Which meant he was already planning the fallout.
“I want her collared,” I didn’t bother dressing it up. Not with him. “Tattooed. Name in the book beside mine. Crest burned into her thigh so every man in those chambers knows she’s not inventory.”
“You’ve had her what, months?”
“Feels like years.”
“That’s how we’re built. You know that. We don’t attach often, but when we do…”
“It’s a problem,” I finished.
“It’s a fact,” he corrected. “Possession. Obsession. Territorial. The codex calls it loyalty and legacy. We know better. The trick is putting a fence around it so it protects instead of cages.”
My head tipped back against the leather. The ceiling was dark.
“I don’t want to trap her.”
“I know.”
“I also don’t want to stand there while she walks toward a man who thinks submission is leverage and Daddy is a punchline.”
“Then don’t. Give her the weekend you promised before you start planning worst-case scenarios with Atticus fucking DuPont.”
The cliffs-edge house flashed in my mind. Black stone. Glass. Madeline in one of my shirts. No veil drones trying to get a picture of us.
I rolled the cigarette between my fingers, not lighting this one yet. “Every time I’ve taken time for myself, something’s gone to shit.”
He didn’t argue. It was the truth. Every hour of every day. Someone needed me. The degrees varied, but the verdict was always the same.
“Friday,” he circled back. “We handle the tunnels like this. Rome reports to me tomorrow at noon. Sober. If he’s still wired like you described, I move him to second. Put him where he can hit someone if he needs to without being the first face on camera.”
“Who runs front then.”
“Me, if I have to. Maybe Luca if I can drag him out of his screens long enough. You go down. You walk the line. Every man in that concrete box sees you. Hears you. Knows we’re in a generous mood but not that generous.”
“So the usual.”
“When the first hour’s clean and I’m satisfied nobody’s going to say DuPont or Charlotte in the wrong tone, you leave. Car already pointed at the cliffs. You don’t sit there waiting for trouble just because you’re used to being its favourite.”
Smoke finally hit my lungs. “And if something blows.”
“I call You turn around. Until then, you give her what you promised.”
“She’s not the only one I promised things to,” I muttered.
“I’m a big boy. I can handle a deal in a tunnel without you breathing smoke down my neck.”
“You like me breathing smoke down your neck.”
“Not when Rome’s in the same room trying to impress me by breaking skulls.”
Nik paused. “How is he really?”
“Rome?”
“Yeah.”