Chapter 54 Vince
Vince
The feed was muted, but I could hear her anyway.
My baby, half-naked under clinic lights, back bare, hair pinned up out of the way. Pale. Too thin.
I’d watched it live, paced the length of the penthouse with my phone in my hand like I could hold her steady across a city. Now the replay ran on the wall screen.
I’d controlled everything but the part that mattered.
Artist vetted twice. Ink batch-logged and sealed. Needles counted in and out. Medical staff on standby who owed me enough favours to keep their mouths shut forever. Private corridor, private room, private security. Temperature regulated so she didn’t get cool.
Every variable locked.
Except her fear.
I tapped the timeline back three seconds and hit play again.
The needle touched her skin. Her shoulders jumped. She swallowed it down immediately, jaw tightening, eyes fixed on a point on the wall.
She looked embarrassed. Like reacting hurt was an inconvenience.
My hand tightened around the remote.
She didn’t cry. Didn’t ask them to stop. Of course she didn’t. Dynasty girls weren’t raised to ask. They were raised to endure on schedule.
My perfect sub. Sitting there alone in a room full of strangers.
I should’ve been there.
Kneeling beside the chair, hand on her thigh, mouth at her ear. Breathe, angel. Daddy’s here. In for four, out for six. You’re safe. You’re not alone. Look at me, not the needle. Good girl.
Instead, I’d watched her walk into that corridor under a handler’s eye, shoulders set like she was going to the gallows.
Thinking I hated her.
That part lodged like shrapnel.
The Codex chamber had done its work too well. I’d let Crow dialect sit on my tongue like a weapon. Raised my voice. Slammed my palm. Barked orders at her like she was a junior lieutenant instead of the woman who used to fall asleep on my chest with my chain wrapped through her fingers.
She walked into this appointment believing she was being branded for a man who couldn’t be bothered to hold her hand.
The artist wiped a clean arc of ink and blood away on the screen. She focused on the opposite wall so hard it felt like a fight.
“Baby…” It slipped out, useless in an empty room. “I’m sorry, angel.”
My chest felt too tight. I braced a hand on the edge of the console.
“You shouldn’t be doing this alone. Daddy should be right there. God, look at you. Look at what you’re doing for me.”
Pride and guilt twisted together until I couldn’t tell which one hurt more.
The camera angle shifted slightly, giving a clearer view of her back as the crest took shape.
I hated that it had to be carved into her skin.
I loved that it meant something no one could ignore.
The only thing that had kept me upright through the last twenty-four hours was that hard, cold truth: once this was done, she wasn’t just a Thorne heiress anyway. She was under our crest.
Not in name, yet.
But enough.
A marked Crow pet—Codex language so ugly it made outsiders flinch, but in our world it was a shield. A vow-adjacent boundary. Mine written in a dialect that crows actually respected.
Damius could make examples of unmarked women. He couldn’t touch a woman under Crow ink without paying for it in blood. And now she was considered my pet. Mine. Damius couldn’t assign her to one of my cousins neither.
The artist said something. I didn’t need to hear it. I knew the script. You’re doing well. Almost there. Breathe. The script I had given him.
I wanted to punch through the screen and take the gun out of his hand like he was a threat instead of a tool I’d personally chosen for her.
My shoulders burned with restless energy. I put the remote down before I snapped it.
Tomorrow everything changed.
I’d go to her.
I saw it in my head so clearly it hurt.
Me, at the edge of her bed. Hands up, palms open, like I was walking into enemy territory instead of toward my own wife.
Baby, look at me.
She’d try not to. I’d deserve that. I’d hold the line anyway.
I’d tell her everything I’d refused to say in that chamber.
That I’d watched every second of the tattoo because I couldn’t stand not knowing how she was breathing.
That I’d picked the artist for the way his hands didn’t shake.
That I’d fought for a private corridor so no one saw her scared, because the world treated Crow fear like a blood sport.
I’d tell her the part I’d been swallowing for months.
That I loved her.
That I wasn’t marrying her for water rights or some old dynasty debt.
I’d say it in Crow first—tal ven arik—because she deserved the word in my mother tongue. Then I’d say it in plain English, over and over, until her heart believed me more than the memory of my hand hitting that table.
Daddy’s so sorry. Daddy loves you. Daddy’s going to spend the rest of my life proving those are the same sentence, not opposites.
My girl sat there with a Crow across her back and her teeth sunk in her own tongue so she didn’t make a sound. Pride punched through me so hard it blurred my eyes.
“Good girl. God, baby. I’m so fucking proud of you.”
I was the villain in her story. Fair enough. I’d earned the title. Tomorrow. I’d earn her forgiveness.