Chapter 25
25
CLAIRE
T he tension in the city complex lobby was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. My pulse pounded in my ears as the kid at the desk—the kid who had been at The Palmetto Rose, watching Diego—stared at the flashing name on the phone’s screen like it might detonate in his hands.
E. Hart.
Marcus stood beside me, silent, but radiating lethal energy, his body coiled tight, ready to strike. His gaze flicked from the kid to the phone, calculating, already working three steps ahead.
“Answer it,” I said, my voice steady despite the fury clawing at my throat.
The kid swallowed hard, his fingers trembling as he lifted the receiver. “M-Mayor Hart?”
Whatever she said made his shoulders snap straight. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.” He darted a wide-eyed look at me, then at Marcus, before nodding sharply into the phone. “Right away. ”
He hung up too quickly. Then cleared his throat, shifting in his chair like he was about to pass out.
“The mayor will see you now.” His voice wobbled, but he gestured toward the hallway behind him, where frosted glass doors led to the offices of Charleston’s highest-ranking officials.
I didn’t wait. I stepped past the desk, through the doors, not bothering to check if Marcus was behind me.
I already knew he was.
Evelyn Hart was polished, poised, and a predator.
She stood behind an oversized desk, her office sleek and modern, filled with polished mahogany, gold accents, and a wall of windows overlooking downtown Charleston. Sunlight spilled over her shoulder, casting a halo around her blond bob, making her look every bit the picture-perfect politician.
She smiled when we entered, smooth and easy, the kind of smile made for cameras and campaign trails.
“Ms. Dixon,” she said, spreading her hands as if we were old friends. “Mr. Dane. What a surprise.”
Her voice was honeyed silk, warm and welcoming, but the steel underneath was unmistakable. A woman who had never been caught off guard a day in her life.
I didn’t play along.
“Cut the act, Mayor.” My heels clicked against the floor as I stepped forward. “You knew we were coming.”
Something flickered in her sharp blue eyes.
Her smile didn’t fade, but the warmth in it was already gone.
Marcus moved in beside me, his presence a solid wall of heat. “Let’s skip the bullshit,” he said, voice low, even. Dangerous. “We know about The Palmetto Rose. About the man watching Diego before he died. And we know you’re connected to Department 77. ”
Evelyn barely blinked. If anything, her smile grew.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said smoothly, taking her seat behind the desk. She laced her fingers together, tilting her head, studying me.
Then she sighed, almost like she pitied me.
“Ms. Dixon, I understand this must be difficult for you. Losing a friend, especially so suddenly …” She made a small, sympathetic sound. “Tragic.”
I clenched my fists. “He didn’t drown.”
She arched a perfectly groomed brow. “No?”
“No,” I snapped, stepping forward. “Someone murdered him.”
Hart didn’t react. Didn’t so much as flinch.
I felt Marcus shift beside me, but I was locked on her. On the careful way she held herself, controlled, like she was waiting.
And then—so soft I almost didn’t catch it—her lips parted, and she murmured: “You have no idea what you’ve stirred up.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
She wasn’t warning me. She was informing me. Like I’d already stepped into something I wasn’t crawling out of.
Marcus let out a slow exhale, the kind that sent a very clear message—he was five seconds away from losing his patience, and Hart wouldn’t like what happened when he did.
Her gaze flicked to him then.
And something shifted. A hint of recognition. A calculating gleam. She leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers.
“You look just like him,” she said softly.
I felt Marcus go still beside me, but Hart wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was studying him .
“You all do,” she mused, tilting her head. “Every one of you Dane boys carries his face. But you …” Her gaze sharpened, mouth curving in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You wear it the way he did.”
I swallowed hard, a slow chill creeping up my spine.
She wasn’t wrong.
I hadn’t seen a picture of Byron Dane until I met Marcus. Not in any of my research, not in any of the articles that whispered about Dominion Hall like it was some kind of myth. The Dane patriarch didn’t do press. He didn’t pose for cameras. He existed in shadows, in power plays written in blood and contracts.
But at Dominion Hall, I’d seen him. A framed photograph. A younger version of Marcus stood beside him, posture rigid, expression unreadable.
All seven Dane brothers carried their father’s presence—the sharp jaw, the unreadable eyes, the quiet, unshakable weight that made people tread carefully around them. But Marcus?
Marcus wasn’t just his father’s son. He was his father’s legacy.
The same quiet, controlled power. The same lethal, unwavering edge. His brothers had inherited pieces of their father. Marcus had inherited the whole damn war. And Evelyn Hart knew it.
The air in the room went razor-sharp.
Marcus didn’t move, but I felt the change in him, the sudden, almost imperceptible tightening of his muscles.
Hart tilted her head.
“Your father should have known better.”
The room tilted.
Marcus’s father.
Hart knew him .
Marcus’s jaw flexed, his shoulders going rigid. His voice, when he finally spoke, was deadly quiet.
“What did you just say?”
Hart’s lips quirked at the corner, a ghost of amusement. But she didn’t get the chance to answer. Because the door behind us opened—without a knock, without hesitation.
I turned just as two men in dark suits stepped inside.
Private security. Not police. Not city officials. Hart’s own men.
Bigger than me. Maybe even bigger than Marcus. Armed. And standing like they had orders.
Hart sighed, like she was bored. “I’d love to stay and chat,” she said, glancing at a gold watch on her wrist. “But I have a press conference in twenty minutes, and I don’t have time for … conspiracy theories.”
She nodded once. One of her men stepped forward.
“Ms. Dixon. Mr. Dane,” he said, voice clipped, professional. “This way.”
A dismissal. A threat wrapped in civility.
I should have fought it. Should have demanded answers, forced her hand, something.
But Marcus’s body was already tense beside me, his breathing controlled, his stance shifting into something predatory. And if I pushed this too far, right now, I wasn’t sure who would walk out of here alive. Because I had never seen Marcus Dane angry.
I’d seen him cold. Calculating. Dangerous in a way that didn’t require volume or threats, just the quiet certainty that if he wanted to break you, he already knew how. But this?
This was something else.
His body was taut with restrained force, his muscles locked so tight I could feel the tension radiating off him. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, but the room had shifted around him—like a fault line waiting to snap.
And if it did?
I didn’t know what would happen.
Would he lunge for Hart? Would he drag her across that sleek mahogany desk and make her regret whatever history she had with his father? Would her security react fast enough to stop him?
Would I?
I pictured it—chaos unraveling in seconds, Marcus slamming one of her men against the wall, the sick crack of bone giving way, the other reaching for a gun he wouldn’t have time to use. I imagined Hart sitting there, calm and composed, watching it all unfold with the detached amusement of a woman who had already planned for every possible outcome.
I couldn’t let it get that far.
We weren’t ready. Not yet.
So I did the only thing I could—I stepped closer to Marcus, close enough that my arm brushed his, that he could feel me there. A tether. A warning.
“Not here,” I murmured, so quiet only he could hear.
For a long, agonizing second, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then, finally, his exhale came—slow and measured, but no less lethal. A war delayed, not won.
I exhaled slowly, too, relieved.
Then I turned back to Hart. She was already looking at me, an almost lazy satisfaction in her gaze.
“This isn’t over,” I said quietly.
Her smile returned.
“No,” she agreed, tilting her head. “It’s not. ”
Then, just before I turned away, she added, almost like an afterthought?—
“Give my regards to Dominion Hall, Mr. Dane.”
Marcus went still. Like the final breath before an explosion.
Hart saw it, too.
And she liked it.
Her lips curved, the barest flicker of amusement in her gaze. She was testing him, pressing at the cracks, looking for the weakness that would make him snap.
“I always wondered how much Byron told his sons,” she mused, tilting her head. “How much he let you boys see before he was gone.”
Marcus didn’t blink. Didn’t move.
Hart leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on the desk. “You think you have power, don’t you? That Dominion Hall and your father’s name still mean something?” She gave a slow, deliberate shake of her head. “You don’t know half of what he was involved in.”
A muscle ticked in Marcus’s jaw.
“Careful,” he said, his voice low, quiet. Too quiet.
Hart’s smirk deepened.
“Or what?” she murmured. “You’ll lose that infamous Dane control? Make a mess right here, in my office, on government property?” She tsked, shaking her head. “Come now, Marcus. You were raised better than that.”
I felt Marcus shift beside me, a fraction of movement that sent every nerve in my body screaming.
He was incredibly close to losing it.
Hart must have seen it, too, because she went for the kill.
“Do you even know why your father died?” she asked, voice soft. Dangerous .
The room froze.
Hart smiled, slow and knowing.
“There are a lot of things you and your brothers don’t know.” She tilted her head. “A lot of truths buried with Byron Dane.”
Something in Marcus fractured.
I saw it in the tension coiling through his body, in the way his fingers twitched like he was one second away from reaching for her.
That was when I realized—this was the point. She wanted him to snap. She was pushing, testing, waiting to see if she could make Marcus Dane lose control in a way she could use against him. And he was right on the edge.
I moved fast.
Before he could react, before he could say something we couldn’t take back, I stepped even closer, my palm pressing lightly against his wrist.
It was instinct. A pull I couldn’t fight.
Not long ago, I would have let him burn. Would have welcomed it—his rage, his ruin—if only to watch him fall. I had hated him. The way he towered over me, pushing, threatening, making it clear that I didn’t belong in his world. That if I got too close, I’d get burned.
And I had.
But Marcus Dane wasn’t just fire. He was everything beneath it.
I had seen the tender side of him—the one no one else got to see. I had felt his hands on me, not just possessive, but reverent, as if he didn’t quite know how to hold something he didn’t want to break. I had learned the way he touched me in the dark, the way his body covered mine, claiming me, owning me, showing me in ways he could never say that I was his.
And worse—I had given myself to him .
Not just my body.
But something deeper.
And that was why I couldn’t let him lose himself now.
Not for her. Not for Evelyn Hart and whatever the hell she thought she knew about his father.
So I curled my fingers around his wrist, my touch gentle but firm, my pulse hammering against my ribs as I whispered, “Marcus.”
Not now. Not yet.
For a long second, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then, after an agonizing pause, he inhaled slow and deep, his knuckles cracking as he flexed his fingers open. Reining himself back in.
Hart let out a soft laugh. “Good boy.”
I clenched my teeth.
Marcus? He just stared at her.
“You’re going to regret this,” I told her instead, my voice steady.
Hart just smiled.
“I doubt that.”
And then, with a flick of her finger, she gestured to the two men in dark suits.
“Escort them out.”
The security stepped forward.
Dismissal.
Marcus didn’t look at them. Didn’t even glance their way.
He was still staring at Hart.