Chapter 17
MICAH
Ididn't go to Dominion Hall.
Not right away.
After leaving Joy's apartment that morning, I'd headed back to the Palmetto Rose with every intention of showering, changing, and responding to Silas's message like a professional.
Instead, I found myself sitting in a diner three blocks from McKinley Flowers, nursing a cup of coffee that had gone cold.
The place was nothing special. Cracked vinyl booths. Laminate tables. The kind of greasy spoon that survived on locals who didn't care about ambiance, only whether the eggs were hot and the coffee was strong.
I'd ordered coffee. Then another. Then switched to water when the waitress gave me a look that said buy something or leave.
I wasn't hungry.
I was waiting.
For what, I couldn't say.
Just ... waiting.
My phone sat on the table in front of me, screen dark. Silas's message was still there, unanswered. Someone I'd like you to meet.
I'd deal with it later.
Right now, my attention was somewhere else entirely.
On a flower shop I couldn't see from here but could feel in my gut like a compass pointing north.
It didn't make sense.
I'd spent years honing my instincts—learning to read a room, track a target, sense danger before it arrived. Those instincts had kept me alive in places where hesitation meant death.
And right now, every one of those instincts was screaming at me to stay close to Joy.
Not because I'd seen a threat.
Not because logic dictated it.
Just because.
The same way you knew to go left instead of right in the middle of an op. The same way you felt a sniper's scope on you before you heard the shot. The same way your body moved before your brain caught up, pure survival reflex taking over.
That's what this was.
I told myself I was being paranoid. Overprotective. That Joy was fine, that Charleston was safe, that nothing about this situation warranted sitting in a shitty diner drinking bad coffee just to be within sprinting distance of her.
But I stayed anyway.
And when my phone buzzed with her message—A woman came in asking questions. About you.—I was out of the booth before I'd even finished reading it.
Now, standing outside Dominion Hall's gates, the fury that had carried me here was sharpening into something colder.
More focused.
Because the timing was too perfect.
I show up in Charleston. Get recruited by Dominion Hall. Meet Joy. Sleep with her.
And suddenly someone's asking questions?
No.
This wasn't coincidence.
This was orchestrated.
And the only people with the resources, the reach, and the audacity to pull something like this were the same ones who'd flown me here on a private jet and handed me a folder with Benson's family in it.
Dominion Hall.
Everything else fell away.
Even Joy.
Not because she didn't matter—she mattered.
But because if I didn't deal with this now, if I didn't find out who the fuck had sent someone to intimidate her, then mattering wouldn't be enough.
The gates opened without me touching anything.
The cab drove through, my jaw tight, hands white-knuckled on my lap.
When we pulled up to the front entrance, Silas wasn't waiting.
That was new.
The butler opened the door before I could knock, his expression as neutral as ever. "Mr. Dane. Please, come in."
I stepped inside, every nerve on high alert. "Where's Silas?"
"He'll be with you shortly. If you'll wait in the parlor—"
"Fine."
He led me down a hallway I recognized, into a room I didn't. Smaller than the War Room. More comfortable. Leather chairs. Bookshelves. A fireplace that looked like it actually got used.
"Can I get you anything?" the butler asked.
"No."
He nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
I paced.
Ten minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
By the time the door finally opened, I was out of my chair in a flash.
Silas stepped in, calm as ever, hands in his pockets like he had all the time in the world.
"Making me cool my heels?" I snapped.
His eyebrows lifted slightly. "Apologies. I was detained."
"Detained," I repeated, voice hard. "That's great. Really fucking great. While you were detained, someone walked into Joy's shop and started asking questions about me."
Silas's expression didn't change. "Who's Joy?"
The question hit like a slap.
"Who's—" I stopped, forcing myself to breathe. "The one your people hired for flowers. That Joy."
Recognition flickered across his face. Then something else.
His eyebrow went up. "You're seeing her."
"That's none of your fucking business," I said, voice low and dangerous. "Not yours. Not any of your high-priced goons."
Silas held up a hand, his tone carefully neutral. "Micah—"
"Don't," I cut him off. "Don't stand there and pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Someone showed up at her shop. Knew my name. Knew about us. And the timing? The timing is too fucking perfect not to be you."
"It wasn't us," Silas said evenly.
"Bullshit."
"Micah—"
"You brought me here," I said, stepping closer, fury boiling over. "You dangled Benson's family in front of me like bait. You made me think this was about something clean, something good. And now someone's threatening her?"
"No one from Dominion Hall would—"
"Then who?" I demanded. "Who the fuck else even knows I'm here?"
Silas opened his mouth to respond.
And then the door clicked open behind me.
I turned, ready to unleash on whoever had the audacity to interrupt.
The words died in my throat.
At first, I thought it was a ghost.
A trick.
Some kind of psychological warfare designed to break me.
Because the man standing in the doorway was dead.
Or gone.
Or whatever the hell had happened to him fifteen years ago when he walked out of our lives and never came back.
Byron Dane.
My father.
I stepped back, my brain short-circuiting, trying to process what my eyes were seeing.
He looked older. Grayer. Harder around the edges in a way that time and guilt both carved into a man.
But it was him.
"Hello, son," he said.
The voice.
Jesus Christ, the voice.
I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but stand there like a fucking idiot while my world tilted sideways and everything I thought I knew shattered.
When I finally found words, they came out sharp and accusatory.
I pointed at Silas. "You're a rat. A fucking liar."
"Micah—" Silas started.
"It's really me," my father said, stepping closer.
I flinched back. "Don't."
He stopped, hands raised slightly, palms out. Non-threatening. Like I was a hostile he was trying to de-escalate.
Maybe I was.
"I know this is a shock," he said quietly.
A shock.
A shock.
That word didn't even come close.
Shock was finding out your target had backup. Shock was a mission going sideways.
This?
This was a detonation.
Because I'd spent fifteen years believing he was gone. Dead, maybe. Or worse—alive somewhere, living a life that didn't include us. Living a life where seven sons and a wife who loved him weren't enough to make him stay.
I'd buried him.
Not literally. But in every way that mattered.
I'd grieved. I'd raged. I'd gone numb.
And then I'd moved on.
Or I thought I had.
But standing here now, looking at him—alive, breathing, here—I realized I hadn't moved on at all.
I'd just locked it down. Shoved it into a box and buried it so deep I'd convinced myself it didn't exist anymore.
And now the box was open.
And I couldn't breathe.
My chest tightened. My vision blurred at the edges. My hands started to shake.
I'd never had a panic attack before.
Well.
Maybe I had.
When I was a kid. When he first disappeared. When I'd cried myself to sleep every night for a year, clinging to my mother like she was the only thing keeping me tethered to the world.
When I'd been terrified to go to school because if I left, she might disappear, too.
That small child was still inside me.
Buried. Hidden. Locked away behind years of training and violence and cold, hard control.
But he was there.
And he was screaming.
"Micah," my father said gently, taking another step forward. "I know you have questions—"
"Don't," I choked out.
"Let me explain—"
"No."
My voice cracked on the word, and I hated myself for it.
Hated the weakness. The vulnerability. The fact that after everything I'd done, everything I'd survived, this was what broke me.
Not bullets. Not blood. Not death.
Him.
"I can't—" I shook my head, backing toward the door. "I can't do this."
"Son—"
"Don't call me that."
The words came out raw. Vicious.
And I saw it land. Saw the flinch in his eyes, the tightening of his jaw.
Good.
Let him hurt.
Let him feel a fraction of what we'd felt when he left.
But even as I thought it, something else rose up—something I didn't want to name.
Because it wasn't just anger.
It was grief.
Old, unprocessed grief that I'd never let myself feel because feeling it meant admitting he mattered. Admitting that losing him had broken something in me I'd never figured out how to fix.
And I couldn't handle that.
Not here. Not now. Not in front of him.
So, I did what I'd done when my mother died.
When my world caved in for what I thought was the last time.
When I shut off everything and everyone because it was the only way to survive.
I ran.
Out of the room. Down the hallway. Past the butler, who called after me but didn't try to stop me.
Out the front door. Across the lawn. Through the gates that opened too slowly, forcing me to squeeze through the gap before they'd fully parted.
I didn't stop until I hit the road.
And even then, I kept moving.
Because if I stopped, I'd have to think.
And if I thought, I'd have to feel.
And feeling was the one thing I couldn't afford.
Not when everything I'd built—every wall, every defense, every carefully constructed piece of armor—was crumbling around me.
So, I ran.
And if it was up to me, I'd run forever.
And never come back.