Tristan
A couple of days later, I’m seated behind my father’s old desk at the helm of Thorne Enterprises.
The CEO’s office has become a familiar space, a constant reminder of the legacy I’ve inherited and the responsibilities that come with it. Today, it feels different. The air is colder, filled with tension. Today, it’s a battleground.
My brothers are all here, gathered in my office.
They’ve all come to have my back, a silent show of support that means a hell of a lot to me.
Dominic stands by the window, his broad shoulders tense.
Gabriel and Reid are near the door, their expressions unreadable but their presence a solid comfort.
Beckett is leaning against my desk, arms crossed, a look of determination in his eyes.
We’re all here for one reason. Spencer.
When the man in question walks in, he’s got that easy grin on his face—the one I’ve watched open doors for him his whole career, the one I used to think was charming and now understand is just a mask he’s gotten very good at wearing.
He takes in the room and his grin slips, just barely, before he drags it back.
“Hey.” He frowns at my brothers, his head cocked as he glances back at me. “What’s with the audience?”
I stare at him from behind my desk, my jaw tight. Then I gesture to the chair. “Sit down.”
He sits, and despite his outward calm, I’m starting to detect some definite signs of nervousness in his posture. His eyes do another circuit of the room before coming back to me. “So what are we looking at? I’ve got my project manager on call if we need to get into the weeds on timeline—”
“We won’t be using Summit on this project. We’re terminating the contract.”
The grin he was still wearing drops. “What? Why the hell not? We haven’t even broken ground yet.”
I stand up and come around the desk toward him, and he pushes back slightly in his chair before he can stop himself. I stop a few feet away and look down at him, and whatever he sees on my face makes him swallow.
“Because you’re a piece of shit in a suit who forces himself on women,” I tell him. “And I don’t do business with disgusting fucking monsters like you.”
The color drains out of his face. For a split second, I see it: the flash of fear from a man who’s probably spent years telling himself this conversation was never coming.
And then, because Spencer has never once in his life been held accountable for anything, he pulls himself back together. His chin comes up and his eyes go hard.
“I don’t know what Chloe told you,” he says slowly, “but she’s lying. She’s the type to try to sleep her way up and then get upset when it doesn’t work, so she’s probably trying to—”
“Finish that sentence.” My voice drops to a register I barely recognize. “Go ahead and finish it. Say another fucking word about my wife, and you’ll leave this room on a stretcher.”
Spencer closes his mouth. He looks at me for a long moment, his eyes flashing like he’s considering tempting fate by saying something really fucking stupid. But then he takes in my brothers again and blanches slightly at the reminder that he’s outnumbered five to one.
“Fine,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “Pull the contract. I’ll sue you for breach.”
I smile coldly. “No you won’t. Because if you do, I’ll have every paper and outlet I own run a front page story on the fact that you’ve been embezzling from your own company for the past six years.”
Spencer goes still. The blood drains from his face so fast it’s almost like a damn magic trick, and his eyes dart to Dominic at the window, searching for any crack or hesitation.
Dominic gives him nothing—not a wince, not a blink, just that flat expression he’s had since we were teenagers, the one that has never once meant anything good for whoever it was aimed at.
That’s what Dominic helped me with. He pulled the threads and ran the numbers, quietly and fast enough to get it all done before Spencer could realize what was happening.
What he found was exactly what I expected—because a man without a goddamn moral bone in his body doesn’t tend to limit his corruption to one area of his life.
Spencer has been skimming off every major contract for years, hiding it through a chain of shell companies that were clever but not clever enough.
Not clever enough for Dominic, anyway.
“The SEC would find that very interesting reading,” I add. “The Wall Street Journal probably would too. I know a few editors there personally.”
Spencer looks around one more time, but my brothers are all watching him with the same hard expression as I am. Nothing and no one in this office is offering him a lifeline.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” He shakes his head, having the nerve to look betrayed. “You fucking win. No contract.”
“I’m not finished.” I step closer, close enough that he has to look up at me.
I want him to feel exactly how much of this room belongs to me right now, how fucking powerless he is.
“You’re going to step down from your position at Summit, effective immediately.
And then you’re going to leave the country. ”
His jaw drops at that. He lets out a short, disbelieving sound. “What? You can’t make me do that. That’s insane.”
“I’m not making you do anything.” I shake my head. “I’m telling you what’s going to happen. And if you ever come back, I’ll know about it the moment you land.”
He shoots to his feet, his face red and his hands shaking.
I can see him calculating whether he can still salvage any of this, whether there’s a version of events where he walks out of here with some part of his old life intact.
He’s trying to decide if I’m serious, and my jaw clenches.
I am more serious than I have ever been about anything in my life, and he needs to understand that.
“You hurt my wife,” I say, enunciating every word. “You’re lucky I’m letting you leave.”
Something ugly moves across his face, and he turns toward the door. I watch him cross the office, his shoulders set in a rigid line. Then he stops, his fists clenching at his sides.
That’s all the warning I get before he turns around and charges toward me, swinging wildly.
I shift my weight, and most of the blow misses—but the edge of his fist catches the side of my jaw and snaps my head sideways, and the pain that fires up through my teeth burns away the last of whatever restraint I had left in me.
I grab his collar and hit him, one clean punch that rocks his head back and staggers him.
He clutches at the edge of the desk, and I hit him again, harder, sending him staggering sideways.
I pull him back up by his shirt and hit him a third time, right in the nose, and there’s a crack that I feel all the way up through my wrist.
Spencer goes down hard with both hands over his face and blood running freely between his fingers.
I’m winding up for another punch when Dominic and Gabriel grab my arms and drag me back. Dominic’s grip is like iron and Gabriel is just as strong, so between the two of them, I’m not going anywhere.
“That’s enough,” Gabriel murmurs.
He and Dominic haul a bloody Spencer to his feet and walk him to the door, each with a locked grip on one of his arms. His legs are barely cooperating, and he’s pressing the back of his hand to his nose, blood dripping down over his mouth and his chin and onto that expensive Italian shirt he wore to make sure everyone knew he has money.
“Security!” Gabriel calls into the hallway. “Now.”
I’m standing in the middle of my office with my chest heaving, my jaw throbbing, and my knuckles split open. My hands are still shaking, not from fear, but from the fury that hasn’t finished crawling through my system yet.
Reid comes to stand beside me. “You’re done here,” he tells me in a low voice. “You should get back to Chloe. She needs you.” He pauses, then adds, “And I think you need to see her too.”
“We’ve got everything from here,” Beckett adds. “Go.”
I nod, still breathing hard as I straighten my jacket and walk out without looking back.
Spencer has no idea that what just happened in that office is the least of what’s coming for him.
The contract termination, the embezzlement evidence, the threats—that’s just what he can see.
What he can’t see is what Dominic has already set in motion: the financial infrastructure being quietly assembled that will close every door Spencer tries to open wherever he lands.
Every investor he approaches, every bank he walks into, every business partner he tries to bring on board—all of it is going to go cold the moment his name comes up.
He’ll never rebuild. He’ll never recover.
He thought he could do what he did to Chloe and just keep walking through his life, but there’s no fucking way I’d ever allow that.
I’ll tear his life apart piece by piece.
The elevator doors open, and I step inside.
As they close, I look down at my bloody knuckles and think about her expression the night she told me, and about the years she spent carrying that alone.
Then I think of the fear on Spencer’s face just now, and the satisfaction that moves through me is as cold and sharp as a knife.