ROMAN
Istorm through the front doors of my family home, the oak slamming hard enough behind me that the echo travels down the long marble corridor.
The scent of polish and old money hangs in the air.
From somewhere to my left, I can hear my mother in the kitchen, the gentle clink of porcelain and the low murmur of the radio drifts through the open archway. It is domestic. Familiar.
And downright offensive in its normality.
I don’t stop to greet her. I don’t trust my voice to sound anything but volatile.
The copies of the files sit heavy inside the leather folder tucked under my arm.
One set is locked in my safe. One set sits in Atlas’ encrypted drive.
The originals are secured elsewhere. If this detonates, I will not be the only one holding the evidence.
I take the stairs two at a time and head straight for my dad’s office. The door is half open but I don’t knock. It swings inward and my dad looks up from behind his desk. I can see the flicker of irritation at being interrupted before it transforms into anger as he realises it is me.
“Just the person I wanted to see,” he says, with a clipped tone.
“Funny,” I reply, stepping inside and shutting the door behind me. “I thought the same thing.”
His nostrils flare as he sets his pen down with deliberate care.
“I’ve just had Quinn’s father on the phone,” he says slowly. “He hasn’t heard from her in three days.”
Silence fills the space between us.
“What did you do, Roman?”
“I killed her,” I shrug.
There is no point softening it. I don’t lie and I don’t dilute facts to make them easier to swallow.
Quinn was a snake and she earned her ending.
I don’t understand why this Company pretends women are somehow exempt from consequence.
They can be just as calculating, just as dangerous, just as capable of destabilising everything we’ve built.
If someone is a threat to Fae, they cease to be protected by anything as irrelevant as gender.
“What the fuck do you mean you killed her?” Dad barks, staring at me like I’m joking.
“I mean she’s dead,” I clarify calmly. “She orchestrated Fae’s abduction.”
Dad shoots to his feet so abruptly the chair skids back against the floor.
His palms hit the desk with a sharp crack.
Colour floods his face, climbing fast from collar to cheekbones as his anger is etched into every hard line.
If I didn’t know how ruthlessly he maintains his health, I might think he was on the brink of a cardiac arrest.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” he shouts. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just jeopardised? The alliance? The contracts? Years of negotiation—”
“She was a traitor,” I cut in as my voice whips around the room.
“You don’t get to decide that unilaterally!”
“She set Fae up,” I snap. “Quinn worked with Fisher and lured Fae out.”
“Quinn was stability Roman! What aren’t you getting? She wasn’t just a suitable match in The Company but also in our private sectors. So fucking what,” he raises his voice, “if she lured Fae… she was the better choice!”
“SHE WAS A FUCKING TRAITOR!” I scream back. “She was part of an elaborate scheme that undermines everything The Company stands for, everything that WE STAND FOR!”
My father’s fingers curl slowly against the edge of the desk as if he’s physically restraining the impulse to react. His breathing evens out by force as he swallows and looks at me.
“What do you mean?” he asks, with a bitter edge to his voice.
I exhale, forcing the surge of temper back, as I cross the room and drop the folder onto his desk. It lands with a heavy slap against the polished wood.
“I mean,” I say, opening the folder and pulling the first stack of papers free, “that we have a problem far bigger than a broken engagement.”
I spread the copies across his desk and smooth them flat with the palm of my hand, arranging them in a sequence that tells its own story.
The ledger excerpts sit first, followed by the transaction trails and the coded entries pulled from the second book.
I selected the sections carefully before I left the house, enough to show a pattern without exposing the girls any further than they already have been.
I place the manufacturing receipt for the keyring beside them as well as the coded dossier with Ackworth’s name buried inside it.
He looks down at the spread of paper without speaking.
I don’t rush him. I watch. His eyes track steadily across the pages, absorbing the information in silence.
I note the way his brow pulls low as he flicks to the next sheet.
I search his face for recognition. For fear.
For anticipation. For any sign that this confirms something he already knew.
But what I see instead is irritation giving way to confusion and confusion settling into something colder.
“What the fuck?” he whispers under his breath as he flips to the next page.
Hope and gratitude flood my chest. This doesn’t look rehearsed. He doesn’t look cornered. He looks like a man who has just been handed information he did not anticipate and if I believed in God, I might thank Him that the version of my father I grew up respecting is still sitting in front of me.
“These were in Fisher’s hidden office,” I explain. “I was made aware by Quinn that he had a home that was not registered to him. Last night we went on a mission in the hopes of bringing Fae home. But Dad…”
He looks up when I pause and I draw in a slow breath, forcing my voice to steady before I continue.
“Fisher is running a sex trafficking ring. He is abusing women and girls.”
“You’re certain?” my dad asks, dragging a hand down his face before leaning back slowly in his chair.
“Yes.”
“And Quinn?”
“She not only confirmed Fisher contacted her,” I say evenly, “she admitted there’s someone above him. Look at page sixteen.”
He adjusts the stack as he finds the page I’ve marked and I lean forward to tap the name with my finger. His eyes flick to mine as he reads it.
“Ackworth,” he exhales. “You think Ackworth is his superior?”
“Yes. I do.”
“What makes you think there’s a singular head?” he asks as his gaze lingers on the document detailing the meeting frequencies.
“Because every single person I have tortured refers to the ‘boss’ not ‘bosses’,” I reply which earns me another glare.
“And how many people have you tortured without permission, Roman?”
He seems calmer now but I can tell by the twitch in his left eye that his anger is simply contained.
“It’s kind of irrelevant. There was no one important.”
“Names, Roman. Now.” He barks and I exhale through my nose.
“Quinn. Jack Archer. A security officer who is irrelevant. I’ve probably killed over fifteen guards.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he exhales then nods once and swipes his hand down his face.
I lower myself into one of the chairs opposite his desk and only then do I realise how tightly wound I’ve been for weeks.
Keeping this from him has been a weight I didn’t fully acknowledge until now and handing it over feels like a release of something that has been digging into my spine.
We sit in silence as the fire in his hearth ticks quietly behind him.
“This threatens The Company as a whole,” he says at last in a low voice that has been stripped of the earlier fury. “If this is accurate and it gets out, nobody can contain it. There isn’t enough influence in the world to bury something as structured as this. It’s reckless.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” My dad’s gaze lifts back to mine.
“You should have come to me before acting,” he replies slowly.
“Psst,” I wave my hand. “Every single person I hurt was compromised. There was no value in keeping them alive. I’d argue that in front of the council and win.” I cross my leg as one ankle rests on the opposite knee.
“I will look into this personally,” he says. “Discreetly.”
I recognise the tone. It’s the same one he uses when he intends to absorb something into his authority and remove me from the centre of it.
What began as a shared crisis is quietly being repositioned as his jurisdiction and a familiar frustration tightens in my chest. I didn’t bring this to him to be benched.
I brought it because it’s bigger than one man.
“I’m not backing off if that’s what you’re implying,” I reply evenly, though there’s steel under it now.
“You will,” he counters sharply. “You are too exposed. If someone high enough authorised this, you are a liability walking.”
“I don’t care,” I respond, and I mean it. There is nothing that will stop me from hunting down those who have helped and hurt my Tink.
“That’s precisely the problem.”
“I’m not stepping back until Fae is home.”
He exhales sharply through his nose as his jaw grinds.
“Why is she so fucking special?” he demands. “She’s just a swallow.”
My brain snags on the word just as if she is disposable.
As if she is a role and not a person. I could sit here and list every reason why she matters.
I could tell him that she is the only person who can touch me without me wanting to skin myself, the only person who has made me stronger or that she is the first variable in my life that feels chosen rather than assigned.
But he wouldn’t hear that. So instead, I give him the language he does understand.
“She could be pregnant.”
My father goes still. The movement simply drains out of him as the calculations begin behind his eyes before the emotion does.
“How?” He stutters out. “She’s a swallow. She should be on birth control.”
“I replaced her birth control months ago,” I say. “With sugar pills.”
The colour leaves his face. I have seen him furious. I have seen him ruthless. I have never seen him unsettled like this.
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” he says quietly.
“I understand exactly what I’ve done.”
“No, you don’t. You may have just given your only viable heir to a man who appears to be selling children,” he says. “If she is pregnant, she becomes leverage of the highest order.”