Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
STEPHEN
The small talk is excruciating, and there’s no use pretending that Dallen’s parents are going to like me at the end of this dinner.
For the past twenty minutes, we’ve said barely any words, certainly nothing substantial.
Dallen will have to make a choice. Me or her family.
Not that I’d ever tell her that she can’t have both, but when it comes to time with her family, I’ll not be present, and she needs to be okay with that. Certainly, her parents will be.
That’s the point of Delizioso tonight, even if I know it will fail. Neutral territory. My territory. A quiet, curated space where I can sit across from the Chief of Police and prove I’m not my father. Prove I’m not a headline waiting to happen.
Eight ten comes and goes with stilted conversation and untouched wine. Susan Byrne makes small talk about the restaurant décor. Chief Byrne studies the wine list as if it requires interrogation. I check my phone more times than I want to admit.
Dallen should be here by now.
At eight fifteen, I tell myself she’s caught in traffic. By eight twenty, a sick feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. By eight thirty, the lie stops comforting me, and I need to leave.
“Has she texted you?” Susan asks, trying for lightness but failing. There’s a tightness around her mouth I haven’t seen before, a mother’s instinct quietly surfacing.
“Yes. She said she was leaving at five past, but nothing since.” I keep my voice steady, but my thumb is already pressing her number again.
It rings.
And rings.
Straight to voicemail. My last message left unread.
Chief Byrne’s jaw shifts almost imperceptibly. He tries next. The line fails just as quickly.
“She always answers,” Susan says. It isn’t an accusation. It’s fear creeping in.
“She could be caught in traffic,” I reply automatically, though the words feel hollow even to me. Dallen wouldn’t ignore my text. She knows what this dinner means. She knows I’m stepping into a room where I’m already judged guilty.
Probably rightfully so, but that’s to worry about another time.
I stand, collecting my keys and wallet. “I’m going to head to her office. Make sure everything’s okay.”
Chief Byrne stands too, neither dramatic nor panicked. Just decisive. “I’ll come with you.” He turns to Susan. “You head home, just in case Dallen rings or heads there for whatever reason.”
We don’t speak as we leave the restaurant. We don’t debate whether we’re overreacting if something could be wrong. But something feels off. An intangible current that runs through a person, intuition, telling you to go, to check, just to be sure…
The drive to Dallen’s law firm is suffocating in its normalcy. Traffic lights change. Pedestrians cross. The city moves in ignorant rhythm while something claws up my spine. I try her again. Call. Text. Nothing. Not even left on read.
Where are you, Dallen?
I’m coming, baby.
I pull the car to a sudden stop, not bothering to find a parking spot, merely using the large pedestrian strip out front. The building is lit up, like most NY skyscrapers, but as we head toward the lobby, I can’t see the security guard who usually occupies the desk.
I start to run.
We burst through the door, Dallen’s father close on my heels.
I skid to a stop as I lean over the desk.
That’s when I see the guard. He isn’t sitting.
He’s folded awkwardly behind the counter, one arm bent wrong beneath him, blood darkening the side of his head.
The sight doesn’t register as shock. It registers as confirmation.
Romeros…
Chief Byrne vaults the counter and checks his pulse. “He’s alive,” he mutters. “Blunt force to the head by the looks of it.” He lays him down in a recovery position and picks up his phone. “I’ll call 9-1-1, but we need to get up to Dallen’s floor.”
We take the elevator, the small space enclosing me like a coffin. Each floor passes in heavy silence, broken only by our breathing. The higher we climb, the colder something settles in my chest — not fear exactly, but recognition. This is how leverage works. This is how you send a message.
Light spills into the elevator as the doors open.
And then I hear it.
A scuffle. A chair scraping violently across the floor. A sharp intake of breath that does not belong to someone in control. Pleading.
Dallen begging…
I react, oblivious to who’s standing beside me. I don’t consider optics, law, or consequences. I bolt down the hall, and the image that meets me will never be erased from my mind, no matter how hard I try.
Dallen is pinned to the floor, her arms trapped above her head in Elio Romero’s punishing grip. His naked lower body is positioned against her in a way that needs no explanation. Fury, cold and deadly, rages through me; something ancient and feral snaps free.
I cross the passage in three strides and wrench him off, throwing him several feet from Dallen.
I come down on him immediately, drive my fist into his jaw so hard I feel bone give beneath my knuckles.
He stumbles to his feet, and I let him, want him upright when I knock him back down.
I hear Dallen sob her father’s name, her breath hitching as her father comforts her, leaving me to deal with this piece of shit.
Elio laughs. Actually laughs.
“You’re going to die tonight,” I say.
Blood runs from the corner of his mouth, and he wipes it away like this is a sport. Like he’s enjoying the evening. “Told you,” he spits. “Romeros always hit back. Pity you were so slow in getting here. You didn’t save her at all.”
His smirk makes the world before me turn red.
He lunges, but I’m over playing with my prey.
I hit him again. And again. We crash into the wall, drywall splintering beneath our weight.
He drives his shoulder into my ribs, and we careen into a bookshelf, law journals raining down around us.
He’s stronger than I remember, quicker, too.
He gets a punch in that snaps my head back and fills my mouth with copper.
Pain steadies me.
Grounds me.
Reminds me that this isn’t my nightmare. It’s his.
He reaches down and comes up with a shard of broken glass from the fallen photo frame. He swings. It slices across my forearm, shallow but sharp enough to sting. That’s the moment I stop thinking about consequences. Because if he’s willing to use glass, I’m willing to use worse.
I tackle him to the floor, driving him down with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs. My forearm presses into his throat. He claws at my face, my shoulders, my neck. I tighten without remorse.
I can hear Dallen somewhere behind me. I can hear her father telling her to look away.
I can hear my own heartbeat pounding like war drums in my ears.
And beneath it all, another voice.
My father’s.
You finish them.
Or they finish you.
Elio’s movements become frantic, then uneven. He tries to speak, something about leverage, about how she’ll never stay with me after this, about how Daddy won’t allow it. The words blur into static.
All I can see is Dallen pressed against the floor. See Elio raping the woman I love and taking what isn’t given freely. If I loosen my grip, he’ll try again. They never stop. Not these bastards. Every one of them needs to be eliminated.
Something shifts. His resistance weakens. His hands slip.
For a second — one dangerous, eternal second — I realize I’m crossing a line I can’t step back from. My hands tighten further.
Chief Byrne’s voice cuts through the haze. “Stephen!”
I don’t release immediately. I wish I could say I do. I wish I could claim morality reasserts itself. It doesn’t. It’s exhaustion. It’s inevitable. It’s the knowledge that the damage is already done.
When I finally pull back, Elio doesn’t.
He lies still beneath me, blood pooling darkly beneath his temple where I've struck his head against the floor. Chief Byrne kneels beside me and checks the bastard's vitals. I meet his eyes, his expression one I will never forget — not horror, not anger.
Calculation.
“He’s dead,” he says quietly.
Dead.
The word lands without drama. Without thunder. Just finality.
Good riddance.
I look back at Dallen. She’s shaking, eyes bright with shock and something far more complicated — fear, yes, but not of Elio.
Of me.
And that’s the moment the rage leaves entirely. Because killing him was instinct, seeing what it does to her is a consequence. Chief Byrne rises slowly. He doesn’t draw a weapon. Doesn’t arrest me. Doesn’t shout. He looks at me as both father and law.
“You understand what you’ve done.”
I do. And I don’t regret it. I’ll never regret removing such scum from the world. That realization should terrify me. Instead, what terrifies me is the possibility that Dallen will walk away — not because of rumors, not because of family legacy — but because she’s seen exactly what loving me means.
What I’m capable of, even right in front of her and those she loves.
I stand up, hands bloodied, breath still ragged, and I understand with chilling clarity that I’ve protected her. And in doing so, I may have destroyed any chance of keeping her.