Chapter 26 Vince
Vince
Rome walked straight down the hotel corridor like the whole floor belonged to him, which, technically, it did, and shouldered the suite door so hard the lock gave way.
The bolt snapped clean out of the frame.
I didn’t tell him to slow down.
When Rome was calm, you could negotiate with him. When he moved like this, your window to redirect him had already passed.
Two guards flanked the door inside, suits, earpieces, good enough for any other dynasty prince.
Not for a Crow who’d just been told two heirs had laid hands on a dynasty daughter in his club.
Rome’s club.
“Out.” I took my eyes off my brother long enough to look at them.
They looked at me, then at the six-foot-something wall of tattooed rage pacing toward the lounge.
They cleared.
Good.
I followed him in.
The twins and Rome had been born into a very specific kind of pressure. Bastion packed it into muscle and guns. Luca buried it in systems and surveillance. Rome burned it through iron bars and ink.
The tattoos had started as armour, cover the skin graft scars on his legs, turn what our father had done to him into something he chose, and then they’d just… kept going.
Head shaved, skull and neck all tattooed. Arms. Hands, fingers, throat, chest. Until there was more ink than untouched skin.
He was as big as me now.
Most days it amused me.
Tonight it didn’t.
Two men were waiting in the lounge. Both heirs wearing expensive suits, drinking top-shelf whisky like they hadn’t just made themselves a problem.
Rome didn’t look at their faces first.
He looked at their hands.
His gaze dropped to the knuckles that had been on a girl they had no right to touch.
The smaller heir tried to swagger. There’s always one.
“You can’t just storm in here. We’re heirs to—”
Rome’s fist hit him before the sentence finished.
A brutal punch that snapped the heir’s head sideways and sent him crashing over the back of the couch. Glass shattered on impact. A bottle rolled, spilling twenty-year-old whisky across the floor like it was nothing.
He pivoted to the second heir, grip already closing on the man’s collar, yanking him forward so hard his feet left the ground. The guy’s shoes scraped uselessly at the marble.
“You booked a fantasy room. You signed a contract. You read the rules.” Rome’s voice came out flat.
The heir’s hands clawed at Rome’s wrist.
He got nowhere.
“No unnegotiated touch. No ignoring safewords. No removing masks without consent. No filming. No closing doors on a woman in my building without her permission.”
My building.
Not ours. Not Crows.
His.
Flag one.
The heir’s eyes darted to me, the way they all did when they realised the shaved-headed psychopath had a bigger brother in the room.
People always assumed I’d be the reasonable one.
Bad assumption.
I leaned against the minibar, arms folded.
“You’re in violation of Rome’s code. That’s worse than violating ours.” I said.
“They lied,” the heir choked. “We didn’t—she said—”
“No.” Rome’s grip tightened. “She didn’t.”
He hit the wall with the man’s back. Plaster dented. A framed print dropped sideways and crashed to the floor.
The heir’s yelp bounced off the ceiling.
Crow dialect slipped out of me before I thought about it.
“Leth ven vren. Kir ven coda.” I muttered under my breath.
Ease your hand, keep the lesson.
Most dynasties had scraps of old tongue, courtroom flourishes the Academy drilled into them alongside trade languages.
Crows were different. We had a whole language.
Built in cages and war rooms and ports. They didn’t teach ours at the Academy.
Just like they didn’t teach our Codex. You learned Crow law from Crows or you didn’t learn it at all.
Rome’s head tipped half an inch, hearing it.
He shot back, words sharp and fast in Crow, the cadence older than any of the bloodlines watching us. “Nor say, Vadar. Sha ven skar touched.”
Not this time, brother. She was touched.
Crow dialect never landed soft in civilian ears. Old vowels, hard consonants, a rhythm built for orders and oaths, not hotel suites. The heirs went still, eyes flicking between us like we’d just started casting spells.
Good. Let them feel how far from home they were.
The heir in Rome’s grip tried again, desperation kicking in. “The girl was playing hard to get. She didn’t—she wanted—”
Rome’s head snapped back a fraction.
“You cornered a dynasty daughter in my room,” he said.
My room.
Flag two.
“You ignored the panic button and my staff when they told you to leave.”
“She’s a DuPont,” the other heir slurred from the floor, trying to push himself upright, blood running from his nose. “She’s used to heir attention. She should be grateful.”
Rome turned.
He moved fast. One moment he was at the wall, the next he was over the coffee table, fist connecting with the second heir’s jaw and sending him straight through it.
The glass exploded under them. The man hit his head and went limp for a second.
I pushed off the bar.
“Rome.”
He didn’t even glance at me.
He grabbed the heir by the shirt front and hauled him through the wreckage until his back hit the entertainment unit.
“Grateful? Is that what she should’ve been when you blocked the door?” his voice dropped lower.
The heir gagged, eyes rolling.
I stepped closer, I wouldn’t correct him in front of outsiders. “Vark varin out. Nar kair’d ven mor.”
They need to walk out, not be carried to a morgue.
Rome drove a fist into the guy’s ribs.
The Crow in me was nodding. The brother was watching Rome’s face.
I’d seen him handle enforcement. I’d watched him correct idiots at the clubs a dozen times. He could be vicious, sure. But it usually lived somewhere in that cold, Crow place we all went when we put the mask on.
That was when it occurred to me.
This was personal.
It looked like someone had laid hands on something he considered his.
“The girl is safe,” I stepped in until I could put a hand on his shoulder.
Rome’s head turned a fraction.
Eyes still wild. Focused, now, on mine.
“The med team checked her. She’s with security.”
He breathed hard through his nose. Slowly—slowly—he dropped the heir. The man slumped sideways.
“For the record. if you kill them, Nik gets annoyed. Paperwork.” I added.
Rome rolled his neck.
“You done?” I asked.
He turned on the first heir again.
So, no.
The guy had managed to drag himself up onto one elbow. Bad idea. It put his face in reach.
Rome planted a boot on his chest and shoved him flat.
“You don’t come back to my clubs. You don’t book rooms in Villain. You don’t look at my girls. You hear me?”
The heir spat blood. “You can’t—Crows don’t—no one bans a—”
Rome leaned harder. He switched languages again. “Say one more thing about what Crows can’t do, I’ll send you home in a box and call it mercy.”
He didn’t understand the syllables. He understood the promise.
“Enough.” I dragged a hand down my face.
I could’ve barked it. Pulled rank. I didn’t. You didn’t throw cold water on a brother holding onto control by his fingertips.
“Security’s downstairs. They’ll escort them to med, then the airport. Nik will handle dynasty politics. You’ve made your point.”
Rome’s jaw flexed. He stepped back a fraction, lifted his boot. The heir coughed, gulping air in.
I caught Rome’s wrist as he moved past.
“You good?” I kept my voice low.
His eyes met mine.
So the answer was, no. There went my blood pressure for the year.
“They touched her in my room,” he said.
Third flag.
Not a room.
His.
“Which room?” I asked.
His chin jerked toward the corridor. “Seven-two.”
Top fantasy suite. The one he’d redesigned himself after the Academy. The floor plan that pushed Luca’s patience to the limit thanks to every very specific feature Rome had insisted on. He’d never brought anyone there, as far as I knew.
“Who booked it?” I asked.
His jaw ticked. “Doesn’t matter.”
It very much fucking did.
I let it go, for now. The guards were back at the door.
“Med. Painkillers, no sedation. Scan for fractures. They sign waivers before they come into our city, they knew the risks. We need them breathing when Nik makes the call.” I told them.
Rome snorted. “You’re too kind.”
“Kindness would’ve been letting you break their hands.”
“I still might.”
I stepped away from him. “Later. After we know how deep this goes.”
He stalked to the bar, grabbed a clean tumbler, filled it with water and threw it back in one go. The glass looked too small in his tattooed hand.
“The twins know?” he asked.
I checked my phone. Unread messages from Luca, Bastion, Nik. Group chats lighting up.
“They will in about thirty seconds.” I scanned the previews. “Luca’s got the footage. Nik’s already drafting letters. Bastion wants to know if he needs to fly back to help you hide bodies.”
Rome’s mouth twitched.
“No bodies. Yet.”
I shifted my weight, letting my shoulder hit the doorframe. “Good. Because I have a question.”
His gaze slid over, defensive already.
“The girl. Who is she.”
“Dynasty daughter.” His jaw tightened. “High-ranking. That’s enough.”
“You want to tell me why a DuPont dynasty daughter was in your fantasy suite. With a private booking under someone else’s name.”
Nothing.
“You want to tell me why you looked like someone had taken a swing at your heart when you saw that door closed.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, same tell he’d had since he was five.
“Rome.”
He swore under his breath.
“She was waiting on me. Alright?”
There it was. I exhaled through my nose.
“Let me get this straight. The girl those two thought they could corner is Charlotte DuPont.”
For a moment there was a silence.
“Daughter of those DuPonts.”
Still nothing. I dragged a hand down my face. “You do realise there isn’t enough blood pressure medication in the world for me to keep up with you idiots.”
His eyes narrowed. “What idiots.”
“You, sneaking off with a DuPont princess to my clubs. The twins falling in love with an Adams dynasty daughter. I swear, if there is a woman on this planet who doesn’t come with a nuclear-grade last name, one of you is physically incapable of wanting her.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it.”
He glared at the floor.
“She okay?” he asked. He wouldn’t met my eyes. That is when I know it is bad.
“Shaken. She hit the panic. Staff got there fast. They pulled her before anything irreversible. Med cleared her.”
His shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Let me guess. She was waiting in that room for you. And you were late.”
He flinched.
“So.” I pushed off the frame. “Two things are true. One, you owe her an apology. And two,” I added, switching back to Crow dialect for the last part, letting the heirs hear the sound if not the meaning, “next time you quietly claim a girl like that, you tell me. So I know how hard I’m allowed to hit the men who touch what’s yours. ”
He looked at me, shoulders dropped a fraction. The rage was still there. Under it, something that looked a hell of a lot like I felt every time Madeline walked into one of our buildings and the air changed.
“Too late to hit them harder,” he muttered.
“We’ll find creative outlets. Nik will have his fun. Luca will make their lives hell digitally. Bastion will scare their cousins. We’re a full-service trauma centre.”
“My brothers,” His mouth twitched. Just a little.
“Yeah. Your brothers.” I clapped his shoulder. “Welcome to the expensive taste club.”
He snorted. “You started it.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Down the hall, I could hear the med team arrive. The heirs groaned as they were rolled onto stretchers. Somewhere in another wing, a dynasty daughter with royal-level blood was probably sitting in one of our quiet rooms.
I’d check on her before the night was out. Not as Vince the enforcer. As the man whose idiot brother had clearly fallen for her.
Because that’s what we did.
We fell hard. Once.