“He slapped his pregnant wife for his mistress, then her three brothers walked in and revealed who she really was.”

Marcus and Christian had already closed the distance. Marcus moved with terrifying speed, stepping up behind Ethan and grabbing him by the expensive fabric of his collar, lifting him clear off the marble floor with one hand and slamming him against the wood paneling of the hallway wall with a sickening thud.

“Gah!” Ethan choked out, clawing uselessly at Marcus’s massive forearm as the breath was driven violently from his lungs.

“Marcus, stop!” Lauren shrieked, stumbling forward in sheer panic, her heels clicking frantically. “You can’t do this! You can’t just assault people! I’m calling the police! I am a senior consultant at Walker Development, and I personally—”

Christian turned his head slowly, fixing Lauren with a cold, hollow stare that killed the words in her throat.

“Sweetheart,” Christian said, his tone dripping with venomous amusement, “if you pull out a phone right now, the only thing the police will be doing is scraping what’s left of your career into a biohazard bag. Do you have any idea whose house you’re standing in?”

Lauren swallowed hard, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. “I… I know who owns it. Ethan Walker. Walker Development…”

“Walker Development,” Christian interrupted with a dry, humorless laugh, “is a penny-ante real estate outfit that currently owes eight million two hundred thousand dollars in bridge loans to a subsidiary of Vance Holdings. My family holds the note on this very house. We own the office park your firm operates out of. We even hold the mortgage on that little Dilworth townhouse where you keep your spare clothes.”

The color drained from Lauren’s face, turning the shade of sour milk. She stumbled backward, her heel catching on the edge of the Persian rug, sending her sprawling inelegantly onto the floor.

Marcus kept Ethan pinned flat against the wall, his grip ironclad. Ethan’s face was turning a dangerous shade of purple, his eyes bulging as he stared at Julian, who stood calmly in front of him, hands buried loosely in his trouser pockets.

“Ethan,” Julian said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “Five years ago, you sat in my office in Atlanta. You were sweating through that cheap off-the-rack suit. You looked me in the eye and swore—swore on your life, your soul, and everything you held sacred—that if I let my sister marry you, you would protect her, love her, and honor her for as long as you lived.”

Ethan managed a strangled gasp, fighting against Marcus’s vise-like grip. “I… I did… please…”

“And how did you honor her tonight, Ethan?” Julian asked, stepping in close until his face was inches from Ethan’s nose. “By bringing some corporate groupie into her home on your anniversary? By mocking her? By raising your hand and striking her?”

Julian’s hand shot forward, clamping around Ethan’s throat and cutting off his remaining air supply entirely.

“You miserable, ungrateful parasite!” Julian hissed, his eyes blazing with cold, lethal fury. “You were nothing when my sister found you. You were a broke nobody with a cracked laptop. Grace built you. Grace funded you. Grace quietly carried you while you played CEO. And you thought you could treat her like trash?”

“Julian.” Grace’s voice cut through the chaos, soft but firm.

Julian paused, his fingers still locked around Ethan’s throat. He tilted his head slightly toward his sister.

Grace walked slowly toward them, her expression calm and devoid of panic. She stopped two feet from her husband, looking down at the crumpled, terrified man who had once promised her the world.

With deliberate composure, Grace reached down, lifted the ultrasound photo from the floor where it had fallen, and held it directly in front of Ethan’s tear-filled eyes.

“You asked if I was acting like a hysterical housewife,” Grace said quietly. “Look at the napkin, Ethan.”

Ethan’s bloodshot eyes shifted to the tiny, grainy image held between her fingers: the unmistakable curve of a developing spine, a beating heart, a tiny head.

A choked, hysterical sob tore from Ethan’s throat.

“Grace… no… please…”

“The deal is off, Ethan,” Julian whispered, his voice sounding like a vault door slamming shut.

And then Marcus threw him across the room.

Ethan crashed violently into the mahogany dining table, sending the carefully arranged crystal, the silver flatware, and the roasted tenderloin flying across the floor in a deafening symphony of shattering glass and splintering wood.

He groaned, clutching his ribs, rolling across the Persian rug as gravy and red wine soaked into the knees of his expensive trousers.

Lauren scrambled backward on all fours like a crab fleeing a predator, her makeup ruined and the hem of her designer dress torn. She looked at Julian, then at Christian, her voice shaking with unadulterated terror. “You… you can’t do this. This is kidnapping! This is assault! You’re going to prison!”

Christian burst out laughing—a sharp, cutting sound devoid of humor. He pulled a heavy leather briefcase from under his arm, popped the brass latches, and extracted a pristine stack of legal documents bound with red ribbon.

“Let’s talk about prison, Lauren,” Christian said, walking over and tossing the papers into her lap like a handful of dirt. “Or better yet, let’s talk about federal wire fraud, embezzlement, and securities violations.”

Lauren stared at the cover page, the breath freezing in her lungs.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA. CASE NO. 3:26-CV-00412-V. PLAINTIFF: VANCE HOLDINGS LLC. DEFENDANTS: ETHAN WALKER, LAUREN PIERCE.

“What… what is this?” Lauren whispered, her fingers shaking so violently she could barely hold the paper.

“That,” Christian said smoothly, crouching down to her eye level, “is an exhaustive forensic audit of Walker Development’s books over the past fourteen months. Specifically, it details how you, Lauren Pierce, and my dear brother-in-law systematically embezzled three million six hundred thousand dollars in corporate acquisition funds into an offshore shell company registered in the Cayman Islands under your maiden name.”

Ethan stopped groaning on the floor. His head snapped up, his face ash-pale. “That’s… that’s impossible. We buried those transactions…”