Page 9 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
Green guerrilla.
It's not legal. Not entirely.
It matters more than anything else I do.
"Give him my number," I say.
Charlie smiles. "Done." She takes two steps, stops again. "One of these days, you're going to get in trouble for that."
I watch her walk to her car, uniform catching the light. She raises a hand without turning around.
I stay leaning against the truck. The sun presses warm against my arms. The garden stretches out in front of me, the beds Ibuilt, the soil I amended, the plants I chose because they were hardy enough to survive once they took root.
I think about the house in Hidden Hills. What it was. What I'm going to turn it into.
Charlie's right. The green guerrilla work might get me in trouble someday. But I've been in trouble before. The difference is that this time, whatever I'm building is mine.
And I'm not done.
4
WILLIAM
The bass comes up through the floor and into my chest, a frequency I know well enough that my body stopped registering it as sound years ago. It just runs. Below the VIP section, three hundred bodies move across Vanta's dance floor in waves. They surge and compress in the dark, strangers pressed close, and from up here the whole thing looks like breathing.
Every sight line in this building was planned. Every bottleneck, every degree of access, from the line outside to the staff corridor behind the bar. I know where the fire exits are because I approved the blueprints. I know where the sound drops off because I stood in every corner during calibration and listened.
This is my club.
And the man sitting across from me, whisky in hand, surveying my dance floor like it exists for his personal entertainment, just blew up the one thing I asked him to handle.
"What do you mean you're not Paula's lawyer anymore?"
Adrian doesn't look at me. He tilts his glass, watches the amber catch the low violet light spilling up from the floor below, and takes a slow sip. The ice shifts. He swallows. He still doesn't look at me.
I wait. The longer he doesn't answer, the tighter the muscle along my jaw wants to pull. I hold it still.
I glance at Carter. He's to my left, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the forearm, one hand resting on the dark wood table beside his untouched water. His expression is the same one he wears during quarterly reviews when a department head starts making excuses: patient, attentive, giving nothing.
No help from that direction, then.
I turn back to Adrian. Everything in me wants to lean forward, close the distance, make the space between us smaller until the pressure does its job. I'm built large enough that most people find the combination of size and stillness clarifying. But I've known Adrian since I was sixteen, and I learned early that pushing him only makes him uncooperative. He's the only person I know who gets more comfortable the angrier the room gets.
So I sit back. I adjust the cuff of my jacket. I fire the question that matters.
"You had one job. What happened?"
Adrian tilts his head, smirks. Then he looks at me.
"Sienna Cross happened."
That name.
I feel the ripple before I can stop it.
My posture doesn't change. My expression doesn't shift. But something turns over in my chest, slow and unwelcome, and I know Carter notices it because his fingers move a fraction against the tabletop.
"She walked into the meeting," Adrian continues, and there's a warmth in his voice that wasn't there before, something I don'trecognize in a man I've known for two decades, "and she signed a document relinquishing everything. The financial holdings, the investments, all the personal property. Every cent." He pauses. Looks at me. "She only wants the house. Cross Manor."
