Page 149 of Maksym

Pride moved through his face so briefly anyone else might have missed it. I did not. It entered me warmer than the coffee.

Doc lifted his cup. “To difficult women. Civilization would be a smoking hole without them.”

Lucia clinked her mug lightly against his. “Finally, an intelligent diagnosis.”

Nikolay’s gaze moved from Lucia to me to Remy, and something in his expression softened into gratitude tinged with worry. He had a hearing in four days. A mate whose testimony might determine whether ancient prejudice found a legal precedent. A family assembling in a room built for war.

I placed my palms flat on either side of the laptop.

“There is something I need handled before we begin Nikolay’s defense.”

Maksym did not move, but I felt his focus sharpen beside me.

Nikolay straightened by a fraction. Taras’s pen paused above his notes. Remy’s expression became unreadable in a way that made me suspect three contingencies had already formed behind her eyes. Lucia watched me over the rim of her mug, utterly still. Doc set his coffee down.

Good, I thought. Let it be formal.

“Lucian,” I said.

The name changed the room more efficiently than any spell.

Maksym’s shadows did not rise, but the corners seemed to remember they belonged to him. Lucia’s gaze cooled into something clean and lethal. Doc’s easy morning warmth disappeared without drama, leaving a man who had worked battlefields and knew exactly how much damage could hide behind a single name.

I made myself continue.

“We are fighting battles on two fronts. Nikolay’s hearing in Chicago is the immediate legal crisis, but Lucian is not a background problem. He is active. He has already sent people to Amethyst. He has already tested Maksym’s absence. He may suspect I am alive, turned, with you, or all three.” I drew a breath and let the prosecutor in me steady the survivor. “If that front remains vague, it will sit in the back of my mind while I am trying to prepare a defense. I cannot afford that. Nikolay cannot afford that. Maddie cannot afford that.”

Nikolay’s jaw tightened at Maddie’s name.

I saw it. Filed it. Did not yet pursue it.

“I need the second front assigned,” I said. “Not solved before lunch. Not magically erased because everyone in this room is powerful and attractive enough to develop unreasonable confidence.” Remy’s mouth twitched. “Assigned. Owned. Reported. I need to know who is looking, what they are looking for, and that I will not be the only person keeping Lucian’s crimes from disappearing beneath vampire politics and arrogance.”

Silence followed. Not resistance. Assessment.

Lucia moved.

She was seated to my left, close enough that I had been aware of her the entire time without quite admitting how much her presence steadied me. She set her mug down, reached across the small distance between us, and covered my hand with hers.

The gesture struck harder than I expected.

Lucia did not seem like a woman who touched casually. Last night, she had taken my hands as a form of introduction, yes, but even that had been assessment wrapped around welcome. This was different. Her palm rested over my knuckles, warm and firm. Unarmored, or as close to unarmored as a Kozlov daughter in a room full of weapons could become.

“Leave finding evidence of his evil doing to me,” she said. “I am the most stealth of the Kozlovs. I have brought more than one man to his knees and to his death because of evidence I have gathered. But do not worry. The kill will be yours and yours alone, Grace Marlow.”

The words should have frightened me. Perhaps they did. But beneath that fear was something darker, steadier, and not entirely civilized.

My legal mind rose at once with objections. Jurisdiction. Due process. Evidence preservation. The distinction between vengeance and justice.

Then another part of me remembered Lucian in a chair beside a bed, smiling as if my captivity were an evening’s entertainment.

The two parts of me did not reconcile.

They simply sat beside each other, both true.

I looked at Lucia’s hand over mine. “I want evidence that can stand.”

“You shall have it.”