“No one touches her,” Greyson said, his voice low enough that only Chapman could hear. He pulled his gun out of its holster and slipped it to him. “If anyone tries, even Veyra, you have my authorization to use lethal force.”

Chapman’s eyes reflected his understanding. “Yes, sir. With my life.”

The doors to the elevator opened and in the next breath they were gone, leaving Greyson alone with Shadera in the suddenly too quiet apartment. The absence of others made the space feel larger, emptier, the silence pressing in and suffocating him.

Greyson stood motionless, his control maintained by the thinnest of threads. Now that Lira was gone, now that his focus on her safety no longer anchored him, he could feel something unraveling inside him—a coil of pain and despair that had been wound tight for decades.

Control. Everything in his life had been about control—maintaining it, projecting it, never letting it slip no matter what his father did, no matter what horrors he witnessed on the execution platform, no matter how much of himself he had to carve away to maintain the facade.

The sound of his own heartbeat thundered in his ears, the wound in his shoulder a distant concern compared to the rage building inside him.

It started in his fingertips, a tremor that traveled up his arms, spreading through his chest until his entire body vibrated with it. That control he maintained—always, always maintained—began to crack, fault lines spreading into gaping voids.

“You should sit,” Shadera said, breaking the silence. “Let me look at your shoulder.”

Her voice penetrated the fog beginning to cloud his thoughts, but he couldn’t bring himself to respond. The sound of his father’s hand striking Lira’s face echoed in his ears. The image of the gun pressed to his mother’s temple burned behind his eyes. The feeling of powerlessness—familiar, suffocating—tightened around his throat.

“Greyson?” Shadera moved closer, her voice sharper now, more insistent.

For the first time in his life, Greyson found himself contemplating not just escaping from his father’s control, but something far more permanent. Something that would end his reign once and for all.

Something snapped.

His fist connected with the wall before he consciously decided to move as a sound more animal than human shredded his lungs. Plaster cracked and gave way, pain shooting up his arm to mingle with the fire in his shoulder. The physical sensation was cleansing, clarifying—a point of focus in the storm.

He tore the mask from his face, hurling it into the mirror above the entryway table. Shards exploded outward like crystalline shrapnel. His hands reached for anything, scrabbled for anything he could destroy. The island stools were next. He picked them up one by one, slamming them against the counter, against the walls, the refrigerator until they were nothing more than twisted metal.

He dragged his suit jacket off his body as his heel connected with the coffee table. It flew across the room, flipping and splintering, as it connected with the entertainment center and shattered the thin glass television screen. The sound was like ice breaking on a frozen lake.

It wasn’t enough.

Nowhere near enough to contain the fury boiling through his veins.

“Fuck!” The word tore from him as his fist connected with the marble island, splitting his knuckles.

He tore through the apartment like a force of nature, upending furniture, shattering anything his eyes landed on. Each act of destruction felt like oxygen after too long underwater, like breaking the surface when he’d been drowning his entire life.

He swept everything from the counters with a single arc of his arm, dishes and glassware shattering on the floor. A liquor bottle flying toward the window.

Thirty-three years of obedience. Thirty-three years of swallowing his hatred, of playing the dutiful son, the perfect heir. Thirty-three years of watching his father destroy everything. And for what? For the privilege of living in a cage, of killing on command, of pretending the Heart’s poison hadn’t infected him to the core?

He was dimly aware of Shadera standing in the entryway, watching his rampage with calm eyes. Her presence registered like a distant signal through the static of his rage, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t regain control. Not yet.

Greyson went for the couch next, flipping the large sectional over as another scream ripped from deep inside of him. The exertion sent a spike of agony through his injured shoulder, and Greyson stumbled, his vision blurring at the edges. He caught himself against the window, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.

His legs gave out, and he slid down the glass to the floor, chest heaving, the rage finally beginning to ebb, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, the pain no longer possible to ignore now that the adrenaline was fading.

The apartment lay in ruins around him, a battlefield of broken possessions, a landscape of destruction that matched the devastation inside him. His ragged breathing sounded obscenely loud in the sudden quiet. Shame crept in at the seams of his awareness—shame at his loss of control, at the animal violence of his outburst, at the knowledge that Shadera had just witnessed him break.

Another weakness revealed, another vulnerability exposed.

He leaned his head back against the glass, closing his eyes as he sucked in a ragged breath. Time seemed to stretch and contract around him, reality bleeding at the edges. He was pulling away from his body. Inch by inch. Like a tide receding from shore.

A soft sound pulled him back—footsteps approaching, giving him plenty of warning.

Greyson forced himself to look at her, to acknowledge what he’d done. He expected to find contempt or satisfaction in her eyes—some vindication at seeing her captor brought low. Instead, she stood a few paces away, holding a first aid kit in her hands, her posture suggesting caution but not fear.

“Are you done?” she asked, her voice steady.

Greyson nodded.

She approached slowly, as if he were a wounded animal that might still be dangerous.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, the words emerging rough and raw. “I would never—” He stopped, killing the lie before it could form. He didn’t have to lie to her, didn’t have to pretend this was something it wasn’t. They would both hurt each other if they had to, but at least, if nothing else, they were honest about that.

A corner of her lips tilted upward and she knelt in front of him, laying the kit on the floor beside her.

“I know.

She said it so matter-of-fact, as if she understood him on some fundamental level that others missed. As if the line between his controlled public persona and this private destruction made perfect sense to her.

“I’m going to clean that wound,” she said, nodding toward his shoulder. “And before you tell me not to bother, remember that if you bleed out, I’m the one who’ll be blamed.” She retrieved antiseptic and bandages without looking up at him. “Can you move your arm well enough to pull it from the sleeve?”

Greyson nodded, complying and wincing as he undid the buttons and pulled his left arm free. The bullet had passed through the meat of his shoulder, missing bone and major arteries—a warning shot, clean and not meant to kill. His father was too precise a marksman to miss at that range if he’d wanted Greyson dead.

Shadera worked in silence, cleaning the wound with clinical detachment. Her fingers were gentle despite the efficiency of her movements, a contradiction that seemed to define her more and more with each passing day.

“I’m sorry,” Greyson said after several minutes of quiet. “That you had to see that. My father. What he really is.”

Her eyes met his, green and steady and unafraid.