I woke wrong. The kind of wrong that means something moved in the night and I didn’t.


    Luca was upright in the chair by the window. Shirt half-buttoned. Phone face-down like it offended him. He didn’t look at me. He looked at the city. That told me enough.


    “Say it,” I rasped.


    He didn’t. He stood, crossed the room, put a hand on the back of my shoulder and squeezed once—grounding me like I was the one that needed it. “He was in the hall.”


    Heat hit the base of my skull. “Who.”<fne92d> The source of th?s content is Find★Novel</fne92d>


    “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “He thinks it does.”


    I swung my legs off the bed. Smoke. I needed smoke. “Where.”


    “Alexander’s tower. Outside her room.” His jaw ticked. “Talking.”


    “Talking,” I repeated. Did he drug her. Did he touch her.


    “He didn’t touch,” Luca added, he’d read the next question. “She slept through it.”


    My fingers curled. The scars along my knuckles ached. My head went quiet. That was when things got dangerous. I walked to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth. I shaved. I pulled on ck. Shirt, jacket, gun. Chain. Three rings.


    Luca watched me. “We can do this clean.”


    “I am clean,”


    “Bastion.”


    I met his eyes. The kind of look that said everything we didn’t name. I know. I hear you. I won’t put blood in her morning.


    He gave one small nod. “I’ll move the pieces. You go look him in the face.”


    I was already at the door.<hr>


    Our men at the lobby didn’t ask questions.


    The elevator doors opened. The corridor to her wing had soft carpet, expensive paint.


    He stepped out of her hallway like the building belonged to him. It didn’t. We owned it under a shellpany. First building we acquired after the academy.


    You could tell the type by the first five seconds. Expensive shoes. Shoulders back in a way that tried to sell height he didn’t have. He saw me and did the little smile men do when they think they’ve met a peer.


    “Morning,” he said.


    I leaned against the wall and took my time lighting a cigarette. The first drag hit. “Is it.”


    He clocked the ink at my throat. Clocked the ck. The gun. Decided to pretend none of it meant anything.


    “Do you live here?”


    “No,” I said. “I haunt it.”


    A flicker of confusion. He covered it with a chuckle. “That supposed to be funny?”


    “No.”


    He shifted his weight. The corridor made men honest if you let it.


    “You’ve been circling,” I said. My voice carried just enough to fill the space between us. “Seeing what sticks. Who looks at you. Which doors open.”


    His smile tightened. “It’s a big tower.”


    “Too big for you.”


    The little re in his eyes told me I’d hit something he cared about. He straightened. “You always block hallways like a bodyguard, or is this new?”


    I took another drag, slow. “Depends who tries to use them.”


    “Rx. No one’s unsafe.”


    “You mistake quiet for permission.”


    Heughed again. “You mistake silence for power.”


    I stepped off the wall, closed the distance. Close enough for him to feel how much bigger I was. Close enough to watch his pulse jump. “No,” I said. “I measure power by whether a man understands he doesn’t have any.”


    He held my stare one second too long. Then he gave me the kind of smirk that gets teeth knocked out in cheaper buildings. “You here to impress me?”


    “No,” I flicked ash. “To measure you.”


    “Measure away,” he said lightly.


    I looked down him like inventory. Shoes, scuff at the right toe from dragging it when he’s bored. Soft hands. No gym. The way he kept ncing past me—not toward her door, toward the elevator. Flight built into the posture of a man who likes to perform near danger and leave before it acts.


    “You like talking near sleeping girls. Makes you feel tall.”


    The smirk twitched. “You know how dynasty is,” he said too quickly, like we were friends. “Lots of handlers. Someone has to lead.”


    “You don’t lead anything here,”


    “You think you do?” He tilted his head. “You can’t own every hallway.”


    “I don’t have to. I own the ground under your feet.”


    I watched the math click behind his eyes. Syndicate. Dynasty. Crow. He hadn’t decided which part of that scared him yet. That was fine. Fear was a slow burn.


    I stepped back and exhaled smoke. “You’ve been measured,” I said. “Now you’ll be moved.”


    He adjusted his watchband. “You can’t clock a man out of a life he chose.”


    “You didn’t choose this one. It doesn’t belong to you.”


    He started toward the elevator. I didn’t move. He had to stall shuffle sideways to give me space. I let him brush a shoulder—just enough contact to feel bone under my arm. The doors slid open. He hesitated with ast little smile, the kind of thing men do when they think they’ll see you again.


    “You won’t like what happens if you keep standing in other people’s rooms,” I said softly.


    He swallowed. “Whose rooms?”


    I didn’t answer. The doors closed on his face.


    I didn’t say her name. Didn’t need to.


    He was already a problem in motion. And I was the hand that would pin him to a wall when the time came.


    I stepped into the second elevator. I took it to the lobby, walked outside. The ports were leaking. Something to feed the fire inside me until I could put my fist through the right person.


    I texted Luca: Measured. Move him.


    He sent back two: Already moving.


    I smiled and I headed for the docks.