She's with Xander right now. After-school pickup, then homework, then whatever ridiculous game they're playing this week. She's safe. She's not here. She doesn't know this man is in my chambers threatening to rip her from everything she knows.
I can't breathe. I can't—
Three steps to the door. Maybe four. I could run.
But I won't move. I know this dance. Stay still. Don't provoke. Wait for it to pass.
Except it won't pass. Not this time. He's not going away. He's standing in my chambers, in my courthouse, threatening my daughter, and I'm locked in a pattern I learned almost a decade ago when running only made things worse.
His hand lifts again, reaching for my face, and my vision tunnels. The room shrinks to just him and me and the space between us that's disappearing too fast.
The door opens.
"Ready to—"
Cole's voice cuts off. I watch his face change in real time, the easy expression he wears when it's just us draining away like water through cracks as he takes in the scene. Me pinned against the bookshelf. Adrian's hand suspended mid-reach.
What's left is cold. Empty. The kind of empty that comes before violence.
Not toward me.The thought surfaces with absolute certainty.Whatever's about to happen, it will never be toward me.
Grazie a Dio.
The relief hits so hard my knees nearly buckle.
"Step away from her."
His voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, and somehow that's worse than any shout. This is a man who's already made his decision. Everything else is just formality.
Adrian turns, that diplomatic smile still plastered across his face. "Ah. The bodyguard."
He doesn't step away.
Cole goes completely still. Not frozen, butcoiled, like a spring compressed past its tolerance, like a fault line in the last second before it slips.
Then he moves.
One moment in the doorway and the next his hand is wrapped around Adrian's throat, spinning him away from me and slamming him into the bookshelf so hard that law books cascade down around them like an avalanche. Constitutional Law. Federal Procedure. The volumes about justice that couldn't protect me falling like dominoes.
"Cole—"
My voice comes out broken and barely there.
He doesn't look at me. His eyes stay locked on Adrian, and I've never seen Cole like this.
This is something else entirely. This is what lives underneath all that control.
Adrian chokes out words around Cole's grip, still trying to grin through it like this is all a misunderstanding between gentlemen. "You don't know who you're dealing with. Diplomatic immunity. International—"
Cole's fist connects with Adrian's nose.
The crunch of cartilage sounds wet and loud. Blood sprays across the wall, across Cole's white shirt, and across my certificates hanging in their frames. Adrian's head snaps back.
Stop him. You're a federal judge. This is assault happening in your chambers. In a federal building. You took an oath.
I don't move.
I watch Cole's fist connect with Adrian's mouth and split his lip wide open. Those same hands, the ones that held me like I was sacred and traced every inch of my body like I was precious, are destroying the man who destroyed me.