My fingers curled around his. “So what do we do?”
Luke looked back toward the dark water. When his gaze returned to mine, something in it had focused. “We stop reacting.” The words landed quietly. “We watch,” he continued. “We document everything. Every call. Every email. Every conversation.”
I studied his face. “To prove what they’re doing?”
“Not just that.”
The wind shifted across the water, pushing his jacket lightly against his shoulders.
“People who move this carefully are always hiding something,” he went on. “Pressure like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It means they have their own vulnerabilities.”
Understanding began to settle slowly. “So we wait for them to slip.”
Luke’s gaze held mine. “Yes.”
The single word carried quiet certainty.
“They’re digging at our futures,” he continued. “Which means somewhere in all of this they’re leaving fingerprints. And when we find them—we stop defending ourselves.”
“We turn it back on them.”
The ocean rolled in behind him, steady and relentless. Standing there with his hand around my waist and the wind off the water pressing against us.
This wasn’t going to end quietly. Whoever had started this believed they could dismantle our futures without ever showing their face.
But Luke wasn’t the kind of person who stayed on defense for long.
Something shifted inside me. Not fear. Resolve.
The ocean rolled steadily behind us, waves breaking against the shore in a rhythm older than everything happening around us.
The pressure had begun. The quiet campaign against our futures was already moving.
Whoever had started this believed doubt would break us apart. They had miscalculated the one thing Luke and I refused to surrender—each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LUKE
Isaw the cars before I even turned into the drive. Three dark SUVs sat in front of the house, engines still running beneath the glow of the exterior lights. Their placement blocked half the circular drive, forcing me to slow the moment I pulled in.
Government plates. I gripped the steering wheel hard. Adriana had been talking to the feds. I’d known the moment she stepped forward that something inside King Enterprises would start collapsing.
I stepped out of the SUV and moved toward the entrance, hockey bag still slung over my shoulder. The pavement muffled my footsteps as I approached the steps.
The front door stood open. Voices carried out into the night air. Something serious was unfolding.
Two men in dark suits stood just inside the foyer. Federal agents. Their posture was immediately recognizable—calm, unhurried, completely uninterested in the fact that they were standing inside one of the most powerful homes in Blackwood.
I slowed before crossing the threshold and stepped inside. Lorne’s voice carried the cold confidence of someone used to controlling every room he entered.
The foyer had become the center of the storm. Dad stood near the base of the staircase, shoulders squared, his features tight with anger.
Mom stayed out of the way a few feet behind him beside the marble console table, perfectly composed despite the tension gathering in the room.
Across from them, the agents held their ground with quiet authority. Lorne stood between them, tall and broad-shouldered, his presence filling the foyer in a way that made the room feel smaller. His custom-tailored suit tried to civilize the brutal edge in him, but it never quite succeeded. “This is completely unacceptable,” he argued as I stepped farther into the room. “You do not simply walk into a private residence and begin making accusations without evidence.”
The lead agent didn’t raise his voice. “We’re executing a warrant.” He held the document in one hand. The words carried across the foyer with quiet finality.