LOGINTwo hundred and twelve dollars. That is all I have to my name. I moved to Miami to save my ruined journalism career. Instead, I ended up sweating inside a forty-pound foam hockey mascot suit just to pay my rent and keep my press credentials alive. Then came the home opener. One empty locker room. Three dangerously elite men. Lucian Voss, the ruthless head coach with eyes like ice. Gavin Steele, the heavily tattooed, quietly terrifying goalie. Zane Cole, the arrogant star forward with a lethal smile. It was supposed to be a catastrophic, one-time mistake. A lapse in judgment I could bury forever. But now, I am staring at a positive test. Triplets. I thought the pregnancy was my biggest problem. I thought I could just walk away. But when a scandal threatens to expose me, these three men do not panic. They do not run. Overnight, they spend nine figures to buy the entire professional hockey franchise. They become my bosses. They lock every exit, terminate my old contracts, and slip a massive diamond onto my shaking finger. I thought they were doing it to protect their unborn children. I thought it was about the scandal. I was wrong. "There were no babies three weeks ago, Malia," Gavin whispers, cornering me in their private penthouse. "We bought the team so no other man could look at you. You were already ours."
View MoreThe skids touched down and the rotor wash flattened the grass in a perfect circle around the helicopter.Dawn was happening all at once. The kind of light that comes up fast over open water, gold and total, hitting the white stone of the estate like it had been waiting all night for permission. The building was enormous and low and built into the landscape like it had grown there. Armed perimeter visible at the tree line but quiet. Disciplined.Safe.I knew it in my body before my mind caught up. Some animal part of me that had been running on cortisol and adrenaline for eighteen hours registered the stillness and simply stopped.My legs gave out when the door opened.Gavin caught me before I reached the ground. He made no comment, asked no question. He simply lifted me with one arm under my knees and one across my back and carried me across the landing pad toward the entrance like the decision had already been made and he saw no reason to revisit it."I can walk," I said."I know," h
Eli laughed.Not the laugh of a man with a gun against his skull. Something colder than that. The sound of someone who had already decided how the story ended and found the journey genuinely amusing."You are going to shoot me," he said. "In front of her. In front of those babies." He let the silence sit for a moment. "Go ahead, then."Lucian did not move."Webb does not want the empire," Eli said. His voice was completely conversational, like he was discussing a trade deal. "He never did. Franchises can be bought and sold. Money can be replaced." He tilted his head forward a fraction, the barrel following. "He wants the bloodline. Those three children are Morgan heirs. The trust structures, the international holdings, the generational assets. Whoever controls the children controls all of it until they come of age." Another pause. "He has attorneys ready. All he needs is a viable custody claim and three men in federal prison to make it stick."The room went very still.Whoever control
The keypad on the other side of the door made a sound like a quiet conversation. Small electronic tones, methodical, patient.He had done this before.I pressed my back against the far wall and forced my voice to come out level. The intercom button was cold under my thumb."Why didn't you find me sooner?" I said. "If you have been watching since Ohio, why wait?"The tones paused."I needed you to be ready," he said. "You were not ready.""Ready for what?""To understand that the people around you were the danger." A brief silence. More tones. "You always trusted too easily, Mali. Even when we were small. I had to remove the variables."My skin went cold."What variables," I said."The job. The city. The man." Another pause. "Derek did not find that evidence on his own. He needed guidance. Direction. Someone to show him where to look and what to build." The tones continued, unhurried. "I gave him the architecture. He supplied the ambition."The room tilted.Derek had not manufactured t
"Tell me what you are walking into."All three of them turned at once.Three weapons dropped to their sides in the same motion, angled down and away, and I watched them perform the fastest controlled stand-down I had seen yet. Lucian stepped in front of the island. Not to block my view. The blueprints were already visible. He just moved toward me the way he always did, putting himself between my body and whatever the threat was, even when the threat was information."You should be in bed," he said."Tell me," I said. "All of it."A pause. The three of them exchanged the look.Then Lucian told me.Webb had been at the fire. Not as a witness. Webb's family had owned the property adjacent to ours and the fire had not been accidental, something investigators had quietly buried when the insurance company involved turned out to share a board member with Webb's first holding company. Eli had not died. He had been pulled from the wreckage by Webb's private security team, taken off the record,












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