“Don’t play innocent. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He did. He absolutely did.
Leo stood, reaching for his wallet to cover her tab. She stopped him with a hand on his wrist—the first time she’d touched him voluntarily since that terrible morning at her shop.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “But, Castellan?”
He looked down at her. At her fierce eyes and the stubborn set of her jaw.
“Thank you. For telling me about Victor. For—” She hesitated. “For not pretending this is all business.”
He wanted to kiss her. The urge was so strong it actually hurt.
Instead, he nodded. He walked out of the brewery before he could do anything stupid. The predator prowled restlessly, unsatisfied with the distance.
But there was work to do. A predator to hunt. A woman’s legacy to recover.
And somewhere in Haven Shores, a traitor who didn’t know that Leo Castellan never made the same mistake twice.
FIFTEEN
JUNIE
The threatening note arrived the morning after Junie agreed to help Leo decode her grandmother’s recipes.
She found it pinned to the back door of Moonrise Mixology with a silver dagger—the kind used in blood magic rituals, the kind that cost a fortune on the black market, the kind that said we’re serious and we have resources.
The message itself was simple. Elegant handwriting on cream-colored paper, like a wedding invitation from hell.
Stop asking questions. Or the next incident won’t be a warning.
Junie stood in the alley behind her shop, Glimmer coiled tightly around her neck, and read the words three times. Her hands didn’t shake. Her voice didn’t waver when she called Wyatt.
But cold dread had settled in her stomach. Fear, sharp and certain.
The “next incident” came six hours later.
She was sortingthrough salvageable inventory in the back room—Wyatt had finally cleared the crime scene, though the shop was still weeks away from reopening—when the ceiling beam gave way.
No warning. No creaking or groaning or any of the sounds a building makes before it tries to kill you. A sudden crack and two hundred pounds of enchanted timber crashed down exactly where she’d been standing three seconds earlier.
Three seconds. That’s how long Glimmer’s warning had given her. The snake had gone rigid, scales flashing emergency red, and Junie had thrown herself sideways on pure instinct.
The beam missed her by inches. Close enough that splinters embedded in her sleeve. Close enough that she could feel the displaced air as it fell.
Close enough that she understood the message.
This wasn’t structural failure. This was attempted murder.
“Absolutely not.”
Theo’s voice carried the weight of alpha authority, the kind that made most people instinctively lower their eyes and agree. Junie was not most people, but even she felt the pressure of his displeasure as he stood in the middle of her ruined shop, arms crossed, pale eyes blazing.
“You’re not staying here,” he continued. “You’re not staying in your apartment. You’re not staying anywhere that isn’t warded to the teeth and surrounded by people who can protect you.”
“I can protect myself?—”
“A ceiling beam almost crushed your skull.” Theo’s lips set in a thin line. “And before you say it was an accident, I’ve had Beck examine the supports. They were sabotaged. Whoever did this knew exactly when to trigger the collapse.”
