Each time, I remain still.
Lenrog stands near the head of the table, jacket removed, white shirt immaculate, sleeves fastened by gold cufflinks. He looks less like a crime lord now and more like a disappointed patriarch carved from marble and regret. There is no theatrical fury in him. That absence makes Ron’s trembling anger look even younger.
“You will apologize,” Lenrog says.
Ron laughs, but the sound is thin and ugly. “To her?”
“To Miss Mercy. To Kauss. To your men, if you still have enough intelligence to understand why.”
“My men?” Ron’s eyes flash. “They followed me.”
“They followed stupidity into my restaurant.”
“They’re loyal.”
“They are frightened boys in costume.” Lenrog’s voice remains quiet, and somehow that makes every word worse. “You confuse proximity with loyalty because loyalty requires earning things you have never learned to keep.”
Ron flinches. He hides it poorly.
Evie’s hand moves inside mine, her thumb brushing once over the side of my palm. She is scared. Angry too. Her heartbeat is fast enough that I can hear it beneath the room’s murmured ventilation and the distant music upstairs.
Lenrog looks at his son with something like weary precision. “Begin.”
Ron’s gaze cuts toward Evie.
I feel his hatred before I see it.
He is not defeated. Bruised, yes. Humiliated, certainly. But humiliation in him has not become caution. It has become a buried fuse, still burning toward powder.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The words are flat, bitten off.
Lenrog’s expression does not change. “For what?”
Ron’s jaw clenches so hard I hear teeth grind. “For taking her.”
“And?”
His eyes flick toward me. “For hitting her.”
My grip tightens.
Evie whispers, “Kauss.”
I force my fingers to relax around hers.
Lenrog lifts one brow. “And?”
Ron breathes through his mouth, bruised nose still swollen beneath clean bandaging now. “For disrespecting the bakery.”
Damn him. Even now, he makes it sound like a parking violation.
Evie’s voice cuts through the room, clear and sharp. “You assaulted Darlene.”
Ron looks at her.
For an instant, the mask slips. Not shame. Resentment. He hates that she speaks. Hates that she has a voice in front of his father. Hates that all of this began with her refusing to behave like a frightened civilian beneath his boot.
