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Hank felt his jaw tighten. “Don’t.”

“I do hope the attention hasn’t been too overwhelming for him. Young men like that—” Clancy made a show of searching for the right word. “So fragile, really. So easily broken.”

“I said, don’t.”

“I’m merely expressing concern.” The smile widened, revealing a row of perfectly capped teeth—expensive and false, like everything else about him. “He seemed like such a sweet thing in that photograph. Those big blue eyes. I can see why you’d be tempted.”

The hallway seemed to narrow. Hank was aware, distantly, of people passing—staffers, tourists, a group of high school students on a tour. The ordinary sounds of a Monday morning in the United States Capitol.

“Though between us,” Clancy continued, leaning closer, close enough that Hank could smell his cologne—something expensive and cloying. “I prefer them a little more experienced. Less likely to get attached. Less likely to cause…problems.”

“Are we done here?”

“Nearly.” Clancy’s voice dropped lower. “I’m just wondering what exactly you’re getting out of the arrangement. Because a boy like that—with that pretty mouth—” His smile turned ugly. “Well, I imagine he earns his keep.”

The punch happened before Hank knew he was throwing it.

One moment Clancy was smirking at him, and the next Hank’s fist was connecting with his jaw—a solid, satisfying crack that sent something white and expensive arcing through the air before it skittered across the marble. Clancy’s head snapped back. His body followed, stumbling into the wall and sliding down it.

For one breath—maybe two—Hank felt nothing but satisfaction. Pure and clean and absolutely wrong. Clancy was on the floor. Clancy had stopped talking. And Hank’s hand hurt in a way that felt like justice.

Then the screaming started.

A woman’s voice, high-pitched and shocked. Running footsteps. Someone shouting for security. Clancy was slumped against the wall, hand pressed to his face, blood trickling from his lip. His mouth gaped where the bridgework had been.

“You saw that!” Clancy’s voice was slurred but raised to carry. “Everyone saw that! He assaulted me!”

Hank stood frozen, his throbbing hand still raised, the adrenaline draining as fast as it had surged. Around him, a crowd was gathering—Capitol Police pushing through, tourists gaping, phones raised.

Phones.

The thought cut through his shock like ice water. Of course, there were phones. There were always phones. And security cameras.

“Senator Fortner.” A Capitol Police officer materialized at his elbow, voice carefully neutral. “I need you to come with me, sir.”

“Of course.” His voice sounded distant. “Of course.”

He let himself be led away, not looking back at Clancy, not looking at the crowd or the phones or any of it. His hand throbbed in time with his heartbeat. His mind had gone blank, wiped clean by the enormity of what he’d done.

He’d thrown away everything.

And the worst part—the part that made him want to laugh or scream—was that he didn’t regret it.

Frannie found him in her hideaway an hour later.

He was sitting on the small sofa with a bag of ice pressed to his knuckles, a glass of bourbon untouched on the table beside him. She closed the door and studied him for a long moment.

“Well,” she said. “I wondered when that key would come in handy.”

“They let me go after forty-five minutes of questioning. Clancy declined to press charges.”

“Of course he did. Pressing charges means testifying under oath about exactly what he said.” Frannie crossed to the sideboard and poured herself a bourbon. “He’s not that stupid.”

She settled into the chair across from him. “You look like hell.”

“That line’s getting old.”

“You punched Clancy Howard in front of a tour group.”