POV: Liam
I found her outside my father's building, shaking and pale under the harsh glare of streetlights.
Something was wrong. Something was catastrophically, irreparably wrong. Jasmine stood on the sidewalk like she'd forgotten how to move, arms wrapped around herself, mascara streaked down cheeks that had lost all their color.
The golden retriever in me—the one who fixed things, who stayed optimistic, who believed every problem had a solution—went silent. Something older took its place. Something feral.
"Jasmine." I was out of the car before I'd fully stopped it, crossing the distance between us in three strides. "What happened? What did he do?"
She flinched when I touched her arm. Flinched away from me, and the gesture cracked something fundamental in my chest.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't want you to see me like this."
"Tell me." My voice came out harder than I intended. "Tell me what he did."
The story emerged in fragments. Jackson's summons. The silk robe and cigar. His hands in her hair, on her breast, teeth against her neck. The nausea that had been her only escape from whatever he'd planned to take.
Every word was another nail in the coffin of my relationship with my father.
"He said he'd reschedule," Jasmine finished, and her laugh was hollow, broken. "Like I'm an appointment he needs to keep."
I pulled her against my chest, feeling the tremors running through her body. Held her while rage built in my veins like a slow-burning fire, consuming every excuse I'd ever made for the man who raised me.
"I'm taking you home," I said against her hair. "And then I'm going to handle this."
"Liam, don't—"
"Don't what? Don't protect you? Don't finally stand up to the man who's been terrorizing everyone I love?" I pulled back, cupping her face in my hands. "I've watched him hurt people my entire life. I've made excuses, looked away, told myself it wasn't my business. That ends tonight."
I drove her to the villa. Tucked her into bed with gentle hands that wanted to destroy something. Pressed a kiss to her forehead and promised I'd be back soon.
Then I went to war.
Jackson's apartment door was unlocked—arrogance or invitation, I couldn't tell. Didn't care. I pushed through into the opulent space where my father had tried to assault the woman I loved, and found him exactly where I expected: standing by the windows with a fresh cigar, gazing out at the city like he owned it.
"Get out," Jackson said without turning. His voice was calm, conversational. "You're not welcome here."
"Neither are you." I crossed the room until I stood close enough to see my reflection in the glass beside him. "Not in my company. Not in my city. Not anywhere near the woman I love."
He turned then, and the smile on his face was almost pitying. "The woman you love?" A low laugh rumbled from his chest. "You love a whore who auctioned her virginity online. A woman so desperate for money she spread her legs for the highest—"
My fist connected with his face before the sentence finished.
The crack of bone meeting bone was satisfying in a way that scared me. Pain exploded across my knuckles, but I barely felt it—too consumed by the primal satisfaction of finally, finally making him bleed.
Jackson stumbled back, hand flying to his mouth. When he pulled it away, blood smeared his palm, dripped from a split lip onto his pristine silk robe. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at me with something that might have been admiration.
"There he is." His tongue swept across the wound, tasting copper. "Finally showing some spine. I was starting to think you were defective."
"Stay away from her."
"Or what?" Jackson straightened, squaring his shoulders like the punch had been nothing more than a mild inconvenience. "You'll hit me again? Call the police?" He laughed, dabbing at his lip with casual disdain. "Go ahead. Tell them your father touched your girlfriend. Tell them Liam Blackwood, industry darling, assaulted a seventy-three-year-old man in his own home. See how that plays in the press."
"I don't give a damn about the press."
"You should. The press is the only thing keeping your precious company afloat right now." He moved to the bar, poured himself whiskey with steady hands, as if his son hadn't just split his face open. "The lawsuit, the scandal, that little stunt at the press conference—you're hemorrhaging reputation by the day. And who do you think is holding the investors together? Who's been on the phone with the board, reassuring them that Cadence Records isn't about to implode?"
"I don't need your help."
"You've always needed my help. You, Asher, Finn—none of you would exist without me. The company, the money, the name that opens every door in this industry." Jackson took a long sip, watching me over the rim. "I own this family, Liam. I own the company. I own you. And anyone who spreads her legs for my sons? I own her too."
The words landed like blows, each one designed to remind me of every way he'd controlled my life. The trust funds he could revoke. The board seats he could manipulate. The legacy he'd built and could burn down just as easily.
But something had shifted in me. Something that started when Jasmine flinched away from my touch, when I saw the woman I loved reduced to a trembling mess by a man who shared my blood.
"You're wrong," I said quietly.
"Am I?"
"You think money and power are the same thing." I stepped closer, close enough to see the burst blood vessels in his eyes, the liver spots he'd paid surgeons to minimize, the decay underneath the expensive grooming. "But you're alone, Father. You've pushed away everyone who ever cared about you. Mom died hating you. Your sons tolerate you because we have to. And when you die no one will mourn you. You'll just be a cautionary tale rich people tell each other at parties."
Something flickered in his expression. Not hurt—I wasn't sure he could feel hurt anymore—but surprise. The realization that his golden boy had finally stopped performing.
"You want a war?" My voice dropped to something deadly quiet, a register I didn't recognize as my own. "Fine. But I promise you, Father—you will lose everything. Starting with me."