Chapter 36: The beginning of war
The bourbon spilled first—warm and biting, seeping into the cuff of his shirt and bleeding across the corner of the contract displayed on-screen—but the blood followed soon after, threading in thin, precise lines between his fingers.
He didn’t flinch.
Instead, with a motion as fluid as it was practiced, he reached for the monogrammed handkerchief folded neatly in his breast pocket and began to wipe the blood from his palm—slowly, with the same elegance one might use to dust ash from a lapel, not hurried, not angry, just... finished.
Then he returned to the tablet.
And that was when he saw it.
Not loud. Not flagged. Not even particularly well hidden.
Secondary Custodial Transfer Clause.
If the omega fails to produce a viable heir by the age of twenty-five, full rights of contract—including bodily custody, reproductive access, and relocation authority—shall pass to the designated secondary party (see Appendix II: Codename Faceless Agatha).
Faceless Agatha.
Not a title. Not a noble house. Not even a person, as far as the archives showed. Just a placeholder, the kind that meant whoever it was had bought their anonymity with enough power to bury legal markers and still sit at the negotiating table.
Someone who didn’t want Lucas seen. Someone who didn’t want credit—only access. And someone desperate enough to wait for more than ten years for him.
His fingers hovered over the tablet screen, the glass glowing faintly beneath the low light, lines of clinical cruelty still staring back at him in cold, unblinking font—and in that moment, Christian understood something about Misty he hadn’t before, something that slipped past all the cleverness and vanity and social silk she wrapped herself in like armor: she was far more dangerous than he had ever believed.