The night had teeth.
Rain licked the glass of Knight Tower in restless streams, carving silver veins across the city's reflection.
Alexander stood before it, one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around a tumbler of untouched scotch. It wasn't the drink he needed, it was restraint.
Below, the city breathed in lights and movement, unaware that its king had gone to war.
He'd seen the footage three hours ago.
Selene's car boxed in. The twins screaming faintly in the background. Tires squealing. Shadows moving. The whole thing over in twenty-seven seconds, but twenty-seven seconds was enough to unmake reason.
He replayed it once.
Then once more.
Then he shut it off, because he couldn't stand the sound of fear in their voices.
Now, the screens before him glowed with faces and names. Men and women who thought they could touch what was his.
He spoke without looking back.
"Damian."
His assistant stood at attention near the door, soaked from the storm, face tight. "Sir?"
"I want every name connected to the attempt. Directly or indirectly. Contractors. Shell companies. Anyone who moved a cent in the last seventy-two hours."
Damian hesitated. "You think this wasn't random?"
Alexander turned, eyes like winter caught in human form. "Nothing around me is random."
The silence that followed was a kind of oxygen deprivation, suffocating, absolute.
He walked to his desk, the steps measured, the sound of polished soles echoing like a heartbeat in the vast office. Every movement felt surgical. Controlled violence wrapped in civilization.
"Victoria Hayes," he said quietly, almost to himself.
Her name slid out like a verdict.
Damian's head lifted. "You think she's…"
"She's on the board. She's desperate. And she knows how to make a point without touching a gun."
He sat, leaning back, the city lights drawing gold bars across his face.
"She wants control of Knight Holdings. She's been bleeding whispers into the market for months—'Knight's distracted,' 'Knight's reckless,' 'Knight's protecting a liability.'"
His mouth hardened. "Now she's made it personal."
Damian's voice softened, careful. "What do you want me to do, sir?"
Alexander's eyes flicked toward the storm outside. "I want her silence bought, then broken."
Damian blinked. "Sir?"
"She'll think I'm paying her off. Let her. Then leak the records, her hidden subsidiaries, her offshore accounts. Quietly. To the board first. Then the press."
"That will ruin her."
"She tried to touch what's mine." He rose, voice low, steady. "Ruin is mercy."
By dawn, the machine was in motion.
Legal teams awakened to encrypted files already waiting in their inboxes.
Anonymous reports arrived at financial regulators, laced with just enough truth to ignite suspicion.
And by the time Victoria's lawyer called for a "private discussion," the markets had begun to whisper.
Alexander didn't answer the call. He was already at the hospital, where Selene sat between two small beds, Zane and Zara still pale, asleep from exhaustion.
She didn't look up when he entered, but he didn't expect her to. Her eyes were fixed on the twins, her hand gently smoothing Zara's hair, as if her touch alone could ward off the world.
He stopped at the doorway, watching her in silence.
There was a bandage on her arm, a small cut from the shattered car window. He noticed it immediately. It lodged somewhere under his ribs.
"Are they hurt?" he asked. His voice was quieter than it had been in years.
She shook her head, still not facing him. "No. Just scared."
He nodded once. "Good."
She finally turned then, eyes sharp despite the dark circles beneath them. "This is your world, isn't it? People getting hurt to make a point."
He met her gaze. "No one will touch you again."
"That's not what I asked."
He looked at her for a long moment. The truth, when it came, was simple. "I warned you once. Everything that touches me gets a target painted on it. You didn't believe me."
She rose, anger rippling beneath exhaustion. "They're children, Alexander!"
"Yes," he said softly, "and that's why the people responsible will remember their names when they pray."
By midday, the first domino fell.
Victoria's private messages leaked, her disparaging comments about board members, her threats to "destroy Knight's reputation," her plan to push Selene's identity into the press.
Alexander watched it unfold from his office, unblinking.
The world that had once bowed to Victoria now began to devour her.
The phones rang. The board met without her. Her shares plummeted.
He didn't smile. Vengeance didn't give him pleasure, it gave him silence.
When Damian returned hours later, his voice carried the edge of disbelief.
"Sir, they're saying she's gone into hiding. The press is calling it corporate sabotage."
Alexander only replied, "Good. Let them call it whatever they want. I call it consequence."
He wasn't finished.
Every journalist who'd ever whispered his name with disdain received a different story now, leaked from "an anonymous insider."
Knight, the man who never blinked. Knight, the businessman who destroyed those who crossed him, but loved two children more than his fortune.
A myth began to bloom in the very ashes of scandal: The ruthless man with a heart no one could touch but one woman and two small shadows.
It wasn't PR. It was prophecy.
Selene, reading the headlines days later, stared at her phone in disbelief.
"He's turning this into a story," she murmured. "He's using us."
Across the room, Alexander looked up from his laptop. "I'm protecting what's mine."
She frowned. "By feeding the wolves?"
"No." His tone was sharp. "By teaching them which throat to bite next time."
Their eyes locked across the quiet. He saw her fear, her confusion, her anger, and something else, something dangerously close to belief.
The days that followed were calm in the way a battlefield is calm after smoke.
Selene stayed mostly in the twins' room. He gave her space, though he found himself pausing outside their door more often than logic allowed.
He heard laughter sometimes, light, unguarded. Zane's voice blending with Zara's, Selene's softer, the sound pulling at him with maddening precision.
In his office, the world recalibrated itself around him.
The company's shares steadied. The board bent. Victoria was a ghost.
But the silence inside him didn't feel like victory. It felt like standing over the ruins of something no one else could see.
Damian entered quietly one night, placing a file on his desk.
"All threats neutralized," he said. "Security increased. Media under control."
Alexander nodded. "And the source of the attack?"
Damian hesitated. "It was traced to one of Hayes's shell companies. But…"
"But?"
"There was another investor, someone who authorized the transfer. Someone closer."
Alexander looked up slowly. "Who."
Damian's throat worked. "Mr. Knight… it was your cousin. Tristan Vale."
The silence that followed was colder than the storm outside.
He rose, walking to the window again.
The city glittered below, his empire, built on iron and precision.
And now, betrayal lived inside it.
His reflection looked back at him: the same calm face, the same steady eyes. Only the stillness was different, tighter, darker, unyielding.
"Prepare the legal teams," he said finally. "Freeze his assets. Pull every project tied to his name. Quietly."
Damian nodded, already pale. "And if he fights back?"
Alexander's voice was ice and certainty.
"Then he'll learn the same lesson as the rest: No one wages war on my blood without paying in their own."
Later that night, he returned home.
The lights were dim. The twins asleep again. Selene sat by the window, her hair loose, a blanket over her knees. She looked up as he entered, her eyes soft and wary.
"You've been gone all day," she said.
"I've been ending it."
"Ending what?"
"The threat."
She studied him for a long time, as if trying to read what violence looked like when contained in a man's suit.
"And what does it cost you, Alexander, to keep us safe?"
He stepped closer, stopping only when he could feel the warmth of her breath.
"Everything I don't care about."
Her voice dropped. "And what do you care about?"
He didn't answer. The air between them thickened, something unspoken and trembling. His hand lifted slightly, then fell before it reached her.
Instead, he said only, "Go to sleep. You're safe now."
And as he walked away, her whisper followed him, soft and breaking against the quiet.
"Safe isn't what I feel when you're like this."
He paused at the door. Didn't turn.
Because the truth was, neither did he.
At midnight, his phone buzzed. A message, untraceable.
You can't protect them forever, Knight.
Every empire falls from within.
The screen dimmed, the city lights flickered against the glass, and Alexander Knight smiled, a thin, terrible smile.
"Then let the fall begin."