The grand mahogany doors of the Grand Alder ballroom closed behind them with a heavy, muffled thud, cutting off the collective gasp of four hundred paralyzed socialites.

High-ranking politicians, international investors, and the city’s new elite mingled under soaring glass ceilings, sipping vintage champagne and listening to a live jazz trio.

Sloan stood near a massive marble pillar, wearing a backless crimson silk gown that turned every head in the room. Dante stood beside her, his hand resting possessively on the small of her back, holding court with the mayor of New York.

That was when the heavy glass atrium doors at the far end of the hall swung open.

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

Striding across the polished terrazzo floor was a man in an ill-fitting, rumpled gray suit. His hair was graying and unkempt, his face hollowed out by months behind bars before his high-priced bail attorneys finally managed to spring him on a technicality.

Richard Hayes.

He looked around the glittering ballroom, his eyes bloodshot and desperate, until they locked onto Sloan and Dante standing near the exhibit.

The jazz trio stuttered to a halt. Conversations died instantly.

Richard pushed his way past two security guards, ignoring their warnings, until he stopped ten feet away from his daughter.

“Sloan,” Richard choked out, his voice cracking with a pathetic, manufactured desperation. He held out his hands imploringly. “Sloan, please. You have to help me. They stripped my pension. They took my home. I’m your father—you can’t let them leave me on the street!”

The entire room watched in breathless silence. Politicians averted their eyes; socialites whispered behind their champagne flutes.

Sloan didn't flinch. She didn't look away.

She took a slow sip of her champagne, her expression as cold and smooth as marble.

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Hayes,” Sloan said, her voice carrying clearly across the silent hall. “My father died the day he decided his business partners were worth more than his family’s integrity.”

Richard’s face flushed a violent, mottled purple. Rage flared in his sunken eyes, overriding his desperation.

“You ungrateful little bitch!” Richard screamed, lunging forward with his hand raised to strike her. “I built you! I gave you everything!”

Before Richard’s hand had traveled six inches, Dante moved.

It wasn't a dramatic struggle. It was the swift, terrifying efficiency of a apex predator.

Dante caught Richard’s wrist in a grip of absolute iron, twisting it sharply behind the older man’s back with a sickening pop of a joint. Richard let out a sharp cry of agony, dropping to his knees on the terrazzo floor.

Two of Dante’s tactical guards materialized out of the crowd instantly, grabbing Richard by the shoulders and hauling him upright like a ragdoll.

Dante straightened his lapel, his face carved from dark granite.

“If you ever come within five hundred yards of my wife again, Richard,” Dante whispered, his voice carrying a lethal, bone-chilling promise that made every person in the room stop breathing, “you won't go to a prison cell. You’ll go straight to the bottom of the Hudson.”

Richard, weeping and clutching his broken wrist, was dragged backward out through the glass doors by the guards.

The silence in the ballroom lasted three full seconds.

Then, the jazz trio tentatively picked up their instruments again, and the murmur of polite, terrified conversation resumed.

Sloan exhaled slowly, her chest rising and falling beneath the crimson silk.

Dante turned to her, his dark eyes instantly softening as he looked down at her. He reached out, gently brushing a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear.

“You okay?” Dante asked quietly.

Sloan looked at the spot on the floor where her father had fallen, then up into the eyes of the man who had burned down an empire just to give her the throne.