Chapter 4

Wren's POV 

"Do you have any idea what you three have done?"

The man's voice cut through the room like a blade, and every single person straightened at the sound of it. Damian was the first to move, stepping slightly in front of me, his posture shifting from possessive to protective in a single breath.

"Father," Damian said. "You weren't supposed to be back until next week."

"Clearly," the man said, his eyes never leaving me. "Or I would have arrived to find my sons fighting over a stray instead of running my empire."

I stiffened at the word stray, but before I could speak, Kane's hand pressed lightly against my lower back, a silent warning to stay quiet. I ignored it.

"I'm not a stray," I said. "I'm a person your family dragged here against her will."

The older man's eyebrows lifted, something like amusement flickering behind his cold expression. He walked further into the room, his presence filling every corner of it without effort. "She has a voice. Interesting."

"Her name is not stray, and it's not debt girl either," Damian said, his tone sharpening. "Her name is Wren."

I blinked, surprised he even remembered it from the paperwork Adrian had mentioned earlier, let alone chose to defend it now.

The man studied me a moment longer before turning to his sons. "Explain."

Adrian stepped forward first, calm as always. "Her father defaulted on the protection debt. Eleven years unpaid. When Kane located her, protocol required she be brought in."

"Protocol," the father repeated, tasting the word like it disgusted him. "Protocol does not require three grown men to stand around a girl like dogs circling a bone."

Kane's jaw tightened. "We were protecting the family's interest."

"Were you." The father's gaze slid slowly between the three of them, then back to me, sharp and assessing. "Tell me something, Wren. In the short time you have been here, has anyone forced themselves on you? Hurt you? Touched you without permission?"

My throat went dry. "No," I admitted quietly. "But they've made it very clear I don't have a choice in any of this."

"Choice," he said, almost to himself, walking a slow circle around me like he was inspecting something valuable. "There is always a choice. The question is simply how much you're willing to lose by making it."

"That's not comforting."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "It wasn't meant to be."

He stopped in front of me, closer than I expected, studying my face with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "You look like her," he said quietly.

"Like who?"

"Never mind." His expression shuttered instantly, and he turned back to his sons before I could push further. "The vow ceremony. Who authorized it?"

"I did," Damian said, standing his ground despite the weight in his father's stare. "The debt required resolution. The vow was the only option that kept her alive instead of disappeared."

Something shifted in the older man's expression, subtle but unmistakable. "Is that so."

"She would have been killed otherwise," Adrian added. "You know that as well as I do."

The father was quiet for a long moment, his eyes moving between his three sons like he was weighing something none of them could see. Finally he exhaled, low and controlled. "Then the vow proceeds. But not the way you three intended."

"What does that mean?" Kane asked, his voice edged with suspicion.

"It means," the father said, turning to face me fully, "that I will be the one deciding her fate tonight. Not you. Not either of you." His eyes flicked toward Damian and Adrian. "All three of you have clearly lost perspective where she's concerned."

The room went tense in an instant. Damian stepped closer to me, his shoulder brushing mine, an unmistakable message. "She's not a possession to be reassigned."

"Everything in this house is mine to reassign," the father said calmly. "Including the three of you, if I decide your judgment can no longer be trusted."

Kane's hand found my wrist again, firmer this time, grounding. "You're not taking her."

"I'm not asking your permission." The father's voice didn't rise, but something in it made the temperature of the room drop several degrees. "I built this family from nothing. I decide who belongs in it and how."

I looked between the four of them, my heart hammering, the walls of the room suddenly feeling smaller than before. "Can I say something?"

Everyone turned to look at me at once.

"I'm not property," I said, my voice shaking but steady enough to be heard. "I'm not a debt to reassign or a vow to negotiate. I'm a person, and every single one of you keeps forgetting that."

Silence stretched through the room. Then, unexpectedly, the father laughed, low and genuine, the sound completely at odds with everything before it.

"She really does look like her," he murmured, mostly to himself, before turning back to his sons. "Fine. The three of you may keep your claim. For now."

Relief passed through Damian, Kane, and Adrian all at once, though none of them let it show openly.

"But," the father continued, his gaze locking onto mine one final time, his voice dropping into something quieter and far more dangerous, "there's something none of you know yet. Something that changes everything about why she's really here."

"What are you talking about?" Damian asked, his voice tightening.

The father's eyes never left mine as he answered.

"Her father didn't just owe us money," he said. "He owed us a promise made twenty three years ago. And she has no idea she was never dragged here by accident.”