Chapter 6 - The Fall of the House of EastonRonan didn't look at Gregor. He didn't look at the pinned gunman.
His pine-green eyes found me instantly, scanning every inch of my body as if searching for invisible wounds. When he saw I was standing unhurt against the kitchen island, the violent tension in his shoulders dropped just a fraction, though the dark storm in his face remained entirely unbowed.
“Get them out of my sight,” Ronan ordered, his voice dangerously low.
Kian grabbed the back of Gregor’s jacket, hauling the unconscious man up by his collar like a sack of garbage, while two operatives hauled the hired gun to his feet. Within seconds, the intruders were dragged out through the service elevator, leaving behind a trail of mud, broken glass, and heavy silence.
Ronan crossed the living room in three long strides.
He didn't say a word. He reached out, his large, warm hands gripping my shoulders, pulling me against his chest with a desperate, crushing intensity that forced the remaining air out of my lungs.
I buried my face in his ruined suit jacket, my hands clutching the fabric as the shock finally broke over me in a wave of shivering exhaustion.
“You’re safe,” Ronan murmured into my hair, his voice rough, vibrating against my ribs. “I told you, Iris. You’re safe.”
“How did you get back so fast?” I whispered, my voice muffled against his chest. “You were at the board meeting...”
“Victoria called me five minutes after I left,” Ronan said, his arms tightening around me as if he never intended to let go. “She saw one of your father’s associates bribing a building superintendent in the parking garage on her way in. We turned the car around before we even hit the loop.”
I let out a shaky, half-hysterical laugh. “Remind me never to cross Victoria Vance again.”
“Consider her on your side,” Ronan replied, a grim smile touching his lips.
Over the next forty-eight hours, the machinery of Ronan Morgan’s empire moved with terrifying, surgical precision.
Gregor Easton was not merely arrested; he was buried under an avalanche of federal indictments—extortion, wire fraud, municipal corruption, and domestic assault. The shell corporations funding his lifestyle were seized, his associates were rounded up across the city, and the apartment where I had spent years hiding in fear was permanently locked down by federal marshals.
By the end of the week, the news cycle had already moved on to the next big corporate scandal, but inside the seventh-floor penthouse, the world had become wonderfully, peacefully small.
Victoria called twice—both times demanding to know when I was going to “stop freeloading and get a real job,” which I took as her own peculiar brand of affection.
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And Kian disappeared for days at a time, handling the loose ends of the cleanup operation with ruthless efficiency.
Which left just the two of us.
