The sirens on Lakeshore Drive had already faded, leaving behind only the damp, metallic smell of wet asphalt and cooling rain, but Willow Whitlock could still feel them beating inside her ribs.

“Please—Veto—Mr. Ferrante—I didn't know!” Marcus choked out, tears of genuine terror pooling in his eyes as the oxygen left his lungs. “Take everything! Take the car, take the company, just let me go!”

Veto held him suspended against the stone wall for three agonizingly long seconds, letting the sheer weight of absolute terror sink into the coward’s marrow. Then, with a look of profound disgust, Veto dropped him.

Marcus collapsed onto the damp cobblestones, coughing violently and clutching his bruised throat.

Dante stepped forward smoothly, dropping a single sheet of notarized legal paper and a gold fountain pen onto the ground inches from Marcus’s hand.

“Sign the waiver, Vance,” Dante said casually, adjusting his cuffs. “It releases all future paternity claims, relinquishes any property shared during your tenancy, and grants sole custody of your past debts to a collection agency in Nevada that specializes in very persistent follow-ups.”

Marcus didn't hesitate. He grabbed the pen like a drowning man grabbing a floating timber, frantically scrawling his signature across the bottom of the page before scrambling backward on his hands and knees.

“Get him off my property,” Veto commanded without looking down.

Dante and another operative grabbed Marcus by his jacket and dragged him toward the iron service gates, leaving him gasping on the public sidewalk outside before locking the heavy iron bars with a definitive, ringing clack.

Silence descended upon the courtyard once more.

Willow sat by the terrace doors, her hands resting over her stomach, watching the empty space where the coward had just vanished. The knot that had been twisted tight inside her chest for five long months suddenly, quietly, unraveled.

Veto walked slowly across the cobblestones, stopping a few feet from her chair. The cold fury in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a quiet, steady concern.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice softening.