Tristan Blackwood was a man who lived by a code of absolute, military-grade discipline, yet even the most fortified heart has a singular point of structural weakness. For him, that weakness was a woman named Summer Brooks. She was his anchor in the turbulent, high-stakes social waters of The Capital, a woman who preferred the quiet management of an upscale university lounge to the predatory glare of the city’s boardrooms. The lounge was meant to be a neutral territory, a sanctuary of leisure that existed far outside the reach of the Blackwood family’s corporate wars. However, tonight, that sanctuary had been systematically dismantled.
The evening had begun with the jarring, mechanical strobe of police cruisers reflecting off the lounge’s tinted glass. It wasn't a routine inspection; the a
