I got dragged off campus for this shit?

Tristan stared at the flat-screen bolted to the wall, his finger drumming an impatient staccato against the imported agarwood of the boardroom table—a table worth more than his car and about as warm as the man on the screen was about to be.

He’d been pulled out of a perfectly good poker game for this. The only explanation offered by his security detail had been the ever-ominous, “Your father wants to see you.” No context. No warning. Just obedience, wrapped in a tailored suit.

He’d at least expected the decency of a face-to-face after wasting an hour in a jet to Geneva. Then the drive. Then the security dramatics.

All of that… just for his father to dial in from the comfort of home. Leaving Tristan sat alone in the offshore office like a joke with a very expensive punchline.

It was already 8 p.m. Not that it mattered. Patrick Vale’s schedule had always been the only one that counted.

The screen flickered—and there he was.

Patrick Vale filled the frame with the same cold authority he filled boardrooms with, his expression unreadable, as if he were speaking to a shareholder instead of his own son.

Tristan hadn’t been home in two years—not once had Patrick bothered to be in the same room as him since he left for university.

And apparently, even now… virtual was good enough.

Tristan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, adopting the same polished indifference his father wore like armour. A lazy, crooked smirk tugged at his mouth.

“Yo, big man,” he drawled, irritation smothered beneath swagger. “Missed ya.”

Patrick steepled his fingers and leaned toward the screen.

Tristan tilted his head. The silence alone was a confession—this wasn’t a courtesy call.

When his father finally spoke, it wasn’t to ask how are you? His voice carried a different weight to it. It wasn’t the boardroom version that Tristan was used to. It was something colder.

“There’s been a threat against the family, Tristan. It will likely result in nothing—or an arrest. But until then, you’ll be assigned a new security detail.”

Tristan’s brow shot up. A threat?

His first instinct was to laugh, because this wasn’t new. It never was.

The last “threat” had turned out to be posturing from a rival firm—empty intimidation tactics aimed at spooking the Vera Group out of a deal. But that hadn’t stopped his father from locking his childhood inside a moving fortress. Two armed guards. Always watching. Always breathing down his neck for six months straight.

He ate with an audience. Slept with company. Even taking a piss had a procedure.

He’d been twelve at the time.

And now? Now he’d finally scraped out a life of his own.

Tristan straightened, eyes hardening as he scoffed.

“You’re joking, right?”

A beat.

“I’m not parading around campus with a pair of human security cameras strapped to my ass.”

Patrick’s gaze slid pointedly past Tristan toward the frosted glass door behind him, and that was when it clicked.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Tristan threw his arms up, a sharp, offended laugh tearing out of him as he twisted in his chair. The door chose that exact second to glide open—smooth, silent, dramatic as hell.

Of course.

His father’s voice cut through the speakers before Tristan could even process what his eyes were seeing, calm and merciless.

“Get to know each other,” Patrick said coolly. “You’ll be working closely with her for the foreseeable future, Tristan.”