Page 51 of Submitting to Daddy
“Save it for the trial,” the one on my right mutters. “Assuming you even get one.”
I look out the window, heart hammering. The city whizzes past in a blur, every building flickers like a countdown. FBI Headquarters looms in the distance, and I know they’re waiting to make an example out of me.
I’ve seen war. Dealt with betrayal. My life is riddled with bullets, blood, and death. I’ve made choices that haunt me—that will plague my soul for the rest of eternity.
But nothing—not a single moment in my violent, vicious life—compares to what I felt watching the FBI drag Madison from me. Barefoot. In nothing but my fucking shirt. Cuffed and trembling. Treating her like she was nothing. And I couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop them.
The moment the last of them stepped into the elevator and the door closed on the cab, the silence in the penthouse was deafening. I stood in the foyer—among the splinters of the door frame—and all I could do was clench my fists until it physically pained me.Theytook her from me.
My chest heaves, and I can’t catch my breath. Running upstairs, I dial Enzo as I hastily change my clothes. Despite the early hour, he answers on the first ring as I’m pulling on my jeans. “Where the fuck are you?” I growl.
“Grabbing an iced coffee down the street. What’s going on?”
“They took Madison.” I loop the belt through my pants and tear a shirt from the hanger. “Feds. Full tactical raid. They came for her.”
“Fuck!” Enzo exclaims angrily. “Why?”
“Obstruction. Tampering. Murder of Frankford.”
“The fuck?”
“I need every fucking lawyer we have on speed dial at the penthouse in the next twenty minutes. Now.”
“I’m on it.”
I hang up and pace the kitchen floor, adrenaline pumping hard enough to make my hands shake, calling in every favor I have to see how legit these charges are against Madison.
Twenty-six minutes later, the kitchen is littered with suits. Four of our top criminal defense attorneys sit in front of me, folders open, pens scribbling as they attempt to piece together the legal equivalent of a triage tent.
“She stopped providing intel to the FBI weeks ago,” I snarl.
One of the lawyers, a balding man named Reuben, lifts a brow. “Did she ever make anyformaldocumentation of her resignation?”
I grind my teeth. “I don’t fucking know.”
“Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help us much if she didn’t submit it on paper,” another lawyer mutters. “From a legal standpoint, the FBI still sees her as one of their own. A rogue agent. One who killed one of them.”
“She didn’t kill Frankford,” I growl.
“Doyouknow that?”
My eyes flash to the young guy we put on retainer a few weeks back. He’s fresh out of law school and apparently stupid enough to say shit that’s going to get him thrown off the terrace.
“I know,” I snap. “I can pull the feed at the club if you need me to fucking prove it to you. She clocked out and had two security guys drive her home hours before the last swipe of Frankfort’s credit card.”
“I know that’s true,” Enzo adds quietly, “but perception is everything right now. And from their side? She’s a Fed who ghosted her handler and disappeared immediately after he vanished.”
The air in the room thickens.
Reuben leans forward. “We need to make one thing crystal clear, Mr. King. If the FBI is charging her with obstruction and tampering, that’s bad enough. But if they’re trying to pin Frankford’s murder on her?—”
“They’re not trying,” Nikolai interrupts. “Theyare.”
“Then you need to prepare for the worst.”
“I’m not letting them bury her.”
“No one’s suggesting you should,” Reuben responds evenly. “But if this goes federal—and trust me, unless we pull a legalHail Mary, itwill—we’re going to need more than emotional declarations. We’ll need real evidence. A paper trail. Something that discredits their timeline or their assumption of guilt.”
