The applause that follows feels like the nail in the coffin. Scott's gaze, when it finds Nate and Lydia, carries all the warmth of a snake sizing up prey. Jake follows as Scott descends, but my attention is locked on Nate. He's a statue carved from tension and spite, every muscle wound so tight he might shatter at a touch.

This isn't just a celebration anymore—it's ground zero, and the Sullivans are nuclear.

The moment Scott exits, Lydia transforms—her gentle demeanor crystallizing into something dangerous. She tracks him like a lioness stalking wounded prey, each step carrying the weight of twenty years of buried rage. Nate stands motionless, as if movement might detonate him. His fists are clenched white-knuckled, tendons straining beneath skin. Ten eternal seconds pass before he follows, trailing storm clouds in his wake.

"I need to go," I say quickly, chair scraping marble like a warning bell.

"Call if you need backup!" Camilla's worried voice chases after me.

The hallway beyond swallows the ballroom's noise into plush carpeting. Nate stands ahead like a sentinel, staring at patio doors, shoulders rigid with barely contained fury. I approach cautiously, taking his hand between mine like something precious and volatile.

"They're fighting," he says, voice rumbling like thunder before lightning. Rage radiates from him in waves hot enough to burn, his body coiled tight as a spring. This isn't just anger, it's muscle memory—the response of a boy forced to become a warrior in his own home.

"You should go." His words are sharp edges wrapped in velvet.

"I'm not leaving you, Nate."

"Nora, please." His hazel eyes are battlefields of pain and pride.

"No." My voice rings with unexpected steel. His gaze cuts into mine like a blade seeking purchase. "I'm with you. No more hiding."

Something in him softens for a fraction of a second and his fingers tighten around mine.

Then Lydia's voice shatters everything.

"You're unbelievable, Scott!"

The sound ignites Nate like a match to gasoline. He bolts toward the patio, his hand tearing from mine.

"Nate!" My heart lurches after him as he crosses the threshold into gathering tempest.

I follow to find Scott advancing on Lydia like a shark scenting blood, his smirk a crown of thorns.

"A congratulations would have been nice, or is that asking too much?"

"Congratulations?" Lydia's voice quivers like a bowstring pulled too tight, each word poisoned with twenty years of venom. "You promised, Scott. You promised to leave Jake out of this."

Scott's expression remains unchanged, but his eyes gleam with something darker than triumph—the satisfied glitter of a puppet master watching his strings dance.

"Jake made his own decision, Lydia. He's a grown man. Or are you forgetting that? You already babied your first born, you're not tarnishing Jake."

"You twisted him into this! Manipulated him!" Her voice rises like gathering thunder. "You're poisoning him, just like you've poisoned everything else you've touched."