Page 161 of Shots & Echoes

His voice cut through the silence like a blade, low and precise. “Chris came to me. Told me everything. You and Evans. The fight. The fucking disaster you’ve created—again.”

A slow exhale burned through my chest as I crossed my arms, every muscle locking down tight. The storm was already inside me, twisting, seething—but my father’s voice stoked it into something bigger, something barely contained beneath my skin.

I met his gaze head-on, but that only made it worse. The disappointment there was sharper than any hit I’d ever taken. I had seen that look before—back when I lost everything.

When I ruined everything.

The memory sank its teeth into me, a ghost of the last time I had let him down. Of the moment I stopped being his prodigy and became his burden instead.

Not again.

“What do you want me to say?” I bit out, my voice tight, barely controlled. “That I regret it? That I’d take it back?” I scoffed, shaking my head. “I don’t.”

His silence stretched, loaded with expectation—waiting for me to crack, waiting for me to give him the answer he wanted. But I was done giving him that power.

“Knox.” His tone dropped, a razor’s edge wrapped in something dangerously close to concern. “This isn’t just about you anymore. It’s about her future too.”

Her.

Iris’s name wasn’t even spoken, but I felt it land in my chest like a gunshot. My pulse kicked up, my heart pounding hard against my ribs as I fought the instinct to react. To defend. To claim.

“She’s tough,” I said instead, my voice flat but edged with something raw. “She can handle herself.”

His eyes sharpened. “But can you?” He leaned in slightly, never breaking eye contact. “Can you handle this? Or are you going to drag her down with your bullshit?”

My fists clenched. That twisted something deep inside me, sending a surge of heat through my veins.

He didn’t get it. He didn’t fucking get it.

I wasn’t dragging her down—I was holding her up.

“I’m not dragging anyone down,” I shot back, my control slipping. I was losing my grip on this conversation. On the way my father had always known how to tear me apart from the inside out.

He exhaled sharply, running a hand over his jaw before fixing me with that same cold, cutting stare. “You’re losing control.”

And for the first time, I wondered if he was right.

The bedroom door creaked open, and there she was—wrapped in my shirt, bare legs peeking out beneath the hem, hair a wild mess from sleep. She looked so fucking beautiful it hurt. Sunlight poured in behind her, tracing the edges of her figure like something out of a dream.

But Callahan’s gaze cut through the room like a blade.

“Jesus Christ…”

The words landed like a gunshot.

The air turned sharp, thick with unspoken accusations as my father’s stare locked onto Iris. I felt it—his disappointment, his disbelief, his fury—all of it slamming into me at once, a storm I couldn’t outrun.

He wasn’t just seeing her. He was seeing the scandal. The headlines. The wreckage of what this could become. He saw a girl meant for more than this—more than me—standing in the center of a disaster she didn’t even fully realize she had stepped into.

And maybe that was the worst part.

But then she moved.

Iris stepped forward, spine straight, chin high, unapologetic. No shrinking. No shame. The fire in her eyes burned right through my father’s judgment, and when she spoke, her voice was steady, unwavering.

“Sir, with all due respect… you’re wrong.”

The room fucking stilled.

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