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The bodyguard pushes, and I back off, barely.

But my hand goes to my back waistband again.

Hook’s neck is corded, his breathing short. “I asked them for her back,” he says, as if it had been the most cordial exchange. “She’ll do better with me. She belongs with me.”

“Does she?” Tink cries. “You barely even know⁠—”

“I know she is a little girl,” he roars. “And I won’t have her growing into a slut like you.”

That’s it. I tighten my grip and draw, and Tink catches me from the corner of her eye—“Pan, don’t!—but it’s too late.

I cock the gun right at Hook’s head.

“Pan.” That’s Blue, low. “Hey.”

The bodyguard springs to life, lunges, but I’m younger, faster, and crack him right on the skull with the grip.

He pile-drives into the floor, nose trickling blood into the pink. Still, but breathing. I re-aim at Hook.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t put his hands up, either. He just stands there, just fucking stands there, and lets me point it at him.

“What?” I say. “You think I won’t?”

Hook smiles, very faintly.

“Not,” he says, “in front of my daughter.”

And—fuck—of all the things, of every single thing he could have said⁠—

I look at Wendy, the kid, cowering by Tink with her fists up by her collarbones and her eyes on the gun and her face still scared, but not of her dad. Not anymore.

She’s scared of me.

Fuck.

Fuck, he’s right.

I lower the gun.

Hook’s smile widens in approval.

“Good boy.”

He turns to Wendy, then, puts his hand out, the normal one. The one that hasn’t paid the ugly price for who he is, what he’s done.

“Come here, princess,” he says, quiet as a bedtime story.

To my surprise, and horror, Wendy nods.

She takes one step, two, away from Tink. Toward her father.

And then she kicks him in the knee.

Not a baby kick or a tantrum. No, this kid drops her weight back on one leg and snaps out the other like she’s in a fucking MMA octagon, and lands it exactly where I have to imagine a tiny Albanian woman has trained her to hit.

Where it hurts.

Hook crumples.