Chapter 22: The First Fall.

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• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 175: Aliana’s POv

  **********************Ghosts in My Skin. The silence wasn’t just silence anymore—it had weight now. A presence. It pressed in from all sides, thick and heavy, like the house itself was holding its breath. I could almost feel it—this quiet tension slithering through the walls, curling in the corners, watching. Not with eyes, but with something colder. Smarter. It wasn’t just quiet. It was waiting. And every breath I managed to take felt like something I had to steal—like I no longer had the right to it. Like the air wasn’t mine anymore, and maybe it hadn’t been for a while. Not after what I’d seen. Not after what I’d done. There was a time I thought silence meant peace. Now I know better. Sometimes, silence is just the space where guilt sits—alive and whispering. --- They’d moved me again. I didn’t know where this place was. Another safe house. Another locked room pretending to be a sanctuary. The walls were painted a pale yellow—meant to calm, to comfort—but it only ma

• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 174: Two steps Ahead

  *****************************Henry’s POV************************ --- I used to believe time was a kind of mercy. That if I just held on long enough, the pain would lose its sharpness. That the weight I carried would somehow feel lighter with each passing year. I thought age would bring distance—that the memories would fade, that the wounds would scab over and stop aching every time I breathed too deep. I told myself healing was inevitable, that one day I’d wake up, and the hurt would feel like it belonged to someone else. But it didn’t. Time didn’t ease anything. It just taught me how to hide it better. How to smile through the ache. How to live around the emptiness instead of in it. And that… that was the cruelest part of all. But tonight, peace feels like a lie. I sat in my private study, the fire crackling low, casting long shadows across the walls. I held a picture in my hand—Liam at ten, wearing a paper crown and chocolate smeared across his cheeks. His mother l

• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 173: The Breaking Point.

  ****************************POV: Morgan************************** --- It was the silence that got to me. Not the news. Not the headlines. Not the whispers from politicians pretending they didn’t see the monster growing under our roof for years. But the silence. The kind that hangs in a room after someone you love stops breathing. I’d heard it the day they told me Sadie fell. I heard it again the night Henry said he couldn’t reach Liam. Now it was back, dragging its cold fingers across the mahogany of my office desk. And I hated it. --- The footage came in a private package—no return address, no name. Just a thumb drive wrapped in thin white paper with my initials written in red ink. It was him. I didn’t need confirmation. Only Liam could mock you and still make it feel like mercy. The footage wasn’t long. Claire, walking the garden. The bracelet was missing. Liz nearby, pretending not to scan the bushes. Then static. A flicker. A shadow. Liam didn’t show his face, but I

• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 172: Blood Debt

  ****************************POV: Liam**************************** --- Pain wasn’t a stranger—I’d known it before. But this… this was something else. This pain didn’t just hurt—it hollowed. It reached places I didn’t know could ache. Not from the bullet wound in my shoulder or the blood soaking through my shirt as the SUV barreled down the gravel path. Not even from the metal digging into my side as Marlo tried to stop the bleeding without killing me in the process. This pain lived deeper. It nested behind my ribs, curled into the silence Claire had left behind. She had the syringe. She had the key. And I had nothing but blood and fury. “Faster,” I rasped. My voice came out low, cracked. The driver didn’t argue. The engine growled louder as we tore through the trees. Marlo didn’t say much either. He was focused on the wound, on keeping me alive. Which was funny, considering I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be. --- “You’re lucky it passed clean,” he sai

• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 171: Vipers and Roses.

  ******************************POV: Claire************************ --- The comm line hissed—then died in my ear. Five seconds of static. A flicker of dread. Rowe’s urgent whisper: “He’s here.” That was all it took for the world to tilt. I didn’t freeze. Training—or desperation—kicked in. My fingers brushed the tiny switch on the bracelet’s band, the silent-alarm button Mack had built. No beep, no flash, just a vibration I felt against my skin. But I had no idea if it reached anyone; Liam had scrambled the channel. The lavender brushed my knees as I pivoted, my eyes sweeping the tree line. Nothing moved except wind and morning haze. Liz was ten paces behind me, pruning shears raised as an improvised weapon, her gaze darting past the roses. Rowe? Invisible in the line of shrubs. Mack? He was supposed to be closest—north edge near the wall. So where was—? A shape detached from shadow. Liam. He crossed the old cobbled path like it belonged to him, boots silent

• The CEO’s Temptation    Chapter 170: The Edge of Control

  *************************POV: Mack****************************** --- We found her sitting on the bed, her eyes too calm. That scared me more than anything else. She wasn’t shaking. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even breathing fast. She just stared down at the bracelet in her palm like it was some strange artifact she didn’t recognize anymore. “I woke up,” she whispered, “and it was on the floor.” I moved first. Crossed the room and took the bracelet from her hand gently. “Did you get up during the night?” Rowe asked, voice low, steady. “No,” she said. “I was asleep the whole time. I swear.” “No window breach,” Liz muttered, scanning the glass from the inside. “No signs of force.” “Nothing on the motion sensors either,” Rowe added grimly. I looked at the bracelet again. The lock was intact. Untouched. He’d been here. Inside this room. While she slept. Close enough to take her. And he hadn’t. Because this was a message. And Claire wasn’t the only on