Chapter: DOCUMENTATIONOcean's POV Daniel comes on Tuesday and Friday. Those are the days I really work. The rest of the week I’m building everything in my head, turning over every detail, preparing for whatever Daniel brings and what Lilo works through on his laptop while a guard sits in the next room pretending to read a newspaper. Today is Tuesday. Daniel puts the folder on the kitchen table. Guard standing in the doorway like always, door left open. Same routine. “The timestamps,” I say quietly. He slides a page to the top of the stack, legal bullshit on the surface. Underneath, in the margins, in the shorthand we created twenty years ago, the real information. I read it. The access to the secondary node happened three separate times. The timestamps put it on days when the property was running a reduced staff rotation. Days when fewer people were logging movements through the system. Days that were picked very carefully. “Someone knew the rotation,” I say. “Yeah.” “Who sets the rotation?” D
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: HOLDINGLola's POV Three weeks in the cottage. I know because Hannah has been marking the days on an old calendar she found in the kitchen drawer. It’s from a previous owner and the year is wrong, but she uses it anyway. She puts a neat little cross through each day before bed. I’ve started avoiding looking at it. The crosses pile up too fast and too slow at the same time. The morning sickness came back hard. I thought it was getting better, two weeks ago I had four good days in a row where I woke up feeling normal, ate a proper breakfast, and actually believed the worst was over. Then week three hit and my body decided otherwise. It’s worse in the mornings and hits randomly in the afternoons. I’ll be fine for hours and then something sets it off. Usually a smell. Hannah cooked with onions on Tuesday and I had to run out of the room fast. I spent twenty minutes standing by the open back door breathing cold air while she stood in the kitchen looking genuinely sorry. “I didn’t know onio
Last Updated: 2026-05-27
Chapter: EVERY SINGLE SECONDOcean's POV The property is in Surrey. It’s big enough to be comfortable but small enough to feel like a fucking cage. Three bedrooms, a study, and a garden that backs onto private land with a high perimeter wall. That wall isn’t there to keep people out, it’s there to keep me in. There are four guards on rotation at all times. Two from Vincent’s side, two from a neutral family. No Dmitri’s men. That was one of my conditions and it stuck. They’re professional. They don’t talk to me unless they have to, they don’t chat much with each other either. They’re here to do a job, and that job is making sure I stay put. I stay put. For now. They let me have one phone, monitored. Every call logged. I’m not allowed any contact with my organisation except through approved channels. Daniel is my legal representative, so he can visit twice a week under supervision and we get one thirty-minute phone call a day. Thirty minutes. I used to run an entire empire through encrypted lines and priva
Last Updated: 2026-05-27
Chapter: HOLD ONLola's POV The safe house is a little cottage. That’s the only word that fits. Small, made of stone, sitting at the end of a long private road with open fields on three sides and a thick wood on the fourth. It looks like something your grandmother might own, except for the heavy reinforced door and the two serious-looking men who step out to meet the car the second we pull up. We get there at two in the morning. Daniel gives us the quick tour. Kitchen, two bedrooms. A sitting room with a real fireplace that actually works. A bathroom that’s been fixed up recently. Everything is clean, simple, and totally anonymous. “There’s food already stocked in the fridge,” he says. “The doctor will come here to check on you, same guards rotating as before. Nobody comes near this place without clearance.” “How long?” I ask. “We don’t know yet.” I nod and he leaves before the sun comes up. Hannah claims the bedroom closest to the front door without even asking. I take the other one that has
Last Updated: 2026-05-25
Chapter: HIDINGLola's POV Daniel shows up at half past eleven. I hear the knock on my bedroom door and Sophia’s voice in the hallway telling him it’s okay, that he’s one of Ocean’s men. Something in the way she says it makes me sit up straight before she even finishes the sentence. One of Ocean’s men. At half past eleven at night. I’m already out of bed by the time she opens the door. I’ve learned how to read Daniel over the months I’ve been around Ocean’s people. He’s always contained, like the rest of Ocean’s best guys... nothing extra on the surface, every move deliberate. Tonight something is different. He walks in, looks at me, and that contained thing slips just a little. Enough for me to know before he even opens his mouth that whatever he’s carrying is big. “Sit down,” he says quietly. “Tell me he’s alive.” “He’s alive. He’s okay physically, just sit down, Lola.” I sit on the edge of the bed. Sophia comes over and stands right beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder. Daniel s
Last Updated: 2026-05-25
Chapter: START TO PLANOcean's POV The car ride home takes twenty-two minutes. Daniel drives. Michael offered, but I told him to go home. The look on his face when I said it was exactly right... concerned, a little hurt, but understanding. I watched him walk to his car and kept thinking about that moment after his speech in the tribunal room. The way the whole atmosphere shifted, the exact kind of doubt he left behind in the air. I thought about twenty years. Then I got in the car with Daniel and I haven’t said a single word since. Daniel doesn’t push. He just drives in silence, and that’s exactly why I wanted him with me tonight. He knows when to shut up and let the quiet do its thing. He doesn’t try to fill it with bullshit that won’t help. We’re on the Embankment when he finally speaks. “What do you need?” he asks. Just that. No “what do we do now” or “how are you holding up.” Straight to it. Immediate and practical. “I need an hour,” I say. “Then I need you back at the house.” He nods. We don
Last Updated: 2026-05-23
Chapter: NORMALThe phone rang while I was standing in the middle of the living room like an idiot. It was Jake’s ringtone... that stupid little guitar riff he’d set as his contact years ago and never changed. My stomach dropped. For a second I just stared at the screen, heart hammering, before I swiped to answer. “Hey, little man,” I said, forcing my voice light. Normal. Like I wasn’t standing barefoot in a twenty-million-dollar penthouse that smelled like cedar, money, and the two men who were slowly fucking up my entire head. “Aurora!” Jake’s voice cracked with excitement on the other end. He was fourteen now, but he still sounded like the kid who used to fall asleep on my floor doing homework. “You finally picked up. Mom said you’ve been crazy busy with the new job.” “Yeah, it’s been nonstop,” I lied smoothly, walking over to the massive windows so I could look out at the city instead of the expensive bullshit surrounding me. “How’s school? You staying out of trouble?” He launched into a sto
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: ECHOESAURORA'S POV I was still catching my breath when it hit me. Nico had finally let me collapse onto the bed after round two, his body heavy and warm behind me, one arm draped possessively over my waist. My thighs were sticky, throat raw from moaning, and the bond between us was humming low and satisfied, like a lion that had just finished eating. He pressed a rough kiss to the back of my neck and murmured something about sleep before his breathing evened out. But I couldn’t settle. Because through the bond, I felt him. Matteo. Not just the usual warm pull. This was sharper, wider. Like he’d been standing right outside the door the whole time, feeling every brutal thrust, every time Nico had called me his whore, every orgasm that had ripped through me. I waited until Nico’s arm loosened in sleep, then slipped out of bed. I pulled on a silk robe and padded barefoot through the penthouse, hair wild and Nico’s marks still fresh on my neck. I found Matteo on the rooftop terrace. He
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: MINE IN THE DARKAURORA'S POV The underground club was still buzzing when it happened. I was leaning against the railing near the main ring, watching two new fighters go at it, when this guy slid up beside me. Tall, tattooed neck, cocky grin that screamed he thought he was somebody. He’d been eyeing me on and off all night, but now he finally made his move. “Never seen you down here before,” he said, voice loud over the noise. His eyes dragged down my body slow, lingering on the way my tank top clung from the heat. “You with somebody or you just slumming it for fun?” I gave him a small smile, polite but distant. “With somebody.” He didn’t take the hint. Stepped closer instead, smelling like cheap beer and too much cologne. “Shame. A girl like you deserves better than standing around waiting. I could show you the real shit around here. My name’s Jax, I train the pros.” Before I could shut him down properly, I felt it. The shift in the bond is Ice cold and sharp enough to cut. Nico appeared at
Last Updated: 2026-05-27
Chapter: UNDERGROUNDAURORA'S POV Nico didn’t ask if I wanted to go. He just told me to put on something I didn’t mind getting dirty and meet him by the elevator in ten minutes. I threw on black jeans, a tight tank top, and my old leather jacket from back home...the one that still smelled like cheap cigarettes and better days. When I stepped out, he gave me a once-over and nodded once, like I’d passed some test. The drive was quiet. His hand rested on my thigh again, heavy and possessive, but neither of us spoke much, the bond hummed between us, cooler than usual, like he was keyed up about something. We pulled up to an unmarked building in a part of the city I’d never been to. No fancy signs, just a steel door and a bouncer who looked like he ate nails for breakfast. The second Nico stepped out, the guy straightened and opened the door without a word. Inside, it hit me like a slap. The place was underground...literally. We went down a flight of concrete stairs and the noise rolled over us: sho
Last Updated: 2026-05-27
Chapter: CRACKS IN THE ARMOURAURORA'S POV The morning after Nico wrecked me felt different. My body was sore in that deep, used-up way that made every step a reminder. Bruises on my hips from his grip, bite marks on my neck, and that raw ache between my legs that pulsed every time I shifted. I woke up alone in the big bed, sheets tangled around me, the penthouse quiet except for the low hum of the city far below. I lay there for a minute staring at the ceiling, trying to rebuild my walls. Last night with Nico had been filthy and possessive and so fucking good it scared me. But underneath the heat, something in the bond had shifted. Like a door had creaked open a little wider. I felt it when I finally got up and walked to the kitchen. Not just the usual pull. Not just heat or tension or that electric awareness. This was… more. Matteo was already there, standing by the windows with a cup of coffee, looking out at the city like it owed him answers. The second I stepped in, the bond flared. And for the first ti
Last Updated: 2026-05-26
Chapter: NICO'S CLAIMAURORA'S POV Nico came back close to midnight. I felt him the second the elevator doors opened... that cool, sharp edge of the bond slicing through the warm afterglow I still had from Matteo. The penthouse was dark except for the low city lights bleeding through the windows. I was in the bedroom, wearing nothing but one of his black button-downs, when he appeared in the doorway. He looked like sin. Jacket gone, shirt sleeves rolled up, hair slightly messed from whatever long day he’d had. But his eyes… fuck. They were burning. He’d felt everything through the bond, every touch, every moan, every time Matteo had come inside me. “You’ve been busy,” he said, voice low and dangerous as he stepped inside and shut the door. I lifted my chin. “You knew that was going to happen.” Nico crossed the room in three strides, grabbed my jaw, and kissed me hard. No warm-up. Just teeth and tongue and raw possession. When he pulled back, his thumb pressed against my bottom lip. “On your knees.”
Last Updated: 2026-05-26
LOGIN
