Chapter: THE OFFICE SUITS MEMichael's POV The office suits me. That’s the first thing I noticed when I sat behind the desk for the first time three weeks ago. After all those years in the chair beside it, the chair at the side of the desk, the one that always faced the man in power and waited for him to finish speaking. Now I’m the one behind it. It fits me better than I expected, and exactly as much as I always knew it would. The organisation has accepted the change with the usual pragmatism these people have. They understand power is power no matter who’s holding it, and the alternative to going along with it is the kind of mess nobody wants. There was some pushback. Bryan was the loudest, young, loyal to Ocean in that simple, straightforward way young guys get loyal to powerful men. He came to me in the first week with his jaw tight and his eyes saying shit his mouth was trying not to. I listened to everything. Then I gave him a promotion. He’s running the east operations now. More responsibility, m
Last Updated: 2026-05-29
Chapter: GLOATINGEthan's POV I've been looking forward to this visit for weeks. The guards at the gate are Vincent's guys, so they search me properly before letting me through. I let them, I’m all cooperative and polite. I’ve got nothing on me they’d care about anyway, and the visit is approved I’m here as Ocean’s son, which gives me access most people don’t get. That’s always been the one useful thing about being his kid. The access. I find him in the garden. Of course he’s out there, he always liked walking in the garden back at the Belgravia house too. Something about needing to move while he thought. I used to watch him from my bedroom window when I was little. Same path, over and over, early in the morning before anyone else was up like the rest of us didn’t even exist yet. He looks up when I come around the side of the house. His face doesn’t change at all. That used to scare me, that total blank look. There was never any reaction for me to grab onto. I spent most of my childhood tryin
Last Updated: 2026-05-29
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: 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
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