Novels by tommy_writes

Amber's POVI woke up on Kade's couch.Still dressed. His jacket draped over me. The city outside is doing its pale gray morning thing through the tall windows.I lay still for a moment and took inventory.No performance required today. No, Adrian, across the breakfast table. No carefully constructed expression to maintain. No version of myself to inhabit that was not actually me.Just a couch and a jacket that smelled like cedar and morning light coming through glass.I sat up.Kade was in the kitchen. I could hear the coffee maker and the quiet movements of someone trying not to wake a person they tho

Amber's POVKade's loft looked the same as the first night.Dark leather. City light through tall windows. The silence of a space where someone actually lived rather than performed living.I stood in the center of it and thought about the woman I had been the last time I was here. Drunk and heartbroken and reaching for something to hold onto in the dark.That felt like someone else's life now.Kade closed the door behind us. Did not turn on any lights. Just the city coming through the windows, filling the room with its ambient glow.He went to the kitchen. Came back with two glasses of water and set them on the table with the practicality of a man who understood that some conversa

Amber's POVIsla opened the door before I knocked.She had changed since this morning. Traded the careful composure for something less constructed. Dark hair loose. A sweater that looked like it had traveled across the Atlantic in a carry-on. The deliberate presentation of someone who had decided to stop performing.I respected that immediately."Come in," she said.I came in alone. Kade had dropped me at the entrance without being asked to, which was becoming a pattern I appreciated more than I had language for yet.The room was a standard hotel room made slightly personal by small things. A paperback on the nightstand. A London transport card on the desk. A photograph propped against the lamp that I had not looked at directly yet.We sat across from each other. The same configuration as this morning, except something had shifted in the air between us. The legal positioning had receded. What was left was just two women in a hotel roo

Amber's POVI read Reyes's message twice.Then I excused myself and stepped into the corridor where Kade was waiting. I held the phone out without speaking.He read it. His expression did not change, but something behind his eyes did."The Sinclair Building," he said."My father's building," I said. "They were found in my father's building."Not Wolfe's Financial District office. Not some private airfield outside the city. Not an anonymous hotel or a shell company property or any of the carefully constructed hiding places a man with Wolfe's resources should have been able to disappear into.My father's building."Reyes wants us there," I said.Kade looked at the closed door behind me. "Isla.""I know." I turned back to the door. Knocked once and opened it. Isla was sitting exactly where I had left her, hands folded in her lap, my father's eyes watching me with a patience that felt familiar in a way that hurt.

Amber's POVI sat on the edge of my hotel bed and read Thomas Greer's message three times.I had checked into a small hotel on the Upper East Side two days ago. Not the penthouse. Not Kade's building. Somewhere that belonged to neither world I had been living in, somewhere with a plain white ceiling I could stare at when everything got too heavy to hold upright.The message was precise and devastating in the way that legal language always managed to be.A secondary claimant has filed against the Richard Sinclair estate asserting biological relationship. DNA evidence submitted alongside the filing. The probate judge has issued a temporary hold pending verification. I am sorry, Amber. Call me.I set the phone face down on the bed.A second child.My father had another child.I sat with that for a full minute. Not processing it exactly. Just letting it exist in the room with me before I decided what to do with it.My father. The man who had run five miles every morning and never missed m

Amber's POVI was already moving before the phone left my ear.Kade matched my pace without asking. Three steps ahead, he had his own phone out, already dialing, already deploying whatever piece of his network applied to this particular emergency."My lawyer," he said into the phone. "The Sinclair trust. I need an emergency freeze on all outgoing transfers. Right now. Authorization code delta seven." A pause. "I do not care what time it is. Do it."We reached the Range Rover. He unlocked it without breaking stride.Inside, the engine was running before my door closed."Can your lawyer freeze it?" I asked."He can file an emergency motion. Whether it moves fast enough depends on which judge picks it up." He pulled into traffic with controlled aggression. "Reyes is faster."I was already calling her.She answered on the second ring."Wolfe is moving the Sinclair trust assets," I said without preamble. "Right now. From his building in the Financial District. Adrian just called me."A bea