Chapter: Poisoned ThoughtsDante POV I told myself the meeting hadn't changed anything. I believed it when I walked out of the restaurant, convinced I had given Isabella nothing useful to work with. She'd shown me the photographs and gotten a shrug. She'd reached for me and gotten a wall. By every measure I understood, I'd walked away from that hour cleanly. The first two days seemed to prove me right. I handled business as usual, briefed Luca on everything she had said, and moved forward like a man who'd closed a door instead of leaving one cracked. I told Elena about the meeting that same night and gave her the honest version—the photographs, the attempt to get under my skin, the failed touch, all of it. She'd asked a few sharp questions, listened to my answers, and seemed satisfied that I'd handled the situation exactly as I'd told her I had. It was the third day when I realized something had shifted. Not with Elena. With me. I started replaying Isabella's exact words instead of remembering the meetin
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-25
Chapter: Old Habits Never DieDante POVShe requested the meeting through a channel three layers removed from anything traceable, which told me she still remembered exactly how careful I'd taught her to be. No weapons, her message said. Neutral ground. One hour. I nearly refused on principle, then decided I'd rather look her in the eye and find out what she wanted than spend another week trying to piece together secondhand reports.Luca hated the idea immediately."You're not seriously considering this." He pulled up a map of the restaurant she'd chosen and enlarged the surrounding streets."I am."He tapped two fingers against the screen. "She could have twenty men stationed within two blocks of that place, and we'd have no way of knowing until it was too late.""I know how she thinks, Luca." I checked my jacket out of habit, even though I wasn't carrying a weapon. "If Isabella wanted me dead, she'd have done it already. She wouldn't send me an invitation with my name spelled correctly and give me an hour to pre
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-16
Chapter: Fault LinesDante POV Luca called me forty minutes before the meeting. "Ricci's been sitting on something," he said. "A medical file with Elena's name on it. He's planning to slide it across the table like a grenade with the pin already pulled." "Where did he get it?" "Working on that. My guess is someone paid a records clerk at the clinic, or someone on staff owed a favor they couldn't refuse. Either way, it was a recent breach." Luca's voice hardened. "There's more Dante. Vincenzo's been coaching one of the older members on what to say if you push back too hard. I don't know the exact line yet, but they've rehearsed it." "Rehearsed," I whispered. "Twice, according to my source. Once in Adrian's office, once at Ricci's house. They're not improvising this." I sat with that for a moment, turning it over in my head. "Anyone else involved?" "Cavallo, probably, though he's harder to read. He wasn't at either meeting my source saw, but he's never been the type to sit something this coordinat
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-03
Chapter: The ReplacementIsabella POV I hadn't meant to watch the harbor footage more than once. By the fourth time, I stopped pretending it was research. Konstantin found me in the study with the laptop still open, the frame frozen on Elena mid-turn, her eyes already fixed on the man with the camera before he'd even lifted it past his waist. "You've been in here since this morning," he said. "Have I?" "The kitchen staff assumed you'd left for the day. I had to tell them otherwise." He came around to look at the screen, and I watched him take in the frozen image, Elena's spine straight, her stance already shifting toward the nearest exit before anyone else on that path had registered a threat existed at all. "She made him early." "Before he'd even finished raising the phone." I shut the laptop a little harder than I intended. "Do you understand what that means?" "That she's cautious." "No." I looked at him. "That she's trained. Caution is instinct. This was technique. Someone taught her to read a crow
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-01
Chapter: The HesitationElena POV Dean had texted that morning asking if we could meet, and this time I picked the place. Not the little café near campus where we'd spent too many afternoons pretending exams were the biggest problem we'd ever have. Some places belonged to old versions of people, and going back only made you look for someone who wasn't there anymore. A bench by the harbor felt safer. Dean was already there when I arrived. His hands were buried in his coat pockets, and he was looking out across the water instead of the path. "You picked a strange place," he said when I sat down, leaving a polite stretch of space between us. "I wanted somewhere that wasn't ours." I looked out at the harbor too. "The café already has enough memories attached to it. This is just... a bench." He almost smiled at that. "Fair enough." The silence that settled after that wasn't awkward. It just felt tired. A ferry cut across the harbor, its wake spreading out slow and even, and I let myself watch it i
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-29
Chapter: PossessionDante POV The envelope was waiting in the middle of my desk when I walked into the office. No note, no return address, just my name printed neatly on a plain white label. Luca stood by the window with his arms folded across his chest. One look at his face told me he'd already opened it. "What is it?" I asked, setting my keys on the desk. He didn't answer immediately. "Open it." I slid a finger beneath the flap and pulled out the contents. A single photograph slipped onto the desk. Glossy. Sharp. Taken through the window of a café from across the street. Elena sat at a small table, leaning slightly toward a man I didn't recognize. Her hands were wrapped around a coffee cup. His rested on the table near hers—not touching, but close enough that whoever had taken the picture had clearly been waiting for exactly that moment. A slow, familiar kind of cold settled low in my chest. "When?" "This afternoon." Luca watched me carefully. "While you were with the councilman." My eyes s
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-24
Chapter: UninvitedLaura Jean POV I barely slept. Every tiny noise in Tyler's hotel room felt like someone stepping out of the shadows. By six in the morning, I gave up, packed my bag with everything except the notes I had lost the night before, and caught the early media shuttle from Oxford to Silverstone. Tyler sat beside me, his arm resting over the back of my seat while he tried to make the morning feel normal. He bought two lukewarm coffees from the hotel lobby, talked about how massive the track setup looked. I smiled when I was supposed to and held his hand when he reached for mine, but my mind kept circling back to the same thought. By nine, the paddock was alive with engine noise. I led Tyler through the team building, adjusting my pass. "Stay close," I told him, glancing over my shoulder as a tire cart rolled past. "The mechanics move fast around here, and they don't stop for people looking at their phones." Tyler laughed under his breath and tucked his phone into his jac
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-25
Chapter: Collision CourseLaura Jean POV I stood near the edge of the hospitality building, watching Jannis walk away with his phone pressed to his ear. The wind had picked up, cutting straight through my jacket and making me pull it tighter around myself. Instead of heading toward the media center, I turned toward the spectator gates at the back of the paddock. Tyler was standing right outside the accreditation booth. He wore his dark denim jacket over a grey crewneck, his bag slung over one shoulder while he stared around at the massive team haulers and motorhomes with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. Tyler looked so thoroughly New York, so completely out of place against the polished machinery and controlled chaos of an F1 paddock, that it took my brain a second to catch up. Then he spotted me, and his entire face brightened. "Laura Jean!" I walked through the security turnstile and headed toward him, but whatever smile I might have given him never quite made it to my face. A spike of pure str
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-25
Chapter: The Wall CracksLaura Jean POV The Silverstone paddock had a completely different energy from Monaco, and it took me about four minutes to understand why. Monaco performed. Silverstone didn't. It was loud, slightly chaotic, and completely unapologetic about it. Even the sky couldn't decide between grey and blue. I liked it immediately. I was setting up near the garage entrance when Jannis walked past without breaking stride. He tipped his head slightly. "You're in the wrong place." "Good morning to you too," I smiled. He stopped and turned back, a faint crease forming between his brows. "The media pen is on the other side of the garage." "I know where the media pen is. I've done this enough times." "Then you know you're in the wrong place." "I'm exactly where Antonio told me to be." He hesitated, just enough for me to notice, before looking toward Antonio's office. "Antonio told you to stand here?" I held up the notes I'd been carrying all morning. "He told me to shadow the eng
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-03
Chapter: Home Isn't HomeLaura Jean POV I was almost back to the hotel when my phone buzzed. I pulled my phone out as I walked. Unknown number. Stay away from the girl. I stopped without thinking, reading the message twice while the evening crowd carried on around me. Tourists drifted past with shopping bags, team staff crossed the street in small groups, and somewhere behind me somebody laughed loudly enough to turn a few heads. Someone had been watching the park. Seen Ash and me on that bench before Jannis arrived, and decided it mattered enough to send me a warning. I slipped the phone back into my pocket and kept walking. Tyler called just after eight. I was sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed with my laptop open in front of me, staring at the same blank document I'd been avoiding for the better part of twenty minutes, when his name appeared on the screen. I answered on the third ring. "Hey, you," he said warmly. "Hey." I smiled despite myself as I closed the laptop. "How's the tap?" "Fixed i
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-01
Chapter: Crossing LinesLaura Jean POV Nobody moved for so long it started to feel deliberate. Jannis remained at the entrance to the park, his gaze shifting between Ash and me with an unreadable expression. Beside me, Ash held her hot chocolate with both hands as if we were standing in line for coffee instead of in the middle of whatever this had suddenly become. Considering the circumstances, her composure was almost impressive. I looked at her, searching for some kind of explanation. She met my eyes without flinching. Please just go with this. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the only one on offer. Then Jannis started walking toward us. He moved the way he always did, like the distance between where he was and where he needed to be was little more than a formality. When he reached the bench, he stopped beside Ash instead of sitting down, his attention settling on her first. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "Sitting," Ash replied, lifting her cup a fraction. "It's a bench. Public
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-29
Chapter: The Girl in the HoodieLaura Jean POV I had left my notebook in the hotel room. I didn't realize it until I'd already been sitting on the bench for a minute, reaching for it out of habit and coming up empty. "Oh, brilliant," I muttered to myself. The park was tucked between two quiet streets, the sort of place most tourists probably walked past without noticing. A few benches sat beneath scattered trees, and if you looked through the narrow gap between the buildings across the path, you could catch a strip of the harbour glittering in the afternoon sun. I wasn't really looking at it. My mind kept circling the same thing. Zurich. It had been three days since Stephen had said the word, and I still couldn't decide whether he'd given me a clue or a warning. It had to be a place. Or maybe an event. A company. Someone's name. Whatever it was, it lived somewhere inside the two years Jannis Laurence never talked about. I was so wrapped up in it that I almost jumped when a voice beside me spoke. "You've
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-24
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