登入Chapter 149Nina’s POVI got out of the G-Wagon slowly.My legs felt strange under me. The engine was still ticking. The figure on the road was sitting up now, helmet off, one hand braced against the tarmac. Stefan stood between us with the gun still in his hand but pointed down.I walked around the front of the car.And stopped.Mr. Kofi.My father’s secretary for eleven years. The man who had managed his schedule and his correspondence and his office with the particular invisible efficiency of someone so good at their job that you stopped seeing them as a person and started seeing them as furniture. Grey at the temples. Reading glasses always in his breast pocket. He had attended my mother’s funeral. He had sent me a card when I started medical school.He was sitting on the road with a shallow bullet wound in his left calf and his helmet cracked on the ground beside him and the bag of my father’s things between us.I stared at him.He looked back at me. Not with defiance. With exhau
Chapter 148Nina’s POVThe scream had barely left my mouth before Stefan was in the doorway.The wine glass was gone. The bottle was gone. His hand was at his side and then it was not and then there was a gun in it and he was already moving, his body shifting into something completely different from the person who had been complaining about the wine selection thirty seconds ago.He grabbed Amanda’s arm with his free hand and pulled her behind him in one motion. She made a sharp sound of surprise but did not fight it. She read the situation fast the way she always did.His eyes swept the study. The corners. The window. The open safe. Then they landed on me.“What happened.” His voice was different. Flat and precise.“The safe.” I pointed. My hand was shaking. “Someone broke in. Everything is gone. The money. The documents. All of it.”His eyes went to the safe. Then to the scratches around the lock. Then to the floor where I was pointing at the heel print.“Are you sure,” Amanda said f
Chapter 147Nina’s POVI walked past Stefan completely and went straight to Amanda.She opened her arms without being asked. I stepped in and held on. Her perfume was familiar. Her hug was solid. I let myself have it for a full ten seconds.“Excuse me.”Stefan’s voice came from somewhere to my left. I ignored it.“Excuse me. Hello. Standing right here.”I still ignored it.“I drove several hours. I told my commanding officer we had a family emergency. I skipped training. I have not eaten since this morning.” A pause. “And you hugged her first.”I pulled back from Amanda and looked at him. He had his sunglasses pushed up on his head and his arms crossed and his expression was genuinely offended in a way that was also completely performative.“Family comes first Nina,” he said. “How could you do this to your step brother.”“You are not my step brother.”“Technicalities.” He waved a hand.Amanda lifted her head from my shoulder and looked at him properly for the first time. She studied h
Chapter 146Nina’s POVHe was conscious by the time the night shift came on.I was still in the chair beside his bed when his eyes opened properly. Not the half-awake drifting he had been doing for the past hour. Fully present. He looked at the ceiling first and then at the window and then at me.“You stayed,” he said.“Yes.”He was quiet for a moment. The monitor beeped. The officer by the door was a different one now. They had rotated shifts without making much noise about it.“Your mother used to do that,” he said. “Stay. Even when I gave her every reason to leave.” He looked at the drip in his hand. “She was better than me in every way that mattered.”I did not say anything. I just let him talk.He told me things I had not known. Small things. How they met at a university function where he spilled tea on her white dress and she laughed instead of being angry. How she used to hum when she cooked. How she kept every card he ever gave her in a box under the bed that he only found aft
Chapter 145Nina’s POV“What did you say?”My voice came out flat. The paramedic was still beside my father on the stretcher. The ambulance doors were open. The hospital entrance was lit up white behind the officers standing in front of us.The senior officer looked at me. Then past me at my father on the stretcher. “We have a warrant for the arrest of Governor Marcus Osei.”“He just won an election.”“Yes ma’am.”“He has a gunshot wound. He just came from a cliff where someone tried to kill his daughter.”“We are aware of the situation.” The officer’s voice was professional and completely unmoved. “He will receive full medical attention. A guard will be stationed at his ward. When he is stable enough for transfer he will be moved to a secure facility.”I turned to look at my father.He was watching me from the stretcher. His face was tired. His hand was still connected to the line the paramedic had put in. The monitor was still beeping. He looked at me with an expression that was not
Chapter 144Nina’s POVEverything broke at once.Isabella’s eyes had found what they were looking for. I saw it happen before I understood what it meant. That flash of calculation. That sudden brightness. And then she moved.She was fast. Faster than anyone expected from a woman in heels on uneven ground. She lunged toward the nearest officer before he could adjust his stance. Her hand went straight for the weapon at his hip. He grabbed for her arm. She twisted under it with the specific desperation of someone who had nothing left to lose and got her hand around the grip.The officer shouted. Another one rushed forward. Two more converged from the left.Someone screamed get down. Someone else was calling into a radio. The field erupted. Isabella’s remaining men tried to move and were immediately met by officers. Bodies colliding. Shouting from every direction. The floodlights caught everything in hard white and made the chaos look flat and overexposed like a scene from a nightmare.I
Chapter 36 Nina’s POV The last toilet in the left wing finally gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light. I straightened, pressing the back of my wrist to my forehead. Sweat stung my eyes and trickled down my spine in slow, itchy rivers. My uniform—already oversized—clung to my skin like damp
Chapter 31 Nina’s POV I stared at the frozen screen. Elena’s face remained locked there wide eyes glistening with the start of tears, lips parted in shock, as if my sudden appearance had punched the air out of her lungs. The chat kept scrolling in the corner, a blur of venom and confusion, but
Chapter Twenty EightNina’s POVI stayed in Enzo’s arms for a long time.My cheeks were wet. My chest hurts. My hands still shook from the gunshot, from the sand, from the way Dante had laughed like it was nothing.Enzo held me tight, one hand on the back of my head, the other on my waist. He did n
Chapter Twenty OneNina’s POVI woke up warm.Dante’s chest was at my back. His arm was around my waist. My leg was over Enzo’s thigh in front of me. I could feel Nikolai’s knee behind mine.We were all in the same bed.But nothing had happened.We had only kissed last night.Just kissing. Just tou







