JonathanI had not slept in three days. Maybe four. I had lost count.The thing about guilt is that it doesn’t punch you in the face. It seeps into you, quietly, like a drug, and before you know it, you are trembling through meetings, forgetting your parking space, drinking espresso until your hands
I could hear the blood roaring in my ears. I didn’t move. My face burned. I had stumbled on the files by accident—at least, at first. But once I saw what he was hiding, once I saw the lengths he had gone to for leverage, for control, I couldn’t unsee it.Images. Emails. Bribery notes. And then... he
He took a step forward, menace creeping into his posture. “You don’t understand the stakes, Jonathan.”“Then explain them,” I challenged. “Why are you so desperate to get me into the Salvare Society? What are you getting out of it?”He didn’t blink. “Protection. Legacy. Leverage. Things you can’t ev
I was exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t just sit in your bones, it scraped at them, gnawed. The promotion was supposed to feel like a reward, like everything I’d worked for had finally cracked open and spilled gold. Instead, it felt like I'd been shackled to a desk and thrown into deeper
Charlotte’s POVBy the time I left the office, my jaw ached from all the clenching I had done behind smiles and firm handshakes. My heels clicked a little too loudly against the marble floors as I walked toward the elevator, the silence of the evening almost mocking me. Damian had returned like a wh
Madelin’s POVI sank into the couch in the library like I had been dropped from a great height. My bones ached, not from age, not even from my illness, but from something far more crushing, far more relentless. My daughter’s voice still rang in my ears, polite but tight, clipped, too formal for a mo