เข้าสู่ระบบVLADIMIR'S POV: I have been waiting for this call for twelve years. Twelve years of patience. Twelve years of planning. Twelve years of watching from the shadows, waiting for the moment when Kier Thornwell's daughter would be old enough to understand, old enough to act, old enough to do what her father planned for her to do. And now she has called me. She has taken the bait. The seed that Kier planted in that letter has finally taken root. I sit in my safe house, the phone pressed to my ear, and I listen to her voice. She sounds young. Vulnerable. Confused. The perfect target for the lies I am about to feed her. "Elara," I say, and I let my voice soften, let it sound kind, let it sound like the voice of a man who cares about her, who wants to help her, who is on her side. "I know this is hard. I know you have been raised by people who have filled your head with lies. But I am going to tell you the truth. The real truth. The truth that your father wanted you to know." She is sile
ELARA'S POV: I sit alone in my room. The walls are pink, the same pink they were when I first arrived here twelve years ago. The bed is covered in soft blankets. The bookshelf is full of stories that I have read a hundred times. The window looks out over the garden, over the roses that Lysander planted for Celestine, over the valley that separates our estate from the one next door. This is my room. This has been my room for twelve years. This is the only home I have ever known. But I am not sure it is my home anymore. I have been waiting for this moment for three years. Three years of wondering, of doubting, of trying to figure out who I really am. Three years of pretending that everything is fine, that I am happy, that I belong here. I reach under my mattress and pull out the letter. The paper is worn, creased from being folded and unfolded plenty and a hundred times. The handwriting is shaky, the letters cramped and uneven. It was given to me at the end of the school year, tu
CELESTINE'S POV:Twelve years have passed.Twelve years of peace. Twelve years of love. Twelve years of watching my family grow and change and become something I never dared to imagine.I am in my forties now and I am not the woman who stood in that bathroom staring at a positive pregnancy test, hoping that a baby would fix a broken marriage. I am not the woman who walked out of that penthouse at three in the morning with nothing but an old coat and a shattered heart.I am someone else entirely. Someone stronger. Someone loved. Someone home.The house is always full of noise and chaos and laughter. That is always the first thing I notice every morning when I wake up. The sound of footsteps on the stairs. The sound of voices arguing over breakfast. The sound of life, real life, the kind of life that I used to dream about when I was sitting alone in that penthouse, waiting for a husband who never came home.Alistair is twelve now. A certified genius, his tutors tell me. He takes advance
VLADIMIR'S POV: I watch my empire burn from a safe house in Eastern Europe. The walls are concrete. The windows are boarded. The only light comes from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. I sit in a wooden chair and I stare at the television screen, watching the news reports, watching my life's work disappear in a flood of red ink and legal jargon and empty buildings. Lysander Ashcroft did this. He did this to me. He did this to my family. My son is in prison. My wife is dead. My allies have abandoned me. My fortune is gone. Everything I built, everything I sacrificed for, everything I bled for, is gone. I should feel something. Anger. Grief. The burning desire for revenge. But I feel nothing. I am empty. Hollow. A ghost in a concrete room. I think about Kier Thornwell. The man who started all of this. The man who came to me with his desperate plea and his broken soul and his willingness to trade everything for revenge. He is dead now. He died in a prison hospital, alone and
LYSANDER'S POV: Vladimir Drakon had been quiet since Kier's death and his son Nikolai's imprisonment. That was what worried me. I had spent years in this world, learning to read the spaces between moves, and I knew what silence from a man like Vladimir meant. It did not mean gone. It did not mean defeated. It meant patience. It meant watching from somewhere I could not yet see, waiting for the moment I dropped my guard. I had not dropped my guard. I had informants in places that would make most people uncomfortable to know about. Eyes and ears embedded in the quieter corners of the underworld, people who reported to people who reported to me through channels deliberately designed to be tedious to trace. One of them, a woman connected to a man who is connected to another man who owed me a favour, came to me with news that settled in my chest like cold water. She sat across from my desk with her hands folded in her lap, composed in the way that people who work dangerous jobs learn
MAXWELL'S POV:The hospital room fills up quickly.Lysander comes first, with Celestine and Elara and Alistair. He looks at my daughter with those gray eyes and his face softens in a way I have never seen before."She is beautiful," he says. "She looks just like Athena.""She has Maxwell's smile," Celestine says. "And I know some of Athena's stubbornness."Athena glares at her. "My stubbornness is a gift."Celestine grins. "A gift to all of us."Elara tugs on my sleeve. She is four now, still quiet, still cautious, but more confident than she was when she first arrived. She looks at the baby with wide green eyes."Is that my cousin?" she asks."It is," I say. "Her name is Isabelle."Elara nods. "She is small.""Babies are very small."Alistair is in Lysander's arms. He is almost a year old, his dark hair thick and his gray eyes bright. He reaches toward his sister, his hand grabbing at the air. He does not understand what is happening, not really. But he knows that something important
ATHENA'S POV: He leans down and sucks hard on my nipple, biting just enough to make me cry out. One hand covers my mouth as he fucks me mercilessly. “Security guard is just down the hall,” he says, voice low and rough. “So you need to be quiet.” I bite his palm. He laughs darkly and pulls my hai
ATHENA'S POV:I have been circling Maxwell Valancourt for months now, like a cat who is not sure if she wants to fight the other cat or mate with it, and honestly I am exhausted by the whole thing.He is infuriating. That is the first thing you need to know about Maxwell Valancourt. He is tall and
KIER'S POV:She picks up a vase from the side table and throws it at me. I dodge and it shatters against the wall behind me, fragments of porcelain scattering across the floor."You cannot do this!" she screams. "I am your sister! You cannot just give me away!"She picks up a book. Then a lamp. The
KIER'S POV:He turns back to face me. His smile is thin and cold."But I can beat him. I have resources that he does not. Connections that he cannot access. Methods that he would never stoop to. If you want me to destroy Lysander Ashcroft, I can do it. But it will cost you, and it is not just half







