LOGINELARA'S POV:"Elara," he says. "Please. Listen to me. Whatever you think you know—""I know enough," I say interrupting him. "I know that you killed my family, all of you and that is enough for me.""That is not true.""Prove it."He opens his mouth and then closes it. He does not know what to say. He does not know how to defend himself against what I have been told.I turn and walk away.**CELESTINE'S POV:**I am in the kitchen when I hear the voices.I walk to the window. I look out at the garden and I see Lysander and Elara standing on the stone bench. Their faces are tense. Their voices are raised.My heart starts pounding. I push open the back door and walk toward them."—killed my mother," Elara is saying. "You and everyone in this family is pure evil."I freeze with my blood running cold."Elara," I say. "What are you talking about?"She turns to look at me. Her green eyes are hard. Her face is pale."The letter," she says. "From my father. He told me everything."My throat
LYSANDER'S POV:I found her in the garden after I checked in her room and didn't see her there early the next morning.She is sitting on the stone bench, the one that overlooks the valley, the one where Celestine and I used to sit when we were first falling in love. She has a book in her hands, but I noticed she is not reading it. She is staring out at the distant hills, her face expressionless, her green eyes empty.I walk toward her. My footsteps are heavy on the gravel. She hears me coming but she does not turn nor does she not acknowledge me.I stop a few feet away and I hold up my phone. The screen glows with the message I found. The message that proves she is a traitor."Elara," I say. "Explain this. This is from your phone."She looks at me. Her face goes pale. For a moment, just a moment, I see the mask slip. I see the fear underneath, with rhe guilt and the panic.Then she recovers and her expression smooths and even her voice is steady."That is not from my phone," she says.
ALISTAIR'S POV:He is sitting at his desk, his head in his hands, his shoulders slumped. He looks so tired and broken.I do not know what to say. I do not know how to tell him that his daughter who is also my sister is a traitor.I take a breath. I walk toward him. I stop in front of his desk."Dad," I say.He looks up and his gray eyes are red."Alistair? What are you doing still up?""I need to show you something dad."I open my laptop. I pull up the screenshot. I turn the screen toward him.He looks at it and after some minutes his face goes white and his hands start shaking."Elara?" he whispers. "Our own Elara?"I nod my head and my voice is steady.He stares at me. His mouth opens and closes but no words come out. He looks like he has been punched in the gut. He looks like the world has just collapsed around him.I think about my mother. About the stories she told me about her first marriage. About Kier Thornwell and the thousand times she forgave him. About the lies and the cru
ALISTAIR'S POV:I have been reading computer science books since I was six.That is not an exaggeration. My parents have photographs of me sitting on the floor of the library, surrounded by books that most adults would not understand, my small fingers tracing the diagrams of code and algorithms. They thought it was cute. They thought it was a phase. They did not realize that I was actually learning, actually absorbing, actually becoming something that most people would not understand.I am fourteen now. I can hack into systems that would take adults days to crack. I can write code that makes people weep with envy. I can find things that people do not want found.And now, I am going to use those skills to prove that my sister is a traitor.I sit in my room with my door locked, the lights dim because it's night time, my laptop open on my desk. My laptop screen glows in the darkness, casting blue light across my very handsome face, lol, I am handsome. My fingers hover over the keyboard.
ALISTAIR'S POV:I wake up to the sound of shouting.I am out of bed before I am fully awake, my feet carrying me to the door, my hand reaching for the handle. I open it and I step into the hallway.The house is in disarray. Security is everywhere. Voices are raised. Phones are ringing. I can see my mother at the bottom of the stairs, her face pale, her hands pressed to her belly.I run down the stairs. I grab my mother's arm."Mom, what happened?""There has been an explosion," she says. "At the shipping headquarters. Three people are injured."I feel something cold settle in my chest."Where is Dad?""He went to the scene."I nod. I do not know what else to say. My mind is racing, trying to make sense of everything that is happening.I look around the room and see the fear and the confusion.And I notice something.Elara is standing in the corner. She is not afraid. She is not confused. She is calm. Completely and utterly calm. She is watching the mess with something that looks almos
LYSANDER'S POV: The call comes at 7:32 AM. I am in the shower when my phone starts buzzing on the counter. I ignore it at first, letting the hot water wash over me, letting myself have just a few more seconds of peace before the chaos of the day begins. But the buzzing does not stop. It keeps going, insistent and urgent, and something about the sound makes my stomach clench. I step out of the shower. Water drips down my chest. I grab the phone and I see the name on the screen: Mark, head of Valancourt security. I answer. "Mr. Ashcroft," he says, and his voice is wrong. Too tight. Too strained. "There has been an explosion at the Valancourt shipping headquarters. Three people are injured. The building is heavily damaged." The words hit me like a physical blow. I grip the counter to steady myself. "What happened?" "We do not know yet. The fire department is on scene. The police are investigating. But there are no leads, no fingerprints, no CCTV footage in fact nothing."
CELESTINE'S POV:Kier’s face flashes through my mind uninvited, and the contrast is almost painful. He never ate me out. Never wanted me dripping and desperate. He’d finish, roll off, and leave me feeling empty and worthless, like a warm hole he tolerated out of obligation.Tears prick my eyes and
CELESTINE'S POV:I laugh. I cannot help it. The sound bubbles up out of me, surprised and delighted and full of a joy I did not know I was capable of feeling."Ruthless?" I say, walking toward him. "I prefer the term strategically aggressive."He grins, that slow, wolfish grin that makes my stomach
CELESTINE'S POV:Kier's face goes red. His hands curl into fists. For a moment, I think he might swing at Lysander, might start a fight right here in the hallway of the Dorchester Hotel with two hundred guests waiting in the ballroom.But he does not. He just stands there, shaking with rage and gri
CELESTINE'S POV: Lysander pulls back just enough to growl, “Eyes on me, love. Stay right here with me.” Then he sucks my clit hard, fingers pumping faster, and I shatter with a scream. My thighs clamp around his head as I come violently, flooding his mouth. He keeps licking and sucking through eve







