LOGIN🖤 Alexandra 🖤Coming back into this building after years away from this life brought a strange, specific kind of clarity with it not excitement exactly, though something close enough to it that I didn’t trust myself to examine it too closely. I’d spent five years convincing everyone, myself included, that I’d outgrown rooms like this. Standing in one again, I understood how much of that conviction had just been exhaustion wearing the costume of peace.God, I couldn’t wait to torture the truth out of her.I sat down across from Amara, close enough that there was no pretending this was anything but personal between us now. “Start at the beginning,” I said quietly. “And Amara? I’d choose your next words very, very carefully.”“I have nothing to say to you.”It came out flat, almost rehearsed, and something in me that I’d kept leashed for five years simply stopped being patient with her.I don’t fully remember deciding to move. I remember the knife was already in my hand Jen always kept
🖤 Jacob 🖤Okay. That was definitely unexpected.I sat there in the back of that car for a solid five seconds after Lex climbed off my lap and put herself back together like none of it had happened, just trying to remember how my own lungs worked. She’d climbed onto me and kissed me senseless, completely without warning, in the middle of the worst day either of us had had in five years, and somehow that felt exactly like her. Exactly like us.I really hoped, once this entire mess was behind us, Stella’s stolen name, whoever was actually pulling the strings that there’d be some real version of a second chance sitting on the other side of it. Because this was already moving faster than I’d let myself expect, faster than was probably wise given everything still unresolved between us.Then again, when it came to me and my Lex, everything had always moved fast. I fell for her fast. Got her pregnant fast. Married her before either of our families had finished processing that we were even t
🖤 Alexandra 🖤Fuck you, Alexandra. How dare you get your panties soaked just from his forehead on yours?I stood in front of the mirror in the hospital’s ladies’ room, both palms braced against the cold porcelain sink, and glared at my own reflection like it had personally betrayed me. Which, in a sense, it had.How dare you get like that just because his forehead was on yours. I pointed at myself in the mirror, fully aware I had lost whatever was left of my dignity the second I started lecturing my own reflection out loud. What the heck, woman.I could control my heart. Life had taught me exactly how to lock that particular door and walk away from it. I could control my brain. God knows I’d spent half a decade proving that, building a whole new empire back up from nothing while raising four children mostly alone, no breakdowns, no slipping. But my body, specifically my pussy apparently, had never gotten the memo that Jacob Grey was supposed to be a closed case.It was like I tur
🖤Jacob 🖤“Everything about Amara’s financial records was traced back to Stella,” I said. “Which is impossible because Stella is sitting in your custody.”She turned, and I watched the last soft edges of the woman who’d just held our children disappear behind something colder, something I recognized instantly even after five years, because I used to be the only person alive who got to see this version of her up close.“Then I need to torture the truth out of Amara,” she said. “Enough mind games. I want her alone, I want her scared, and I want her talking inside the hour.”The old Lex. No performance in it, no hesitation, just pure clean intention with all the softness stripped out of her voice like she’d peeled it off on purpose.God help me.“Is it weird,” I said, before I could stop myself, “that I like this version of you better?”She went still. Just for a second. Long enough that I knew the question had actually landed somewhere instead of bouncing off her.“Excuse me?”“You hea
🖤 Jacob 🖤Lex had barely finished saying help me find out who turned your mistake into a weapon before my phone started buzzing in my pocket, and some old instinct in me the one that had kept me alive for five years of running went cold before I even looked at the screen.Jack.I stepped a few feet further down the corridor before I answered, some reflex of keeping the worst of my life at arm’s length from Lex still firing even now, even after everything.“Talk to me,” I said.“Boss, you need to sit down for this.” Jack’s voice had none of its usual flatness. That alone told me everything I needed to know about how bad it was about to get. “I pulled Amara’s financials like you asked. Followed the money backward.”“And?”“She’s been getting paid two ways. One small transfer, monthly, from an account I’m ninety percent sure traces back to you the videos, the arrangement, whatever you had going. That part’s clean. That part makes sense.”“And the other way?”“The other way is bigger. A
🖤 Alexandra 🖤“Thank you,” Jacob muttered, the second we got outside the ward.He pulled me into his arms before I had time to decide whether I wanted to let him.“Thank you for keeping me alive in their little minds,” he murmured against my ear, his hold tightening like he was afraid I might disappear if he loosened it even slightly. “Thank you for showing them what I look like.”I let myself stay there for exactly three seconds longer than I should have. Three seconds of his heartbeat against my ear, three seconds of a smell I hadn’t let myself remember in years, three seconds where the only thing that existed was the relief of two children breathing on their own and a man who hadn’t disappeared completely, no matter how hard he’d tried.Then I pulled myself out of his arms, because three seconds was already three seconds too many.“You don’t need to thank me,” I said, stepping back, putting air between us where his arms had just been. “They exist because of your obsession with me
🖤 Alexandra 🖤The room was already packed before I even stepped in, cameras lined up like soldiers waiting for a command, lights bright enough to make anyone nervous, and reporters seated with that hungry look in their eyes like they were about to witness something big.Good.Let them watch and l
🖤Alexandra🖤“Papa I do hope he dies though,” I said slowly.The words came out calm, almost too calm, like I was talking about the weather and not a human life, and for a second the room went quiet in a way that made it clear even Papa didn’t expect me to say it that directly.He didn’t respond i
🖤 Alexandra 🖤“Okay… hmm, Timmy, I want MM Media broadcasting the press conference live tomorrow morning,” I said into my phone as I walked into my room, already kicking off my heels without breaking my pace because my mind was ten steps ahead of my body at this point.“Yes, boss,” he responded q
🖤 Alexandra 🖤The moment the car pulled over in front of the house, Papa was already out before the engine fully died, like he had been waiting for that exact second to continue the conversation he started at the hospital, and honestly I could already tell where this was going before he even open







