LOGINELYRAI didn’t sleep properly that night.The night had dragged on in long, restless hours, and instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling while my thoughts slowly drove me insane, I had buried myself in work—designs, sketches and unfinished projects I had abandoned for days.If my mind refused to rest, then at least my hands could stay busy.The glow of my laptop had become my company sometime after midnight, and I had barely realized how much time had gone as I sat there in front of the laptop.I remembered glancing at the clock at some point.Three-thirty.After that, exhaustion finally won.I barely managed four hours of sleep before my alarm exploded through the room like an angry warning. I jolted awake with a sharp inhale as the sound drilled into my skull.Groaning, I reached for my phone with heavy hands and shut it off.For a moment, I stayed there, face pressed into the pillow, eyes closed.Everything hurt.My shoulders felt stiff, my head heavy, and my body felt like I
ELYRAI didn’t leave the studio until past midnight.By the time I finally shut my laptop and walked out of my office, the building had gone completely quiet. Everyone else had left hours ago. The hallway lights had dimmed automatically, casting long shadows against the walls as though the place itself had decided it was time to rest.But my mind had refused to rest.The entire evening had been swallowed by work, designs, and the heavy thoughts I kept trying to outrun.Unfortunately, none of it worked, because no matter how much I distracted myself, the memory of the man who had walked into my office earlier refused to leave my head.His face, his calm voice, the warning… they all stayed there like a stain I couldn’t scrub away.Outside, the night air hit me immediately as I stepped into the parking lot. The city had quieted down, though not completely. Somewhere in the distance, I could still hear the faint sound of moving traffic.I unlocked my car and slid inside, and I started the
ELYRA.I woke up to the dull, miserable ache of someone who had fallen asleep in the worst possible position and somehow stayed there for a long period.My neck hurt, my shoulder hurt and my cheek…I slowly lifted my face from my laptop keyboard and winced.My cheek hurt too.I blinked several times, trying to clear the heaviness in my eyes while my brain slowly remembered where I was.I had dozed off while working on the desk after I had locked the bedroom last night. Wonderful.I squinted at my laptop screen and frowned.The letter G stretched endlessly across the document. Rows and rows of it.A horrifying amount of Gs.I stared at it for several seconds, then sighed.I rubbed my face and pressed my fingers on the backspace button, deleting what looked like several hundred accidental letters.The screen returned to normal.I leaned back slowly and rolled my neck.Crack.A painful but deeply satisfying sound.“Oh, that’s concerning,” I whispered.I closed my eyes for a second. This
ELYRAI did not go to my room when I got back.I could not.The moment I stepped into the mansion, the silence hit me too hard, too suddenly, and something inside me refused to sit alone in a bedroom with my thoughts waiting like hungry animals.Instead, I walked straight to the kitchen.The lights were dim, soft enough to make everything feel strangely unreal. The polished counters reflected little streaks of gold from the overhead lamps, and the massive space felt emptier than usual.I moved toward the fridge without thinking, grabbed a bottle of water, and poured myself a glass. The sound of water hitting glass seemed louder than it should have been.Everything seemed louder in silence.I leaned against the counter and drank slowly.The mansion was quiet—too quiet—and I hated it.Because quiet meant my brain had permission to replay everything from the hospital on a loop, and unfortunately, my brain was taking that permission very seriously.I stared down at the glass in my hand, a
NICKThe first thing I did after stepping out of that holding room was rub my wrists.The handcuffs had left angry red marks around them, and even though they had finally taken them off, I could still feel the uncomfortable pressure lingering there like a reminder of the humiliation I had just gone through.I hated every second of it—the cold walls, the suspicious looks, the way people whispered when they walked past my cell like I was already some criminal waiting to be sentenced.Me.Nick Carter.A man who had spent years building his reputation.And now, because of one ridiculous accusation, I had spent a day locked up in here like some common fraudster.Well, maybe I actually was, but what the hell.I stood in front of the officer handling my release papers while he flipped lazily through a folder, taking his sweet time like he had nowhere else to be.I was already irritated enough.“Are you done?” I asked sharply. “Or are you planning to keep me here longer for fun?”The officer
ELYRAI gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers hurt.This had to be a lie.It simply had to be.My mother’s voice still echoed inside my head, sharp and painful, refusing to leave me alone.“Your father’s condition wasn’t just bad luck.” she said. “He also had a hand in everything.”The words replayed over and over until they became unbearable.“No…” I whispered to myself, shaking my head as I sped through traffic. “No, that can’t be true.”But the worst part was not knowing. The worst part was the tiny voice inside me that had already begun to believe it.I felt sick. Ashamed. Angry.Mostly angry at myself.Because if my mother was right, then I had been living in the same house with the man connected to my father’s suffering.Sleeping under the same roof.Caring for him.And even currently, I was beginning to soften a bit for him, especially since he got into the accident.The thought made my stomach twist violently.I pressed harder on the accelerator.Cars honked as
ELYRABy the time Radiel finished explaining everything, the café had grown louder.The restaurant he chose sat near the river, a calm place with wide windows and soft music playing in the background. Normally, it would have been the kind of place I enjoyed sitting in for hours. But right now, the
RADIEL.For a moment, I didn’t move. I leaned back against my bedroom door, pressing my shoulders into the hard wood as if it could somehow hold me up. My chest rose and fell slowly, but it felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room.“This can’t be happening,” I muttered under my breath.I close
ELYRAMy eyes remained on the man seated across me, trying to keep my cool despite how I felt about Radiel’s response to my gratitude. Last night, he seemed different—warmer, and even easier to talk to. But the man before me now looked exactly like the same cold, arrogant narcissist I had always kn
ELYRAThe evening was quiet in that calm, lazy way that made time feel slower than usual.I sat at the dining table with my laptop open in front of me, a half-eaten bowl of chips resting beside it. The screen’s light reflected faintly on the glass table, and the only real sounds in the room were th







