LOGINAlina’s POVI called Ronan from the airport.He picked up on the first ring, which meant he’d been watching the flight tracker, which was deeply predictable and also quietly lovely.“How is she?” he asked.“Getting there,” I said. “She needed to hear it from someone who’d been through it. Not the advice version — the actual honest version.”“Did you give her the actual honest version?”“I told her I ran. That I sat in my father’s penthouse and tried to force myself back into a life that didn’t fit anymore. That I was terrified the whole time.” I found my gate and sat down. “I told her the truth. That brave isn’t the absence of fear — it’s doing it anyway.”A pause. “How did she take it?”“She’s still processing,” I said. “But she’s close. Closer than she was yesterday.” I leaned back. “She’s been holding herself to a version of me that I’ve never actually been. The idea that I just accepted everything smoothly and moved forward without falling apart.” A beat. “I don’t know where that
Chloe’s POVI made it home before I fell apart.That felt important somehow, that I held it together through the goodnight and the elevator and the drive back and the key in the lock, and it was only when the door closed behind me and the apartment was quiet that my legs stopped cooperating and I sat down on the floor with my back against the door like someone had cut the strings.*Boston.*Lucian had been offered a job in Boston and he was going to take it if I didn’t give him a real answer in two weeks and I had been sitting across from him nodding like a reasonable person while internally every coherent thought I had was dissolving.I sat on the floor for a while. Thought about getting up. Didn’t.My phone was in my hand without me deciding to pick it up, and I was calling Alina before I’d consciously made that choice either.She answered on the second ring, which meant she’d been near her phone, which meant some part of her had probably been waiting.“Hey,” she said. “What happene
Lucian’s POVI called Chloe on a Thursday afternoon from my office, between a twelve-hour shift and whatever came after it.She picked up on the third ring, slightly breathless, like she’d been moving. “Hey. Is everything okay?”“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Can you come over tonight?”A pause. I’d learned to read her pauses. This one was cautious but not afraid. “Sure. What time?”“Seven. I’ll order food.”“You’re ordering food? You always cook.”“Tonight I’m ordering food,” I said. “Seven o’clock, Chloe.”She came at seven, like I knew she would. She was in jeans and that leather jacket again, which I’d privately begun to think of as her armor — not in a bad way, but in the way that some people had objects that made them feel like themselves. I took her jacket and she sat on the couch and looked at me with that careful, reading-the-room expression she’d developed over the past months.“You have a face,” she said.“I have my regular face.”“You have your specific face. The one you us
Chloe’s POVI resumed working.Maya cornered me at the coffee machine on a Tuesday.Not aggressively. Maya didn’t do aggressive — she did relentless, which was worse. She appeared at my elbow with her own mug, topped up her coffee with the unhurried energy of someone who had already decided this was happening, and said, “You’ve been staring at your screen for forty minutes without scrolling.”“I’ve been thinking.”“You’ve been not working and calling it thinking.” She leaned against the counter. “Talk to me.”“I’m fine.”“You have used that word so many times in the past month that it has completely lost meaning.” She sipped her coffee. “What’s going on? And I mean actually going on, not the sanitized version.”I looked around the kitchen. Empty. I looked at Maya, who had the specific expression of someone who was prepared to stand at this coffee machine for as long as necessary.I gave up.“You know… I do have feelings for three men,” I said. “I’ve been trying to decide what to do ab
Jake’s POVMy sister answered the door looking like she hadn’t slept properly in a week.She was in a hoodie that was definitely too big to be hers, holding a mug of tea, and her hair was up in the kind of bun that meant she’d stopped thinking about it. She looked at me standing on her doorstep with my bag and her expression went through surprise, then relief, then something that was dangerously close to the face she used to make when we were kids and she’d been holding something difficult for too long and someone finally asked.“Jake,” she said. “What are you doing here?”“You weren’t answering my calls properly.” I picked up my bag. “So I booked a flight.”“That’s…” She stepped back to let me in. “That’s a dramatic response to unanswered calls.”“You’re my sister. Dramatic is proportional.” I looked around her apartment. Books out, notepad on the coffee table covered in writing, the specific energy of a space where someone had been thinking very hard for a very long time. “You look
Chloe’s POVI went with Lucian first.He suggested the Seattle Art Museum, which was either genuinely his idea of a good time or a very educated guess about mine. It turned out to be both, he’d been there twice before, had opinions about specific pieces, and walked through galleries the way he did everything, unhurried and observant, stopping when something interested him instead of moving through at a pace designed to look cultured.We stood in front of a large canvas that was mostly dark blue with a single streak of pale yellow cutting through the middle of it, and he said, “What do you see?”“Blue,” I said. “And yellow.”“Helpful.”“What do you see?”He looked at it for a moment. “Someone who made a decision,” he said. “The yellow. Everything else is the same, and then one thing moved differently.” He glanced at me sideways. “It’s either very brave or very chaotic, depending on how you look at it.”“Or both,” I said.“Or both,” he agreed.We had lunch at a café near the museum, and
Ronan’s POV - One Week LaterMorrison’s lawyer arrived at the compound flanked by heavy security. He seemed out of place in his fancy suit amidst a world filled with leather and tattoos. “My client wants to talk about a possible deal,” the lawyer said as he sat down across from me, Jaxon, and Madd
Alina’s POV - One Week LaterLife at the compound had settled into a strange routine. The immediate threats were gone. Hart was in prison. Morrison was in prison. Tommy was in prison. The Vultures were scattered and broken. We’d won.So why did everything feel so weird?
Ronan’s POV - Later That EveningI found Alina in the library—a quiet place we made at the compound for anyone looking to escape the chaos around us. She was cozied up in a big chair, staring off into space, deep in thought.“Mind if I sit here?” I asked from
Alina’s POV - Three Days LaterThe courtroom was overflowing—every seat was taken, and people filled the back, while others watched on screens in nearby rooms. This wasn’t just any trial; it felt like a dramatic show. The fall of Commissioner Marcus Hart, brought down by his own daughter, played o





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