เข้าสู่ระบบChapter 2Extraction was clean on paper.In reality it was four armed men in plain clothes, a black SUV that smelled like gun oil, and Cassian sitting too close to me in the back seat with his thigh pressed against mine like the panic room had never ended. He had borrowed my jacket. It hung on him wrong. Every time the vehicle took a corner I caught the faint scent of sex still on his skin.His father was waiting at the safe house.Not a hotel. A private residence in the hills with gates, dogs, and men who looked at me the way professionals look at someone who might already be compromised.Victor Rowe stood in the foyer in a charcoal sweater and the kind of calm that cost more than most people’s annual salary. He hugged his son once, hard, then held him at arm’s length and checked for blood like a man who had done it before.“You’re unhurt.”“I’m fine,” Cassian said. “Roman got me out.”Victor’s eyes cut to me.“Report.”I gave it. Gallery layout. Angle of the shot. Time to the panic
Chapter 1The first shot hit the concrete six inches from Cassian’s left shoe.I had him moving before the echo finished. One hand locked on the back of his neck, the other already drawing. People screamed. The gallery lights turned everything white and useless. I shoved him through the staff door, down the service corridor, and into the reinforced panic suite the museum kept for exactly this kind of night.The door sealed with a heavy magnetic thud.Silence slammed down after it.Cassian Rowe—twenty-five, trust-fund, mouth permanently set on trouble—stood in the middle of the small concrete room breathing hard, eyes bright, a smear of dust on one cheek. His tuxedo jacket was open. The silk shirt underneath had come untucked. He looked more alive than he had all evening.“Was that real?” he asked.“Yes.”“Aimed at me?”“Yes.”He laughed once, sharp and delighted, like the bullet had been a compliment.I holstered the weapon, checked the internal panel, and ran the secondary locks. Cam
Chapter 5Two weeks after the wedding that never happened, the noise thinned enough for the real quiet to arrive.It was worse.The group chats slowed. The passive-aggressive posts stopped getting as many likes. Mutual friends decided, one by one, whether they were still speaking to us. Some were. Most weren’t. Lena’s sister blocked Julian. Claire never unblocked either of us. Ben sent a short, awkward text that said I don’t hate you, I just can’t be in the middle, and then silence.Julian’s mother called once. She cried. She said she loved him. She also said his father still wouldn’t say his name at the dinner table. Julian listened, thanked her, and hung up with his jaw locked so tight I heard it click.He moved a duffel of clothes into my place without calling it moving in. We didn’t label anything. Labels felt dangerous while the ground was still shifting.On a Thursday evening the last confrontation found us anyway.We were coming back from the grocery store—normal errands, the k
Chapter 4The message from Lena arrived at 11:47 p.m. on the third day.Julian was in my kitchen wearing one of my shirts and nothing else, eating cold leftover takeout straight from the container because neither of us had the energy to pretend we were functional adults. His phone lit up on the counter. He glanced at it, froze, then turned the screen so I could see.Lena: I keep replaying the moment you walked into that room with him. You looked relieved. That is the part I can’t stop seeing. You looked relieved to be done with me. I hope whatever you found in that hotel room was worth the year I wasted loving a man who was already gone. Don’t reply. I mean it. This is the last thing I’ll send.Julian put the phone face down.He didn’t cry. He just stood there with a fork in his hand and his shoulders locked like someone had reached into his chest and closed a fist.I took the container from him and set it aside.“Come here.”He didn’t move.“Julian.”“I did that to her.” His voice wa
Chapter 3The house looked the same as it had when we were twenty.Same brick. Same rose bushes Julian’s mother still over-watered. Same brass knocker that had watched us stumble in drunk after exams and after breakups and after every version of “I’m fine” we ever sold each other.Today it felt like a mouth waiting to bite.Julian’s hand was cold in mine when we walked up the path. He didn’t let go. I didn’t make him.The door opened before we knocked.His mother stood there in a cardigan the color of old pearls, eyes already red. Behind her, his father filled the hallway like a verdict.No greeting.Julian’s mother looked at our joined hands, then at my face, then at the faint mark Lena’s slap had left on my cheek.“Come in,” she said. Voice thin. “Both of you. Before the neighbors start taking notes.”We stepped inside.The living room still smelled like lemon polish and the candle she always burned when she was trying not to cry. Julian’s father didn’t sit. He stood by the fireplac
Chapter 2At 6:19 his brother knocked on my door.“Jules? You in there? Planner’s losing her mind. Lena’s already in hair.”Julian sat up so fast the sheet slipped to his hips. My come was still a shine on the inside of his thigh. His phone was a stack of missed lives on the nightstand.I put a hand on his chest and held him there.“Don’t answer like that,” I said.He looked at the door. Then at me. Then he did the stupid, brave thing anyway.“I’m here,” he called. Voice wrecked. “Give me ten.”Silence on the other side.Then, slower: “Why are you in Silas’s room?”Julian closed his eyes.“Because I needed to talk to him.”Another pause. His brother, Nate, has never been slow.“Open the door.”“Nate.”“Open the fucking door.”I got up, pulled on last night’s trousers, and opened it myself.Nate took in the room in one sweep. The wrecked bed. Julian bare-chested. The shirt on the floor with half its buttons gone. Me, shirtless, standing between him and his brother like a man who had al
Chapter 3: Cabin Fever The family cabin loomed ahead like a trap wrapped in pine trees and fresh snow. Mom and Dad had insisted on the weekend getaway to bond us all together, but they bailed at the last minute with some excuse about a work emergency back in the city. Convenient. Or maybe suspicio
Chapter 2: Bound by the Secret The flash from Damien’s phone burned behind my eyelids long after he lowered the device. My knees still ached against the basement carpet, my lips felt swollen and raw, and the taste of him lingered on my tongue like a brand I could not wash away. I stared up at him,
Chapter 1: Caught in the Dark I never thought I would see my stepbrother like this. The house was supposed to be empty. Mom and Dad had left for their anniversary weekend, and I had planned to spend the night buried in my books, finally getting some peace from Damien’s constant noise. Hockey prac
Chapter 1: Caught in the ActThe bass from Jordan’s speakers thumped through the walls as I slipped out of his room, heart hammering like a damn traitor. The party downstairs was still raging—cheap beer, shitty EDM, and too many people crammed into his parents’ living room. But I wasn’t going back







