LOGINHe chose the bowling alley.I almost laughed when I saw the address, the absurdity of it landing somewhere between sweet and devastating, given everything that had happened since the last time we'd stood under those buzzing fluorescent lights together.The lanes were empty when I arrived, the place closed to the public for the evening, which meant Killian had bought out an entire bowling alley just to have a private conversation with me, an act so quietly extravagant it almost made me forget, for a single charitable second, that the man doing it had spent the last several days disappearing without a word to anyone who loved him.He was sitting on the same bench from before, his rental shoes already on, a single bowling ball resting untouched beside him."You actually came," he said, standing as I approached, his voice rougher than usual, like he hadn't used it much over the last three days."You asked.""I half expected you to send Kade instead. Or my mother. Everyone else in this fam
Three days passed before I saw either of them again.The silence wasn't dramatic, no slammed doors, no ambushes in lobbies, no formal requests through the internal system. It was just absence, a quiet, careful distance that felt somehow more unsettling than every chaotic confrontation that had come before it.Madeline mentioned, with careful neutrality, that Killian hadn't come into the office at all. Kade had, but only briefly, locked away in calls that ran late into the evening, his usual measured calm replaced by something tighter, more brittle, according to the handful of staff brave enough to gossip about it within my earshot.I threw myself into work instead, the one thing in my life that had never once required me to manage two billionaires' fractured relationship with their own father. The Henderson merger needed finalizing. A new associate needed mentoring. Ordinary tasks, blessedly ordinary, and I clung to them the way I'd once clung to spreadsheets and case files in the day
"A man called me," I said carefully, watching Kade's face for any flicker of the answer he hadn't given yet. "Said he used to work for your family. Said he had information about the attack five years ago that your mother left out when she told me her version."Kade set his coffee down with deliberate, controlled precision, the kind of movement that told me far more than his expression did. "What exactly did he tell you?""That your father authorized the attack. Not Vivienne's family. Not rivals settling some old corporate score. Your own father, targeting Killian, to clear a path for you in the company's succession."The silence that followed stretched long enough that I started to wonder if I'd finally said something that could break whatever fragile thing had been building between us over the last several weeks."It's true," Kade said finally, his voice flat, stripped of all its usual warmth. "Most of it, anyway."My stomach dropped even though I'd half expected the confirmation. "M
I didn't sleep.I sat up most of the night with the email open on my laptop, the cursor blinking beside that unfamiliar phone number, my mind cycling through every possible scenario until exhaustion and adrenaline blurred together into something close to delirium.By the time the sun came up, weak and gray through my blinds, I had made a decision I knew, even as I made it, neither twin would approve of.I called the number myself, alone, sitting cross-legged on my kitchen floor like that somehow gave me an advantage.It rang twice before a voice answered, male, unfamiliar, carefully neutral in a way that immediately set my teeth on edge."Ms. Perez. I wasn't certain you'd call.""Who is this?""A name won't mean anything to you yet," he said. "But I worked for the Carter family for over a decade, in a position that required me to know things the Carters themselves preferred to keep buried. I left that position eighteen months ago, under circumstances I'd rather not discuss over the ph
Killian's idea of a date, it turned out, was significantly less predictable than his brother's.He picked me up himself, no driver, no security trailing two cars back, just him behind the wheel of a car that looked far too unassuming to belong to a man who owned half the skyline."This isn't your usual style," I said, eyeing the modest sedan with open suspicion as I climbed in."My usual style got you ambushed in a lobby and photographed for a gossip blog," he said, pulling away from the curb with an ease that suggested he drove far more often than his reputation implied. "I'm trying something new. Humility, allegedly.""Allegedly being the operative word."He didn't tell me where we were going, which would have annoyed me from anyone else, but from Killian it felt almost like an apology for every other time he'd tried to control the terms of my own life without asking. We ended up at a small, unglamorous bowling alley on the edge of the city, fluorescent lights buzzing over scuffed l
Kade picked the restaurant the way he picked everything, with a quiet, unshowy precision that somehow felt more thoughtful than Killian's grand gestures ever had. Small, tucked into a side street I'd never noticed despite walking past it a hundred times, the kind of place that didn't advertise and didn't need to.He was already seated when I arrived, no entourage, no security hovering at the door, just a man in a simple navy sweater who stood the moment he saw me, like some old-fashioned instinct he'd never quite shaken."You came," he said, echoing his mother's words from the pier without realizing it, and the small, involuntary flinch I gave at the phrase made his brow furrow slightly. "Did I say something wrong?""No. Just a strange echo." I sat, smoothing my dress, suddenly aware of how badly I wanted this dinner to be simple, uncomplicated, the way he'd promised. "Sorry. Long few weeks.""The longest," he agreed, and for a moment we just sat there, two people who had been through
The car ride back to the office felt longer than it actually was, every red light an insult, every block a fresh chance for my nerve to fail me. I kept Eloise's words running on a loop in my head. Trust my sons. Trust no one else. Including her.It was an impossible thing to ask of a person, trusti
I didn't go back downstairs immediately. I stood at that railing until the cold worked its way past my jacket and into my bones, because going back down meant deciding, and deciding meant lying to two men who had just dismantled five years of careful obsession in a single evening.I wasn't good at
The week that followed was surprisingly... quiet.Well, as quiet as life can be when you've essentially told two billionaire predators to go balance some checkbooks while you enjoy your weekend in peace. I had expected a retaliatory strike, maybe that they’d schedule a mandatory board meeting at 3
"I do," they said in unison.The sync was creepy. It was that twin thing they did that usually made me want to hide under my duvet, but today I just raised an eyebrow and pointed to the paper."Only one date per weekend," I reminded them."Figure it out. Preferably somewhere that doesn't involve my







