MasukSienna POVHospitals had a way of stripping things down to essentials.Light. Breath. Time.Everything else—status, history, fear—hovered at the edges, waiting to see what would be allowed back in.Sienna stood on the other side of the glass wall, arms folded loosely, posture calm enough that no one challenged her right to be there. Nurses passed without comment. Doctors nodded, brisk and tired. She had learned long ago that composure was its own kind of clearance.Aria lay motionless in the bed, monitors ticking out a steady, stubborn rhythm. Machines did the heavy lifting now—oxygen, medication, vigilance—but the fact remained:She was alive.Sienna let herself feel that for exactly three seconds.Then she locked it down.A reflection stared back at her from the glass. Same face she’d worn into boardrooms and negotiations that decided the fate of companies—and people. Cool. Unreadable. A woman who did not beg, did not break.Behind her, footsteps approached. She didn’t turn.“You’re
Sienna POV Desmond Blackwood did not pace.Pacing implied uncertainty, and uncertainty was a luxury he had buried years ago.Instead, he stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse office, hands clasped behind his back, the city sprawled beneath him like a living map of leverage and liability. Dawn was threatening the horizon, a thin bleed of light cutting through steel and glass.Hospitals never slept.Neither did he.On the wall behind him, silent screens pulsed with live feeds, data streams, and security overlays. He wasn’t watching them—not directly. He already knew what they showed.Sienna holding her ground.Gabriel circling like a man who mistook obsession for devotion.And Aria—still breathing.That was the only metric that mattered.“Any change?” Desmond asked.His head of security didn’t look up from the tablet. “Vitals stable. No improvement, no decline.”Desmond nodded once. Status unchanged. Exactly what he’d told Sienna.Truth mattered. Especially when everyt
Hospitals had a way of distorting time.Minutes stretched until they felt like hours, then collapsed into nothing at all. The steady beeping of machines became background noise, a reminder that Aria was still here—still fighting—while the rest of us hovered in this strange in‑between, afraid to breathe too deeply in case the balance tipped.I stood near the glass wall of the ICU, arms folded tightly across my chest, my reflection staring back at me. Calm. Composed. Unreadable.That’s what they saw.What they didn’t see was the constant hum beneath my skin—the awareness that I was being watched. Not just by hospital security. Not just by the staff whispering in corners.By Gabriel.And somewhere above us, in a glass-and-steel fortress overlooking the city… by Desmond.I didn’t need confirmation to know it. I felt it the way you feel pressure before a storm breaks.My phone vibrated in my palm. Not a message. Just a system alert—one I’d programmed myself. Access attempt denied. Vale’s p
Desmond’s POVThe night had a chill to it that made every movement deliberate. I stood in the quiet of my penthouse, the city lights below a scattered constellation of control and chaos, both within my grasp and just beyond it. The phone on the table buzzed incessantly, each vibration a reminder that my father’s demands in Italy weren’t going to disappear. Yet, my focus wasn’t on the mafia empire or the threats of inheritance withheld. My attention was on Sienna and the delicate, precarious world we were building around Aria.Sebastian had been at my side for hours, running simulations, checking communications, making sure every contingency was accounted for. He was precise, methodical, my silent shadow in a world that rarely gave second chances.“Sir,” Sebastian said quietly, glancing at the monitors tracking hospital activity. “Gabriel Vale is escalating. He’s requesting constant updates, security access, and—”I cut him off with a slow hand wave. “I know. That’s expected. Predictab
Gabriel’s POVI slammed the door of my office behind me, the sound echoing sharply through the empty space. Silence was supposed to be calming, but right now, it was suffocating. Every thought, every image of Sienna kneeling beside Aria, every flicker of Desmond’s calm presence in that hospital room, was a knife twisting deep into my chest.I should have been angry at Sylvia. I should have felt betrayed and justified in my fury. But my mind refused to focus on her. My vision blurred with the image of Sienna, flawless, serene, unshaken by the chaos around her, commanding attention without asking for it. And there I was, powerless, watching from the outside while she became the center of everything I had thought belonged to me.Vincent, my assistant, tapped at the edge of my desk. “Gabriel, you’ve been pacing for the last twenty minutes. Are you okay?”I didn’t answer immediately. My eyes were fixed on the cityscape beyond the office windows, but all I could see was that hospital room.
Desmond’s POVThe hospital smelled of antiseptic, a sterile scent that did little to calm the storm brewing in my chest. I stood near the doorway of Aria’s room, my hands clasped behind my back, observing everything—every monitor, every staff movement, every subtle shift in the air. Calm, calculated, controlled. That was my approach. Always. And yet, beneath it all, a low hum of tension vibrated through me.Sienna knelt beside Aria’s bed, her fingers brushing the girl’s hair, whispering promises only she could keep. Her composure was infuriating. Perfect. Serene. Focused. Every instinct I had screamed to step closer, to shield her, to take control of the room and remove every variable from her path. And yet, I remained still, silent, because I knew timing was everything.Gabriel paced near the doorway, his presence a storm of panic and authority, and I could feel the tension radiating off him. That man—his love for Aria and obsession with control—was both predictable and dangerous. He







