登入Hello guys.Thank you for reading and supporting this story. Happy weekend from here. I think I might be taking the rest of the weekend off. I'm stressed 🥹🥹🥹 love you all❤️❤️
Denver.I barely had enough sleep the night before. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of the ballroom again. Gold lights. Crowds. Selena was standing across the room, looking as if seven years had never passed.And every single time I reached her in my head—I woke up.By morning, exhaustion sat behind my eyes like a second pulse.I was already in my office when Alec wandered in.The sunlight spilling through the tall windows caught the edges of his curls as he stepped quietly into the room, still dressed in sleep clothes, one sock half-falling off his foot. Usually, he moved carefully in the mornings. Slow. Tired before the day even fully began.Today was different.I noticed it immediately.His eyes were brighter.There was color in his face that hadn’t been there yesterday.“Morning,” I said, leaning back slightly in my chair.“Morning.”He climbed onto the couch near the fireplace without being asked, pulling one knee up loosely as he looked at me with an excitement he
Selena.By the time I made it back to the hotel suite, the quiet felt almost unreal after the noise downstairs.The soft click of the door shutting behind me seemed louder than it should have been.For a second, I just stood there.Breathing.Trying to settle myself back into something normal again.The lights near the bed were dimmed low, casting soft gold across the room, and Maxwell was curled beneath the blankets exactly where I had left him earlier.At least that was what I thought initially.Then my eyes caught the empty chip bags scattered across the bedside table.I stared at them for a moment before a small breath escaped me.So he had definitely woken up at some point.I moved closer quietly, brushing a few curls away from his forehead before straightening again.My gaze drifted toward the window afterward, toward the city lights stretching endlessly beyond the glass.And before I could stop myself—I thought about him again.Denver.Seven years.Seven whole years, and someh
Denver.By the time I made it back downstairs, the party had already swallowed itself whole again.Music rolled through the ballroom beneath low conversation and clinking glasses, the kind of polished atmosphere designed to make powerful people feel untouchable.Normally, it would have meant nothing to me.Tonight, I barely noticed it.The second I stepped back into the ballroom, I saw her again.Selena.Across the room.Alive.Real.Not a scent disappearing down empty hallways or a presence I convinced myself I imagined.Her.She stood near one of the marble columns speaking to a small group from the medical delegation, calm and composed in that quiet way she always carried herself. The soft gold lighting caught against her hair every time she turned her head slightly, and for a moment, the rest of the room faded badly enough that I almost forgot where I was.Seven years.And somehow my body still recognized her before my mind fully caught up.Something tightened painfully beneath my
Third Person POV:“Tell me what you did with my child.”Talia’s lips parted, but no sound came out immediately.For the first time since he had known her, Christopher watched real fear move across her face without disguise. Not manipulation. Not a strategy. Fear.The corridor suddenly felt too narrow, like the walls were closing around the rage climbing up his throat.“Christopher,” she said quietly, “lower your voice.”His laugh came out rougher than intended.“You lied to me for seven years.”Her eyes flicked once toward Alec’s suite door before returning to him quickly. “Not here.”That only made something uglier twist inside him.Not here.As though the location was the problem.As though the fact that she had built an entire lie around another man’s child was something secondary.“Where is my son?” he repeated.Talia swallowed hard enough for him to notice.Then she finally said the words that changed everything.“He died.”Christopher went completely still.The hallway noise fad
Christopher.The hallway stayed quiet long after Denver disappeared.Christopher remained exactly where he was for several seconds, his gaze fixed on the closed suite door while his uncle’s warning replayed slowly in his head.If anything happens to him, I will forget we were ever related.The words should have irritated him.Instead, they unsettled him.Because Denver had meant them.Not as a threat.As a fact.Christopher had spent years watching Denver treat most people with controlled indifference, but something about Alec had always been different. Protective in a way that looked less like choice and more like instinct. Denver barely allowed anyone near the boy for long, especially family, and until now Christopher had assumed it was paranoia.Christopher himself had only ever seen the child from a distance, brief glimpses during gatherings before Denver inevitably pulled him away again.At first, Christopher assumed it was a pretense. Denver was playing the over-doting father to
Denver.“Alec isn’t in his room.”For a second, the words didn’t register properly.They reached me, but my brain refused to process them because it sounded impossible.Then they did.And everything inside me turned sharp.“What?”The guard straightened immediately beneath the weight in my voice.“He was there twenty minutes ago,” he said quickly. “The nurse stepped out briefly, and when she came back—”I was already moving before he finished.The ballroom blurred around me as I pushed through it, conversations cutting off the closer I got to the exit. Somewhere behind me, I heard another guard calling my name, but I ignored it.My pulse had already shifted into something dangerous.Not panic.Worse.The kind of cold focus that came right before violence.Alec.The word kept hitting the inside of my skull with every step.He was sick.Too weak to be wandering the hotel alone.And people knew who he was.Which meant they knew exactly what taking him from me would do.The elevator took t
Selena.They returned me to my room without ceremony.No apology. No explanation. Just a pair of guards walking me back through halls I knew too well, their footsteps echoing as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As if I had not been locked away beneath the ground and forgotten.The door
Denver.The door closes behind her with a soft sound that lingers longer than it should.I remain where I am, my gaze fixed on the grain of the desk, a copy of the contract still lying open where I placed it. I do not move. I do not exhale. Years of command have taught me how to sit with decisions
Selena. I didn’t sleep last night. I kept turning in bed until morning came, my thoughts running in circles.I couldn’t stop thinking about what Denver might want from me. What kind of offer could he possibly make?I didn’t have to wait long.Not long after sunrise, a maid knocked on my door and t
Trigger warnings: This chapter contains physical assault, threats, and parental betrayal.-----Selena.Christopher found me the next morning.I felt it the moment the guards outside my door shifted, their posture changing in that subtle way that meant someone important had arrived. Someone they ans







