LOGINAvery 's POVI heard everything.I’d come downstairs to grab water and had barely reached the back corridor when Nate’s voice carried across the terrace.By the time I realized what I was hearing, it was already too late to walk away.So I stood there in the doorway and listened to everything.Ridgefield…He'd dropped that word like a grenade he'd carried for months.The crowd broke up slowly after that. People didn’t know where to look and voices dropped low. Someone steered the kids back inside. Anna stood near the grill with her arms folded, face tight like she’d seen one too many of Sterling dramas.I turned back toward the house. I needed air, even though I was already outside.Then Celeste stepped into my path.No smile, no polished expression this time. She walked straight at me with her arms loose at her sides and eyes locked on mine. For a second I couldn’t read what she planned to do but I held my ground.She stopped close enough that I could see the tension in her jaw, her
Wyatt’s Pov"Wyatt…I think… I… I've seen that before," she whispered.Her hand pressed flat against her temple, fingers trembling. Her eyes went unfocused, staring through the barbecue and the grass like she saw something else entirely.I grabbed her arm to steady her. “Hey. Look at me.”She didn’t. Her lips parted and the words came out broken."Dark…" Her fingers dug into my forearm. "Stairs…""Pain…""A voice…""Metal…"Then her whole body went rigid and her breathing went shallow and fast. This wasn’t just panic, her brain had cracked open something sealed for years.Nate cut through the crowd first. “Avery?” He scanned her face. “What’s wrong with her?”Anna rushed up right behind him. “Oh God, Avery, are you ok? should we call a doctor?”Half the family crowded around us within seconds."What happened?""Someone get water…"“Everyone back up,” I said quietly and the crowd pulled back. I turned to Anna. “She needs to lie down. We’re going upstairs.”I kept my arm tight around Ave
Wyatt's POVThe fork in Eleanor's hand hovered over her plate, waiting.Avery set hers down slowly, buying time to steady her voice. “No,” she said. “I still don’t remember anything about that night.”Eleanor nodded. She patted Avery’s hand twice. “Such a shame.” She sighed. “I was told you were expecting at the time.”Avery went still beside me. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it but I did.Her fingers tightened around her glass and her breathing changed. I almost reached for her hand under the table, but I didn’t. Sometimes touching a wound only reminds you it’s there.“I always thought pregnant women were supposed to be careful on stairs,” a younger cousin said from down the table. The room went completely silent. Somewhere down the table, a fork hit porcelain. The sound seemed far louder than it should have been.“Enough.” Uncle Edward’s voice cut through. He rarely raised his voice which was exactly why everyone listened when he did. “This is a dinner table, not an interrogat
Wyatt’s POVAvery was curled up on the couch with her sketchbook when I sat beside her. I draped an arm along the back of the couch behind her shoulders.“Anna invited us to her birthday.”That got her attention immediately.“Your stepmother’s birthday?” She looked up. I nodded. “At the estate. Four days. Maybe five.”Her eyes widened instantly. She set the pencil down and turned to face me, eyes already lighting up. "You mean like a vacation?"I almost laughed. "A family gathering.""Same thing.""Avery.""What? Big house, pool, food I don't have to cook." She shrugged, with a grin. "Sounds like a vacation to me."I didn't argue. Nothing involving the Sterlings was ever simple.But she’d buried herself in Monochrome crises for weeks, and if four days at the estate meant she got to breathe for a minute, I wasn't going to be the one who ruined that for her.She was off the couch before I finished my drink, and headed to the bedroom with a bounce in her step. By the time I caught up,
Wyatt's POV"Is there something you're not telling me?"For a second I said nothing. The words hung between us in the car. Stella’s smile when she said ‘Avery Morne-Sterling’. Things I’d dismissed as coincidence suddenly didn’t feel like coincidences anymore.If I told Avery now, she’d go straight to Celeste. And if Celeste realized we were getting close before we had evidence, she wouldn’t sit back and wait to be exposed. People like Celeste didn’t protect themselves quietly. They destroyed threats before those threats could destroy them."No," I said finally, keeping my eyes on the road. "I'm just working through some things."Avery sat up. I could feel her watching me. Avery had become good at reading silences lately, maybe because there had been too many of them between us.She turned to the window and stayed quiet the rest of the drive.Monochrome steadied over the next several days. The replacement suppliers delivered. Fabric started arriving on schedule. Elise pushed the bri
Avery 's POVThe next three days in California disappeared in a blurElise and I spent two days calling every supplier contact we had in California and cities nearby, and by the end of it we'd secured two replacements. One for bridal production, one for the California Fashion Week run. Neither was as established as our previous suppliers we’d lost, but both were willing and fast. Both contracts were signed by day three after the lawyers finished their review. Advance payments were cleared, fabric deliveries scheduled within twenty-four hours. Monochrome was bruised a little but still standing.Elise squeezed my arm when the second contract went through. "We're okay."“We’re okay,” I said quietly.Before Stella, before the arrests, before everything fell apart, I used to think Monochrome was mine alone.The last few days had reminded me how wrong that was. Without Elise, I would’ve been buried under this mess days ago.She’d spent the last seventy-two hours saving my ass without com
Wyatt’s POVI had waited patiently since I had placed that call that day, but no feedback. It’s been seven days of checking my phone every ten minutes. Of course Marcus told me to eat something, sleep, to get busy, to stop staring at the same blank wall like it would answer me back. Then my phone
Avery’s POVThe black SUV stopped at a corner three blocks from the facility.Not Richard’s apartment, not anywhere he’d arranged.I told the driver to take me somewhere else. He nodded without asking questions, pulled over at a corner where traffic moved heavily and nobody looked twice at a woman
I lost them on the highway.One wrong turn at the Route 9 construction detour and the ambulance disappeared into the early night like it had never been there.I sat at the intersection for ten minutes, both hands gripping the wheel, going nowhere. Kane… The way his whole body went tensed the mome
I didn’t remember leaving the hospital as Celeste’s words kept playing in my head.“Disappear, Avery or I make you.”The threat wasn’t some empty threat. She was dead serious.By the time I got to my apartment, my hands were shaking so badly I dropped the keys twice before I could manage to open th







