LOGINWakes pov
I woke up to the harsh glare of sunlight pouring through the thin curtains, my head pounding like I’d been hit with a hammer. The room smelled of cum and alcohol, nothing like the warmth of our main bedroom. For a few seconds, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together how I ended up here.
The guest room.
Of all places.
Then the blurry flashes of last night came back. A bar, too much whiskey, and a girl whose name I never cared to learn. Her perfume had been heavy, clinging to my shirt, her laugh loud enough to drown out the noise in my head. A mistake, sure, but one I’d chosen. One I could shrug off, because sometimes you need to sink low just to breathe.
I’d taken the guest room deliberately when I got back, not because it was comfortable, but because it was far from Aloe. I didn’t want the questions. The quiet accusations. The way her eyes could strip me bare without her saying a word. I thought a few hours of silence would be a blessing.
Turns out, it was a curse.
Dragging myself out of bed, I ran a hand through my messy hair and headed toward the main room expecting to find Aloe there. Maybe sitting with that stiff posture she gets when she’s angry. Or ready to throw a sarcastic comment my way. Anything.
But the bed was untouched. The sheets are smooth. Her pillow was exactly where it always was, only without the faint smell of her hair.
Something inside me twisted.
I searched the living room but she wasn't there. The kitchen was empty too. Even the terrace, where she sometimes went to cool off, was deserted. Each empty room fueled my irritation until it was a steady burn in my chest.
I went straight to the security post. The guard was leaning against the desk, half-distracted by his phone.
“Have you seen Aloe since last night?” I asked, my voice low but sharp enough to make him straighten.
He shook his head. “No, sir. Not since yesterday evening.”
I stared at him, waiting for more, but he avoided my eyes. My patience was already thin, and his evasiveness pushed it to the edge.
“Pull the footage,” I ordered.
The place where all the CCTV recordings were kept, felt colder than usual. The hum of the equipment filled the air as I rewound through the hours, my eyes locked on the screens.
I scrolled back to the day she caught me with the blonde girl on our bed..mm but it was filled with cries so I skipped till where she pulled out her phone, glanced around, then made a call.
I leaned closer to the monitor, but the audio was nothing but scrambled static. My jaw clenched. Who was she talking to, without my permission, I'm sure she's with whoever that person was. My worst mistake was giving her a phone.
I inhaled loudly, then skipped to the next day… I wanted to fast forward to evening time after the security man saw her last … but I paused when I saw her suitcase, half-open on the floor, clothes spilling out everywhere. A few dresses, jeans, and shirts and.. few stuff but I quickly skipped till when I saw her carrying her bag outside.
I clicked on the outside camera as the video played full screen. And there was a Black SVC which she entered after a little talk with whoever that person holding the door for her was.
My heartbeat slowed, heavy, like my body was bracing for something my mind didn’t want to accept.
Was leaving me, of course she can't, she can't spend more than 48 hours without my help.
I sat there longer than I needed to, staring at the paused frame of her stepping into the car. The Aloe I knew or thought I knew would never vanish in the middle of the night without saying a word. And yet here was proof.
By the time I left the surveillance room, anger was everywhere around me, because I got inside the main building, I had my phone and dialed my Tech guy's digits.
“Heron,” I said immediately he picked up, “I need you to trace something for me. Last night, Aloe made a call. I want to know who she called.”
There was a short pause, before he said. “Give me the time and the phone number she used in making the call.”
I told him the exact minute I’d seen her on the footage, then called her phone digits for him. I could hear his keyboard tapping in the background.
“Got it,” he said after what felt like eternity. “The call came from Blake Matthew’s personal apartment.”
I still went.
“That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not,” Heron replied. “That’s what the logs show.”
I shook my head. “No one goes to Blake’s apartment, not without an invitation. He meets people at his villa, his penthouse, his mansion… but never that place.”
Heron didn’t argue. “All I know is what the system tells me.”
I ended the call without another word, my grip tightening around the phone until the plastic creaked.
Blake Matthew, my fucking enemy. And Aloe had gone to him.
The thought alone was enough to make my blood feel like boiling tar. It wasn’t the fact that she’d left but she fucking went to my enemy, of all places to go.
I stood there in the middle of the room, and made myself a promise… one I had no intention of breaking.
She could run to the ends of the earth. She could hide behind locked doors and powerful names.
But I would find her. Because as long as we didn't end with a signature on some divorce papers, she's still my legal wife, and nobody takes what belongs to me.
And as for Aloe… she hadn’t seen the lengths I could go yet…. She's about to bring out the monster that created the monster in me.
Wakes's POVAt eighty, I'd outlived most of my former business associates and all of my enemies. The doctor's diagnosis came during routine checkup stage four pancreatic cancer, prognosis measured in months rather than years."How long?" I asked."Six months, maybe less. I'm sorry, Mr. Savage."I called Evelyn first. She deserved to know before anyone else, deserved time to process that her father—the man who'd transformed from abuser to dedicated philanthropist was dying."Dad, no." Her voice broke. "We'll get second opinions, try treatments—""Evelyn, I'm eighty. I've had good life, especially the last twenty-eight years since prison. I made peace with my mortality long ago.""But I'm not ready.""No one's ever ready. But sweetheart, I need you to promise me something. The foundation don't let it become monument to me or Blake. Keep it focused on the work, not the founders. Can you do that?""I promise. Dad, I love you.""I love you too. More than I ever expressed adequately."I tol
Blake's POVTwenty-five years after Morrison's revenge was exposed, I woke to find Aloe watching me from across the pillow, an expression on her face I couldn't quite read."What?" I asked."You're fifty-six years old. We've been married twenty-eight years. Morrison's been dead a quarter century. And you're still here, still fighting, still building." She touched my face gently. "I'm just grateful."The foundation's twenty-fifth anniversary gala was that evening. Unlike previous milestone celebrations, this one felt different—less about proving Morrison wrong, more about celebrating what we'd built independent of his attempted destruction."Four hundred and twenty-three exonerations," Evelyn reported during her presentation. At forty-three, she'd been foundation chair for a decade, her leadership having expanded operations beyond anything Wakes or I had imagined. "Combined total of 5,847 years of wrongful imprisonment prevented. Reforms implemented in all fifty states plus three terri
Sofia's POVI announced my retirement from the Second Chances Initiative on my fiftieth birthday, after twenty-five years of campaign management, foundation leadership, and advocacy work. It was time, Heron and I agreed, to focus on our daughter Maya and the life we'd built beyond the cause."Twenty-five years," Blake said when I told him my decision. "You've been part of this since before Morrison's revenge was even exposed. Sofia, you've been essential to everything we've accomplished.""Essential is overstating it. I just managed logistics while you did the actual fighting.""You did much more than logistics. You managed my first impossible campaign, coordinated my legislative agenda, became foundation's executive director. None of this works without you."The retirement announcement generated unexpected media attention. Stories appeared about "the woman behind the movement," profiling my role in Blake's campaigns, my foundation leadership, my marriage to Heron Lewis—the man who'd
Hope's POVThe story broke at three AM when a source finally sent the documents I'd been pursuing for eight months. I was twenty-three, working as investigative journalist for national news network, and I'd just received evidence of systematic prosecutorial misconduct in a major city's district attorney's office."Dad's going to freak out," I muttered to myself, reviewing the files. "This is Morrison-level misconduct, just ongoing instead of posthumous."The evidence showed deliberate suppression of exculpatory evidence in over forty cases, coerced witness testimony, and coordinated effort to maintain high conviction rates regardless of actual guilt. Three people had been executed based on these tainted prosecutions. Dozens more remained in prison.I called my editor at six AM. "I have it. Everything we needed to prove the DA's office has been systematically hiding evidence.""How solid?""Internal memos explicitly discussing suppression strategies. Testimony from assistant prosecutor
Blake's POVDaniel called from law school with news that made me simultaneously proud and terrified. "Dad, the innocence project accepted my application. I'm working on actual wrongful conviction case. Someone who's been in prison for twelve years for murder he didn't commit.""That's incredible, Daniel. Also overwhelming. Are you ready for that?""Probably not. But I've been preparing for this my entire life watching you fight Morrison's revenge, working at the foundation, studying criminal defense. If I'm not ready now, I never will be."The case consumed Daniel's final year of law school. He worked under supervision of experienced attorneys, but the passion was all his. Late-night calls where he discussed evidence, strategy, the crushing weight of knowing someone's freedom depended on finding the truth."It's harder than I expected," Daniel admitted during one call. "Marcus Henderson has been in prison since he was nineteen. He's thirty-one now. Twelve years stolen because eyewitne
Aloe's POVTwenty years after Morrison's revenge was exposed, we gathered at the foundation's twentieth anniversary celebration. The event took place at the same Portland convention center where we'd celebrated the tenth anniversary, but everything else had changed.The foundation now operated in all fifty states, had staff exceeding five hundred, and had helped exonerate 312 people each representing years of life saved from wrongful imprisonment. The numbers were staggering, the impact immeasurable.James flew in from Seattle where he worked as structural engineer, his career completely divorced from criminal justice but successful and fulfilling. At twenty-seven, he'd recently gotten engaged to fellow engineer, building life unconnected to our family's dramatic history.Hope, now twenty-two, was investigative journalist for major news network, her documentary work having launched career that was already garnering awards and recognition. She'd maintained focus on criminal justice rep







