LOGINColleenI’ve always believed that a person can feel two opposing truths at the same time. Standing inside the glass conference room today, pretending to take notes while my uncles spoke over each other, I realized I was living inside that contradiction. I looked composed on the outside, calm, agreeable, dutiful Colleen, but inside I felt like a stretched wire, humming with a tension no one else could hear.I shouldn’t have come back here. Not like this. But walking away immediately would have raised every alarm bell in this family, and I couldn’t afford that. Not when Savannah was counting on me. Not when I had finally started to understand the shape of the monster that raised me.So I stayed seated, nodding where I needed to, answering when called upon, and letting them believe I was slipping neatly back into the space they carved for me long ago.A puppet. A placeholder. A silent heir with a borrowed voice. But not this time.When the meeting ended, everyone filed out without sparin
JulianI didn’t sleep much after Evan left the apartment. I didn’t bring up anything that could throw him off yet. I knew how difficult it was battling addiction, and if I pressed him now, I feared there might be no reaching him, so I let him go.However, after he left, I stayed up replaying the moment over and over, wondering if I should’ve pushed harder or backed off more. But then morning came, and with it that heavy sense of unfinished business. I knew I couldn’t let it sit any longer. Not when the numbers in those reports spelled trouble. Not when Savannah kept calling.Maybe that’s why I walked back into the office building that morning with a kind of determination I hadn’t felt in months. I wasn’t here for the company. I wasn’t here for the transition papers. I was here for Evan.He didn’t come into work until noon, and somehow that alone told me how bad things had gotten. He used to be the one who got here before everyone when we were teenagers, always eager to impress, eager
JulianWhen I finally settled into a hotel in Singapore, I did the first thing I’d been dreading since I left and called Savannah. We didn’t talk at all since I’d told her I was in Singapore. And for days, she had called me a few times. But when I reached for the phone, I suddenly couldn’t. I told myself I needed space, and I thought I would get it here. But then, I spent the next morning catching up with the parts of my life I had left hanging. I had already told my father I wasn’t returning to my old role, and I meant it. I didn’t come home to slip back into the same expectations. I came to hand everything over.Evan wanted the position. He’d always wanted it more than I ever did. This time, I was ready to let him have it.Still, even stepping into the building felt strange. The hallway smelled the same, the suits looked the same, and the polite nods from the executives were the same. But I felt different, like someone walking through an old memory instead of a life he once lived.
SavannahI didn’t speak for a long moment. I couldn’t. It felt like my brain had jammed itself trying to process everything Clint had dropped on me in the span of a few minutes. It was all too overwhelming, from his daughter to the cartel. The stolen money, a dead man behind a locked door. I didn’t know how to react.So I stood there with my arms wrapped around myself, staring at the floor like it might give me instructions, while Clint kept pacing in front of me. He looked wrecked, tired, frantic, almost hollow, but still trying to hold himself together enough to convince me to do the one thing I wasn’t sure I wanted to do.“Savannah… please,” he said for what felt like the tenth time. “You can’t expose me. Not to the police. Not to Melordy. Not to anyone. If they find out, if they trace anything back…”“They’ll kill your daughter,” I finished, because he didn’t need to repeat it. The words were already burned into my head.He stopped pacing, turned toward me, and nodded in acceptanc
ClintSavannah’s question hit the room like a window slamming shut. “Did you steal the money?”I froze instantly, even when I didn’t mean to. I wanted to be smooth about it, to play it off or redirect, or at least pretend I hadn’t heard her. But the second her eyes locked with mine, everything in me stalled. My mouth didn’t move. My breath didn’t move. Hell, even my thoughts felt like they screeched to a stop.She caught it immediately. Of course she did.Savannah always noticed the things I wished she wouldn’t.Her face tightened, not in rage this time, but in that slow, dawning awareness that felt worse.“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You did.”I looked away. That was mistake number two. The first was stealing from the cartel in the first place. But this only confirmed everything she feared, and I could feel the weight of it settle between us.She stepped back slightly. She didn’t look scared, just… disappointed. “Why?” she demanded. “Clint, why would you do something that insane? Wh
SavannahFor a moment, all I heard was my own breathing even as it was shallow, uneven, and barely keeping up with the pace of my thoughts. Clint’s confession lingered in the air a little longer than he must have intended. He had finally said it. He killed Rafe. But he still hadn’t told me why.“Which truth, Clint?” I asked again, my voice barely above a whisper. “What were they close to exposing?”He didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at me like he was trying to measure how much I could handle before my mind snapped in two. His jaw suddenly clenched, then loosened, then clenched again, like every version of the story he considered saying tasted wrong.“Savannah…” he started softly, and my stomach twisted at the way he said my name. “This is bigger than you think.”“I’m already in it,” I shot back, but my voice trembled. “So just tell me.”He dragged both his hands over his face, then down to his jaw, rubbing his chin like he wanted to scrape the truth out of himself by force.







