เข้าสู่ระบบChapter 236: Olive’s POV“Is it? Because that’s how this looks from where I’m standing, Zane. From where I’m standing, my dead brother’s best friend manipulated his way into my life under false pretenses, hid the most important information about himself from me, and got me to fall in love with him while he watched me grieve a brother he’d been lying to me about knowing. That’s how this looks. So tell me, Zane. Tell me why I should see it any other way.”He took a step toward me.“Don’t.”“Olive—”“Don’t come near me.”He stopped.“Olive,” he said quietly, and I could hear the desperation in his voice, the way he was begging me without saying the word, “please. Please let me explain. There’s so much you don’t know. There’s so much I haven’t told you because I was trying to protect you, because I didn’t know how to tell you, because I was a fucking coward. But please, please don’t do this. Please don’t end this without giving me a chance to explain.”“Did Klaus ask you to look after me?
Chapter 235: Olive’s POVThe night air hit me the second I stepped out of the elevator and into the underground parking garage, cold and heavy and exactly the way I needed it to feel.My legs were moving on autopilot. My mind was somewhere far away, somewhere outside my body, replaying the last scene over and over again and still trying to fit in my crumbled mind.Brenda safe. Walter broken. My mother on the floor. The two versions of Klaus’s death battling each other in my head, both of them sounding true and both of them sounding wrong.I needed to see him.I needed to look him in the eyes and figure out which version of this story was real.My keys were in my hand. My fingers were shaking. I was walking toward my car like a person who had forgotten how to be a person, like a stranger had taken over my body and was operating it from a distance, like nothing about the next few minutes was actually going to feel real.“Olive.”I frozeI stopped because I knew that voice. I knew it the
Chapter 234: Olive's POV"What did Klaus say?" I asked."Olive—""What did my brother say before he died, Walter."Walter closed his eyes.When he opened them again, his voice was barely above a whisper."He asked Zane to tell me the truth," he said. "He asked Zane to make sure I knew what had really happened to him. So that I could understand. So that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life wondering.""And.""And he asked Zane to take care of me. To make sure I wasn't alone in my grief. He told Zane to come to me. To work with me. To let me be part of his life. He said something like, 'Don't let my dad disappear into this. Promise me you'll make him your manager. Promise me you'll keep him close.' And Zane promised. And then Klaus died."The sound that came out of my mother wasn't human.It was a wail. A keen. The sound of a woman who had just learned the last words her son had spoken in life, who had just learned that those words hadn't been about her, hadn't been about either of them
Chapter 233: Olive's POVWalter took a deep breath.The kind of deep breath you take before jumping off a cliff. The kind you take when you know the next words out of your mouth are going to change everything, when you know you've been holding onto something for too long and finally the dam has to break."It started in the military," he said. "Twelve years ago. Long before any of you ever met Zane."I felt my stomach tighten.Because this was familiar. This was the same starting point Alonso had used. This was the same backstory I'd already been forced to hear once tonight, except this time I was hearing it from my father, and my father had no reason to lie about parts of it the way Alonso had."Zane was in the military?" my mother asked.She was still on the floor, still in Grayson's arms, still trying to process the fact that her ex-husband had been lying to her for over a decade."Yes, Diane. He enlisted when he was fifteen.""Fifteen?""It's a long story. The point is that he was
Chapter 232: Olive's POVLike all the sound had been sucked out of it. Like the air pressure had changed."Olive," my mother said carefully, "what are you—""And I'm not talking about the bullshit story of him dying in a car accident," I said, cutting her off, my eyes locked on Walter. "I want to know the truth now, father. The real truth."Nobody spoke.I could see the calculation happening behind Walter's eyes, the way he was trying to figure out what I knew, how much I knew, where I'd gotten my information from."Olive," my mother said again, her voice trembling now, "what are you talking about? Did something happen, baby? Why are you bringing Klaus's death up?"I could see the hurt in her eyes. Knew bringing this up was going to rip open a wound that had finally started to scar over.But she needed to know.She needed to know the real truth about her son's death, and she needed to hear it from the man who had been hiding it from her this entire time."Walter," I said, my voice har
Chapter 231: Olive's POVMy hands pushed against the steering wheel with much more force than necessary as I drove through the dark streets, my hands shaking with fear and rage and something underneath both of those that didn't have a name yet, something raw and ugly that felt like it was going to eat me alive from the inside out.The car was moving too fast.I knew it was moving too fast because Brenda was clutching the armrest beside me and her face had gone pale and I could see her glancing at the speedometer every few seconds.But I couldn't slow down.If I slowed down my brain might catch up with me, and if my brain caught up with me, I was going to lose what little control I had left.It was the truth.That was the worst part. Everything Alonso had told me had the awful ring of truth around the edges. Not because I trusted him, not because I believed his version of events, but because too many of the pieces fit. Too many of the small wrongnesses I'd been ignoring suddenly made
Chapter 55: Zane's POVThe second I stepped out of my private garage, I tossed the keys to the valet without looking at him.The company building loomed ahead—another constructed part of my life I didn't give a damn about. Sometimes I wondered if anything about my existence was real, or if I'd just
Chapter 67: ZANE's POV"We could go even more feral," I said, pulling her toward me until her head rested against my chest, her soft hair fanning across my skin like silk, the intoxicating scent of her filling my lungs with every breath."You're something else, you know
Chapter 66: ZANE's POVThe second the door slammed shut behind us, I shoved her against the wall with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs, my lips crashing against hers in a deep, claiming kiss that made her moan despera
Chapter 62: Olive's POVI couldn't breathe.The hallway was spinning, walls closing in, and my heels were too high, dress too tight, everything was wrong.Behind me I could still hear them even from this distance. Their voices. Their phone shutters clicking. The video probably still playing on loop







