MasukChapter 238: Zane's POVOr at least, he'd benefited from it.Either way, when I walked into that family house tonight, when I looked him in the eyes and demanded answers, I was going to find out exactly how much of my life he'd been controlling from behind the scenes.And then I was going to make him pay for it.I drove.The roads were getting emptier as I got closer to the outskirts of the city, the houses spreading further apart, the lights getting dimmer, the sky stretching out wider above me. By the time I turned onto the long private road that led up to the family estate, the only thing I could see was the gate at the end of it and the soft glow of the house beyond.I stopped at the gate.I punched in the code I hadn't used in years.It still worked.That was almost insulting. That after everything that had happened, after every time my father had told me I wasn't welcome, after every fight we'd had and every silence that had stretched between us, the code was still the same.He
Chapter 237: Zane's POVI stood there in the parking garage long after her taillights disappeared.Long after the sound of her engine faded into the distance. Long after I should have moved, should have done something, should have at least gotten back in my own car instead of standing there like a statue while my entire fucking life fell apart around me.I couldn't move.My body had forgotten how to do basic things. And it was weird because I’d always thought to be strong.But then she hit me.She had walked up to me and hit me and I had let her, because what else was I supposed to do, because I deserved every single blow, because she had been right about every accusation she'd thrown at me even when she'd been wrong about the details, because in the ways that mattered most I had failed her completely.I had let her fall in love with me without telling her the truth.I had spent months building something real with her on a foundation of lies I'd been too cowardly to come clean about.
Chapter 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 39: Olive's POVZane got me the apartment in less than twenty-four hours.I still didn't know how he'd pulled it off—called in favors, threw money around, threatened someone, probably all three—but here I was. Standing in my first real apartment. My space. My name on the lease.The cleaning
Chapter 45: Olive's POVFifteen years ago, I was nine.Walter had gotten Klaus his first car—a sleek silver thing that Klaus treated like it was made of gold. Klaus was always the favorite. I'd known it from the beginning, even when I was too young to understand what favoritism really meant.Walter
Chapter 41: OLIVE's POV"Stock's been climbing like crazy and I don't know, this whole board meeting thing involves us somehow."Brenda was speed-walking down the hallway, iPad bouncing against her chest, heels clicking against the polished floor. I followed behind, trying to match her pace while m
Chapter 42: Olive's POV"What?"I was still standing in the hallway, phone pressed to my ear, the world tilting sideways."You need to come here, Olive." Annie's voice was tight, urgent. "He really needs to see you.""How bad is it?" My hands were shaking. Actually shaking."I can't really explain







