LOGIN**Lucian’s POV**The engine growled low as I pushed the black Range Rover harder than necessary down the empty stretch of highway. No music was on. No headlights until the last second. Just the dashboard glow and the drum of my own heartbeat in my ears.Every mile marker felt like a countdown.All of it piled up behind my ribs until breathing hurt.I gripped the wheel so hard my knuckles split white.I was going to end it tonight.Put the bullet in his forehead. Watch the light leave his eyes. Then turn the gun on myself and end my life too.Clean. Final. No more carrying this weight.The abandoned textile mill came into view, it was a rusted chain-link fence half-collapsed, it's windows like broken teeth. I killed the engine fifty yards out, coasted the last stretch in silence, and stepped onto cracked concrete.Malik stood under the single working floodlight with his arms folded. Alexander was slumped against a rusted loading dock pillar, his shirt was soaked dark with blood, an
**Alexander’s POV**The bar was half-empty, the jazz low enough to let conversation breathe. We’d claimed the corner booth, me and Marcus—two bottles of Macallan 25 already half-gone between us. Our ties were loosened, sleeves rolled, celebrating the Dubai deal closing and his messy divorce finally being official.Marcus raised his glass. “To winning at work and winning at freedom.”I clinked mine against his. “To never having to pretend again.”He smirked, glanced toward the tinted windows where the black Maybach idled under the streetlamp. My driver Malik sat motionless behind the wheel, same posture he’d held for the last eight years.Marcus tilted his chin toward the car. “You really brought the babysitter tonight? It’s almost two a.m.”I followed his gaze. “He’s not babysitting. He’s insurance.”“Insurance against what? Us getting too loud?”“Against me getting too drunk to remember where the brake is. And against photos. You know how fast a blurry shot of me stumbling out of her
**Chloe’s POV**The room felt smaller everytime Ryan paced it. Three steps to the window, three back to the foot of the bed, his hands flexing open and closed like he was trying to strangle the air itself. The lawsuit papers lay face-down on the tray table between us, but we both knew they were still screaming.He stopped abruptly, turned, planted both palms on the metal rail at the foot of my bed.“Tell me the truth, Chloe. All of it.” His voice was low, controlled, but the vein at his temple throbbed. “What the hell is the real history between you and Alexander Knight?”I exhaled slowly through my nose. “Ryan, can we just not....”“Don’t.” He shook his head once. “Don’t soften it. Don’t protect him. Don’t protect me. Just talk.”I looked down at the IV line taped to the back of my hand. The bruise beneath the tape had faded to ugly yellow-green. Fitting.“Okay,” I said quietly. “But sit. Please. You’re making me dizzy.”He hesitated, then dragged the chair closer and dropped into it
**Alexander’s POV**The corner office still smelled faintly of Chloe’s vanilla candle even though she hadn’t set foot in it for three weeks. I’d thrown the candle away the day after the lawyer delivered the papers. Couldn’t stand the scent anymore.Angela knocked once sharply, professional then stepped inside with the tablet already open.“Morning, Mr. Knight.” Her voice was bright without being cloying. Twenty-six, Columbia MBA, references impeccable, and a smile that never quite reached calculating eyes. Perfect.“Morning.” I leaned back in the chair. “Hit me.”She tapped the screen and began without preamble.“9:15 – investor call with the Dubai group. They want fifteen minutes on the Q4 projection revisions. 10:30 – board pre-meeting with legal. They’re still pushing for the shareholder vote on the Cayman restructuring. 11:45 – lunch with Senator Hargrove’s chief of staff at The Modern reservation confirmed, private booth. 2:00 – site visit to the new data center in Jersey; helico
**Alexander’s POV**The hospital corridor smelled like bleach and stale coffee as usual. I kept my head down, my black cap pulled low, moving past the nurses’ station like I belonged there. The one I needed, Marisol, night-shift, thirty-two, single mom with a kid in private school...was already waiting near the supply closet, her arms crossed, and her eyes darting.“You got the envelope?” she whispered.I slipped the thick white packet into her scrub pocket. Ten thousand in cash. Another ten when she delivered proof.She didn’t count it. Just nodded once.“Room 412. She signed the waiver yesterday afternoon. Misoprostol and methotrexate combo. Process completed around 1900 hours. No complications so far.”My stomach turned to lead.“Say it again.”Marisol glanced down the hall, her voice barely audible. “She aborted the pregnancy. Your child. Voluntarily. No one forced her. She was lucid, signed every page herself.”I felt the air leave my lungs in a slow hiss.“You’re sure it was min
**Lucian’s POV**I’d spent the afternoon turning our home into something softer, something that felt like a promise instead of just expensive square footage. Fairy lights draped in lazy loops across the living-room ceiling, warm gold against the charcoal dusk pressing on the windows. Dozens of white roses, long-stemmed, barely open spilled from crystal vases on every surface. Candles flickered in clusters on the coffee table, the dining ledge, the marble island in the kitchen. Soft jazz drifted from hidden speakers...Ella Fitzgerald, low and velvet, the kind of music that makes you want to slow-dance in socks.I stood near the floor-to-ceiling glass, my hands in my pockets, trying not to check my watch every ten seconds. The driver had texted five minutes ago: *Five minutes out.* My pulse hadn’t settled since.When the private elevator doors finally slid apart, Isabella stepped into the foyer.She froze.Her purse slipped an inch down her shoulder. Her eyes wide and her lips were par
**Isabella’s POV** Chloe’s voice still lingered in my ears like stale cologne -sweet, cloying, impossible to ignore. “You sure you’re not jumping from one billionaire to another a little fast?” I turned back to her, forcing my face into something that might pass for polite if you squinted. “Y
**Isabella’s POV** The private jet hummed beneath us, sleek and white and completely unreal. I gripped the armrests like they were the only thing keeping me on earth. My first time on a plane...ever—and it had to be a billionaire’s toy that probably cost more than my childhood home. Lucian glance
**Isabella’s POV** I zipped up the last suitcase and flopped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. Lucian had insisted I stay home today—“Pack, relax, get your head in the Maldives game,” he’d said with that half-smirk that made my stomach flip. He and the team were finalizing flight details at th
**Lucian's POV** I leaned back in my office chair, scrolling through the email about the Global Commerce Summit— a fancy name for a one-week "business vacation" in the Maldives where suits pretended to relax while stabbing each other in the back over deals. "At least five reps per company," it







