MasukThe Fight Marcus's POV I saw it building before it broke, the way you see a storm gathering long before the first strike lands, and I still wasn't fast enough to stop it. "Daniel." I kept my voice level, my hands open at my sides, every instinct in me reaching for the version of this conversation that didn't end badly. "Step back. Nobody's trying to take anything from you right now." "You already took everything." His voice had gone somewhere I didn't recognize, somewhere past the careful charm he wore like armor, past even the cold fury from the boardroom. This was something older, something that had been building for years under all of it. "God i hate you, i hate that you are my brother." "She's not your wife, Daniel. She hasn't been for a long time." "She was supposed to be." His hand had closed around something on the mantel behind him, one of the heavy brass c
What Daniel Overheard Natalie's POV Noah ran straight for the garden the moment we arrived at his grandma's house, already shouting something about a lizard he'd spotted there last time, and Marcus went with him, laughing, leaving me alone with Eleanor in her kitchen for the first time in weeks. She handed me a cup of tea I hadn't asked for which told me she'd noticed too. "Sit," she said. "Properly. Not on the edge of the chair like you're about to be called away." I sat with the tea untouched in front of me, my fingers curled around the handle of the cup without ever lifting it to my lips. "You look different," Eleanor said. I glanced up. "Different how?" She studied me for a moment, her expression thoughtful rather than concerned. "I haven't quite figured that out yet." My fingers tightened around the handle. "Natalie, I'm not trying to pry." "Eleanor—" "I'm asking because I care about you." Her gaze steady on mine. "Whatever it is, you don't have to carry it alone. You
The Rumor at Work Natalie's POV The blog post went up on a Tuesday. Whitmore Group's "Clean" Launch: What They're Not Telling You About Second Skin's Design Credit. I read it standing at my kitchen counter, Noah's cartoons playing unwatched in the background. It wasn't accurate, not exactly. It was worse than inaccurate; it was close enough to true that denying it outright would have looked like exactly the kind of cover-up it was accusing us of. It mentioned the governance review without context, implied I'd been installed as presenter through personal influence rather than merit, and included, with careful legal phrasing, an unnamed source close to the company. An unnamed source. I thought of Adrian immediately, and then made myself stop thinking about him long enough to read the rest. By ten o'clock, Zoey forwarded me an email from one of our retail partners, a
Chapter 72Priya Picks a SideNatalie's POVI almost walked past her before I realized who she was.“Priya?”She turned at the sound of my voice, and for a second, neither of us said anything. She looked exactly as I remembered her from the branch—except for the tension in her face and the folder clutched against her chest.“What are you doing here?” I asked.Priya glanced over her shoulder before stepping closer. "I was called in this morning."My stomach tightened."Called in for What?"She hestitated, then lowered her voice more"Legal sent out a request Friday afternoon," she said quietly. "Asking staff who've worked near you to submit statements. About your conduct."I stared at her "My conduct?""Professionalism during work hours. Appropriate boundaries with executive staff. Whether you've ever used your relationship with Marcus to influence decisions." Priya's
Chapter 71The Paper TrailNatalie's POV"Invoice 4471 isn't in the current system," Zoey said, squinting at her screen the next morning. "Which means either it's old enough to predate the migration, or somebody archived it on purpose.""Can you find it anyway?""Give me the rest of the week and a strong coffee." She was already pulling up the archive directory, a sprawling, badly organized digital basement that the company had apparently never quite finished sorting since switching systems years ago. "Whoever built this filing structure should be legally prevented from ever organizing anything again."We spent two days on it, stealing hours between fittings and meetings, cross-referencing invoice numbers against vendor names against dates that didn't line up the way they should have. I told myself it was worth it. Some part of me suspected I would have kept
Chapter 70 Vanessa Cole Natalie's POV The next morning, I recognized her before Zoey pointed her out, which told me something I didn't want to sit with just yet. She was standing near the reception desk in a gray coat, clutching a leather folio against her chest. She looked younger than her voice on the phone had suggested, late thirties maybe, with the kind of careful, polished appearance that came from years of client-facing work, and underneath it, visible if you knew to look, something closer to exhaustion. I knew her face from the photographs. The hotel entrance. The restaurant table, her hand on Daniel's arm. I had looked at those pictures so many times in the early days that her features had become a kind of permanent fixture in my memory, filed under a category I'd never expected to meet in person. "Ms. Reyes." She said it quickly, like she'd been rehearsin







