LOGINMilaThe biting wind coming off the ocean whipped my hair across my face.I walked slowly along the shoreline. On my left, the sea stretched out forever. On my right, tall cliffs surrounded the quiet cove. High up on the rough rocks, partly hidden in the shadow, I saw a square metal vent.I stared at it as I walked.If I had gone through with my plan at three in the morning... if I had squeezed my pregnant body into that tomb, tearing my fingernails and bleeding my knees for four hundred feet in darkness... I would have dropped straight down onto this sand.I would have fallen right into the exact place he had already scheduled to take me.My grand rebellion. My desperate fight for freedom. It was nothing more than a rat running through a maze entirely designed by the man who owned the cheese.The sand crunched softly behind me.I didn't have to turn around to know how close he was. He was exactly three steps behind me. He wasn't holding my arm to prevent me from running into the
MilaI felt so numb. My lungs forgot how to pull in oxygen. Every memory I had of the last two years fractured and shattered into a million irreversible pieces.It had all been a trap. A beautifully constructed trap, and we had walked right into it with our eyes wide open."Do you..." I started, but my voice broke. I swallowed hard, forcing my paralyzed throat to work. "Do you… do you think Richard will win? Do you think Ryan will actually fall back into line?""The Reapers are already breaking, Mila.” Aaron replied, not giving me any false hope. "Richard's money is flooding the streets. He is funding rival charters, paying off the local precincts and squeezing the club's legitimate fronts. Ryan is a king swinging a sword in the dark. He is bleeding resources trying to find you, and a desperate king makes fatal mistakes. Eventually, the club will turn on him, or he will break. Richard just has to wait."A cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck. Ryan was losing. The empire he
MilaRichard Wylder. The man who helped Ryan to destroy Caleb and save me. He was behind all this.My mind raced, desperately trying to find a hole in Aaron’s logic or a lie in his eyes. But there was nothing. Only the terrifying, suffocating truth.I had to take a few deep breaths before steadying myself. "If you knew." I forced the words out of my mouth. "If you knew he was planning this, you could have warned us! You could have told me or warned Ryan! We could have reinforced the clubhouse. We could have hidden!"Aaron’s eyes darkened, the shattered green hardening into something sharp and unapologetic. "Warn Ryan?" He arched a brow. "So he could do what, Mila? Start a street war with a billionaire who owns the police commissioner and three federal judges? Ryan would have taken his guns and marched right up to the Wylder estate. Richard would have legally wiped the Reapers off the map before dinner, and you still would have ended up in a black site.""You could have told me!" I y
Mila“Have you gone completely crazy?” The words tore out of my throat before I could stop them.I pushed myself away from the bookshelf, my fingers still trembling from gripping the wood too hard and stared up at him in disbelief. “What wolf? What are you talking about? Richard is your stepfather! He helped Ryan save me! He smiled at us… he let me stay at his place.”His face remained cold, unreadable. “That smile?” He said quietly. “It’s bought. Practiced. Worn for people he plans to use.”My stomach twisted. “Aaron…”“Richard isn’t what you think he is.” His voice hardened, cutting clean through mine. “He is a man who builds empires out of people. And more importantly…” His jaw tightened slightly. “He is Ryan’s biological father.”The words hit harder than they should have.“He is obsessed with his bloodline. His legacy. Everything carrying his name.” Aaron took a slow step closer. “And Ryan destroyed that image ten years ago when he walked out of Wylder estate to play king of the
MilaThe string of coincidences was so impossible it felt like a sick joke the universe had played on me. The man I had drawn that broken crayon picture for, the boy who had promised me an empire, had been standing in the shadows of my entire life, watching me stumble, watching me fall and watching me marry a man who would eventually break my spirit."You knew." I whispered as I yanked my wrist out of his grip. "You watched Caleb hit me? You watched me walk into that emergency room with a bruised rib and you did nothing? You were the CEO of his company! You could have fired him! You could have stopped it!"Aaron shook his head. "I didn't know the extent of it at first, Mila. He was careful. But when I finally realized what he was doing... I was going to end him. I promise." He paused."But then Ryan stepped in." Aaron said as his voice registered into a dangerous, icy tone. "Ryan found you. And despite everything I felt, despite every instinct screaming at me to take you from him...
Mila Aaron’s entire body went perfectly still. The dark, empty void in his eyes completely vanished, replaced by a storm of raw, painful memories. He slowly lowered his head, staring at the floor for a long second before looking back up at me."Nobody has called me that in years.” He said softly. My back was pressed hard against the bookshelf. My hands were shaking so much that I had to drop the drawing onto the floor. I couldn't breathe. My mind was breaking under the weight of the truth."Why?" The word ripped out of my throat. "Why me, Aaron? Why keep all these pictures? Why watch me?"Aaron didn't step closer, sensing my fear. Instead, he slowly knelt down on the floor right across from me. It was the exact same way he used to sit in the corner of the playroom all those years ago."Because you were the only real thing in that house." He said. "Everyone else was broken, crying, or mean. But you... you were this tiny, brave thing. You were so cool, Mila. You never let the warden b







