LOGINNADIA.The woman in the mirror wasn't me.That was my first thought when the makeup artist Jeremy had called finally stepped back and let me see. The dress was black and did the kind of work that looked effortless and cost a fortune — cut close, cut clean, the sort of thing that made a body look like a decision men would make and bear the consequences later.My hair had been pulled away from my face in soft waves that fell down my back, and my mouth was painted a deep red that made me feel confident.I had not dressed like this in a long time. With Liam, I dressed safe. Plain enough not to call attention to myself - he hated that - and pretty enough not to embarrass him in public.My phone lit on the vanity, and the woman in the mirror flinched.Talia:'I know you'll return to him even after your melodrama. So, just a little heads up: Don't wait up when you return. Liam's taking me to the Halcyon gala tonight. Little apology for you ruining our fun. No hard feelings, right?'For one
JEREMY.It took both balls not to react the way I wanted to when I saw that Nadia was in touch with Ferdinand Blake.I kept my face still and neutral and hoped she didn't get a glimpse of the quick panic that flashed across my face.Which was impressive, considering the name had just walked into my room and put a gun to the back of a plan I had spent eleven years keeping alive.What the fuck.Ferdinand was a piece on the board that I wasn't ready to move just yet. And here was Nadia Wilson with his private number in her phone, dragging him out of the dark by his collar without the first idea what she was reaching for.Nadia stared at me with her face pale, her lips parted, and eyes wide with that terrified intelligence of hers.Fuck.I knew the next question that would leave her mouth. She was a little inquisitive devil.So, I braced up for it."Have you been in touch with him?" She asked just as I expected.There it was. My stubborn, shaking, curious little problem.But I decided in
NADIA.I swallowed a dry lump as I stared at him, speechless."The nights don't count down while you fight me," he went on, ignoring whatever was running through my head. "You had sixty yesterday. You threw the deal away. So now the sixty doesn't start until you stop resisting — and every time you make me repeat myself, it resets. Every refusal to comply adds seven nights. Every missed summons adds ten. And every lie I have to uncover myself resets the count from the beginning.”My hand tightened around the paper."That's insane. That's not—""There's a clause about exclusivity." He talked over me, calm. "It reads like standard non-conflict language. What it means is that for the length of the term, you're not available to anyone else. Including Liam."I hated the clause with a strong passion. But at the same time, there was a flash of relief that moved through me at the thought of never having to let Liam touch me. But the idea of Jeremy being the one enforcing it was absurd.I looke
NADIA.The cab stopped in front of Kellason Global at 7:52 p.m.Jeremy’s private suite sat high above the executive floor, sealed away from the rest of the company.I sat in the backseat for too long with my fingers wrapped around the door handle.The driver glanced at me through the mirror. “This the right place?”“Yes,” I said. "Sorry."I paid him and stepped out before I could lose my nerve.My eyes still burned, and my chest felt scooped out and filled with needles.For the first time since Jeremy Kellason dragged my life under his hand, I was not walking toward him only because I was afraid.I was walking toward him because I needed a weapon.Liam had my mother’s life in his pocket.Jeremy had my father’s secret in his.And somewhere between both men, my family was being held apart by money, lies, and blood I still did not understand.I would sign whatever was on that paper,I would keep my father away from Liam, because Jeremy's cage was the one that kept my father out of Liam's
NADIA.By the time the cab pulled away from Aurelia Medical Institute, my hands had gone cold around my phone.The cab driver had soft jazz playing under the low hum of traffic. I barely heard it because I sat in the back of it doing the math on my own ruin and replaying all the bad decisions I made on impulse. Like the text I sent to Jeremy. I couldn't stop wondering if I had been too rash. I mean... He was going to tell Liam about Dad, right?The tiny voice in my head kept telling me I did the right thing and that it was just a contract that binds my time to my boss. But there was another voice, a tinier one, that kept telling me there was more to that contract than meets the eye.Jeremy hadn't written anything about wanting sex with me. I mean, not explicitly. But, God, I knew somehow, and someday, he would toe that line. And me signing the contract gave him every single right he would need by that time.My heart wouldn't stop thudding in my chest at the thought of that.But, maybe
NADIA.By four-thirty, my mother was asleep with a tube in her nose.I stood in the doorway of her private hospital room, one hand locked around the strap of my bag, and for a few seconds I could not move.The room smelled like metallic medicine - a smell my mother used to hate when she was still strong and healthy. Now she couldn't do without them.I'd learned to stop noticing all of that. You learn to stop noticing a lot of things when someone you love is dying in increments, especially the way the nurses' eyes go soft when they see you coming, because they know your loved one was running out of time.Machines blinked beside Mum's bed. Clear fluid dripped into her vein one patient drop at a time. The curtains were half-open, letting in a strip of pale afternoon light that made her skin pale."Mom?" I whispered as I walked in."There's my girl." Her voice came thin off the pillow as she opened her eyes.Her smile was real, and it gutted me because she had so little left and she spent







