LOGINDear reader, It means the world to me that you’ve made it this far. Knowing someone finds my story interesting enough to keep turning the pages is the greatest joy a writer can ask for. If you're enjoying it, please consider leaving a comment, a gift, or some gems. Each one gives me an incredible boost to keep writing! All my thanks, June
Marcus's POVI sat in the dark of my office long after my father hung up, staring at the phone in my hand like it had just grown teeth and tried to bite me. The call had lasted less than ten minutes, and in that time my father had offered me everything I had been working to steal from him. His shares, his company and his entire empire, handed over on a silver platter with only one condition: I had to divorce Iris and let him have her.The irony was so thick I could have choked on it.I had spent weeks sabotaging him from the inside. I had planted false leads and leaked merger details to competitors and convinced the board that I was the steady hand the company needed while my father chased his obsession. I had been methodical and patient and completely ruthless, and now my father was offering me the prize before I could finish stealing it. All I had to do was sign a piece of paper agreeing to something that had already happened.Iris and I were already divorced. She had signed the pap
Victor's POVThe whiskey bottle was half empty, and I couldn't remember pouring a single glass.I sat in the dark of my study with the city lights glittering through the window and my phone clutched in my hand like a lifeline. Hyde had called twice in the past hour with nothing to report. Cross had stopped answering my messages altogether, which meant he was either closing in on something or he had finally realized our alliance was worth less than the breath it took to maintain it.None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was Iris, and I had been without her for weeks now with no end in sight.I had spent my entire adult life getting exactly what I wanted. Women, business deals, rival companies I wanted to crush beneath my heel. All of it had come to me with minimal effort because I understood something most men didn't: people were predictable. They responded to the right stimuli in the right circumstances, and if you knew how to press their buttons, you could make them do al
Iris's POVMy childhood bedroom had not changed in the years since I left it, and that was the cruelest part of coming home. The same pale blue walls and the same shelf of old books and the same stuffed bear my father had won for me at a carnival when I was seven. It was a room preserved in amber, a shrine to the girl I used to be, and I didn't belong in it anymore. I hadn't belonged in it for a long time.My mother had put fresh sheets on the bed and a vase of peonies on the nightstand. She had folded my old quilt at the foot of the mattress and opened the curtains to let in the morning sun, as if cheerful lighting could somehow mask the fact that her daughter had returned home pregnant with a baby whose father could be either her husband or her father-in-law. The peonies were a nice touch. I didn't deserve them.I sat on the edge of the bed with my hand pressed against my stomach, a gesture that had become as natural as breathing. The nausea ha
Marcus's POVThe board meeting had been scheduled for weeks, but my father had forgotten about it entirely. He had forgotten about a lot of things lately. The search for Iris had hollowed him out from the inside, leaving behind a shell of the man who had once commanded every room he entered. He spent his days pacing by the window with his phone pressed to his ear, and he spent his nights staring at photographs of a woman who had never truly belonged to him.When his assistant reminded him about the meeting, he waved her off without looking up from his phone. "Tell Marcus to handle it. He's been taking care of everything else. He can take care of this too."I had been counting on exactly that response.The boardroom was already full when I arrived. Twelve directors seated around the long mahogany table, their expressions ranging from curiosity to barely concealed skepticism. They had been expecting Victor Hale, the titan of industry who h
Marcus's POVThe office had become my father's prison, though he was too consumed by his obsession to notice the bars closing around him.He sat behind his desk every morning with his phone pressed to his ear and his eyes fixed on the window, waiting for updates from Hyde that never brought him any closer to finding Iris. The search had swallowed him whole, leaving no room for board meetings or contract negotiations or any of the thousand small decisions that kept an empire running. His kingdom was slowly grinding to a halt, and he was too busy chasing Iris to realize that I was the one who had hidden her from him in the first place.This was exactly the opening I had been waiting for, and he had handed it to me without a second thought."Marcus." He waved me into his office without looking up from his phone, the same way he had done every morning for the past two weeks. "I need you to handle the Morrison deal. The contracts are on my desk, and they need to be signed by the end of the
Marcus's POV Three minutes. That was how long the test needed to process, according to the instructions on the box. Three minutes to determine whether my life was about to get complicated in ways I had never imagined possible. I stood by the window with my back to the bathroom door and my hands shoved deep in my pockets, staring at the mountains without seeing them. Iris was in the bathroom with the tests lined up on the counter. I had bought three of them because the pharmacist said to be sure, and I needed to be sure. I needed to know whether my wife was carrying my child or my father's. Whether I was about to become a father or a brother to the baby growing inside her. The thought made my stomach turn. My wife had slept with my father for months before I found out, and now she might be carrying his child. The same man who had drugged me on my honeymoon and followed her across the country and bought her publisher to stay close to her. The same man who had been planning to kidna
Iris’s POV The mall was way too loud for a Tuesday afternoon. Music blasted from three different stores at once, a baby was screaming somewhere near the food court, and a teenager walked past me yelling into her phone about someone named Derek who had apparently "liked her story but didn't text ba
Iris’s POV His fingers tightened around my throat. “I know.” The words came out low, steady, and far too calm for the way his hands were pressing into my skin. I clawed at his wrists, my nails digging in, my body twisting beneath him as I tried to pull free. “I know what you’ve been doing.” My
Iris's POVIt's finally the dreaded Friday. I was standing in front of my closet, staring at the armor I'd carefully selected: high-necked black blouse, long sleeves, trousers that buttoned at the waist instead of anything that flowed or teased, when my phone buzzed on the dresser.A text from Marc
Iris’s POV The café on Fourth was the kind of place that made you want to be a better person. Exposed brick walls, hanging ferns, mismatched vintage chairs that somehow looked intentional rather than chaotic. The smell of fresh bread and lavender drifted through the air, and every table had a tiny







