LOGINIris's POVI woke up drowning in silk.The sheets were so soft they felt like water against my skin, and for one disoriented moment I thought I was back in Adrian's estate but when I turned my head and saw the peonies on the nightstand, fresh-cut and arranged in a crystal vase that probably cost more than my first car, and I knew exactly where I was.This had to be Victor’s doing. The peonies were from Victor. The silk sheets were Victor. The faint smell of cedar and whiskey lingering in the air was Victor. He had found me. He must have taken me from my parents' house in the middle of the night while I was too drugged to fight back, and now I was here, in his bed, in his house, like some kind of possession he had finally reclaimed.I sat up so fast my head spun. The room was beautiful in that cold, expensive way Victor did everything. First edition books stacked on the dresser, their spines uncracked and their covers pristine. A breakfast tray waiting on the nightstand with tea and to
Victor’s POV I turned and walked away, my heart pounding with a mixture of rage and exhilaration. He knew something. He suspected I had found her, and he was going to try to follow me. But I had been dealing with men like Adrian Cross my entire life, and I knew exactly how to shake him off my trail.I drove through the city for the next hour, taking detours and doubling back until I was certain no one was following me. I switched cars twice, abandoned my phone in a parking garage, and used a burner to contact Hyde with the final instructions. By the time I arrived at the rendezvous point, I was certain Cross had no idea where I was.The extraction was set for two in the morning, when the house was dark and the guards were at their most complacent. But when we arrived, something was wrong. There were more lights on than there should have been, more movement behind the curtains. Someone had warned them. Someone had told them we were coming.Hyde's voice crackled through my earpiece. "W
Victor's POVThe call came at four in the afternoon, and for the first time in weeks, I felt something other than the slow, grinding emptiness that had consumed me since Iris disappeared.Hyde's name flashed on my screen, and I answered before the first ring finished, my voice rough from disuse. "Tell me you have something.""I have her." He was not a man who wasted words, but I heard the satisfaction buried beneath his usual flat tone. "I wanted to be certain before I contacted you. My men spotted her at a private hospital two towns over. She was with her mother. They arrived before dawn and left within the hour."The photograph of Iris on my desk blurred in front of my eyes, and I realized my hands were shaking. "Where is she staying?""Her parents' house. They have security posted around the perimeter, but it's nothing sophisticated. Local hires. Ex-cops and private security types who are used to babysitting wealthy families, not dealing with a professional extraction. The cameras
Iris's POVI had been cooped inside for so long that I was starting to forget what the outside world looked like.My mother had dismissed the housekeeper and the gardener and every other domestic worker the moment Marcus dropped me off, replacing them with a rotating schedule of doctors who made house calls and nurses who checked my blood pressure in the living room. No one came in without her approval. No one left without her inspection.The paranoia was exhausting, but I understood it. Adrian Cross had found me once by watching my movements and learning my routines. Victor had found me by planting a mole in his own organization who reported my every move. If they could track me through the staff at a luxury estate, they could certainly track me through a housekeeper who gossiped with her friends about the pregnant daughter hiding in the upstairs bedroom.But a house call could only do so much. The doctor who came to see me was kind and
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 pape
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 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
Iris's POVI wrote.The words came faster than they had in weeks, pouring out of me like water through a broken dam. My fingers flew across the keyboard, barely keeping pace with the scenes unfolding behind my eyes. A new hero emerged from the haze, darker than Daniel, sharper around the edges. He
Iris’s POV We ate slowly, trading bites back and forth while our conversation drifted over nothing particularly important, the kind of lazy morning talk that felt like an extension of sleep itself. Every so often he leaned across the small space between us and kissed the corner of my mouth, his to







