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 POV The drive home felt longer than it should have. Marcus had the radio tuned to that low jazz station he likes, humming off-key while he scrolled emails at red lights. I stared out the passenger window, watching streetlights smear past, but my brain was still stuck on the terrace. I cou
Iris’s POV I should have known from the day I met my fiancé’s father that I would end up sleeping with him. The attraction was so fierce and it was obvious it went both ways. I didn’t go out of my way to seek him out and I even avoided him, but there was no escaping this. I write romance for
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







