LOGINChapter 150SOPHIAThe news alert came at 6:47 in the morning, which was when I'd been awake since approximately 3 AM, lying in a hotel bed that cost four hundred dollars a night and felt like sleeping on a accusation.I'd set up alerts for Kingston Industries months ago, back when the plan was still in its early stages and I'd told myself I was simply staying informed. Being strategic. Knowing the landscape. All the things Marcus had told me smart people did, in that particular tone he used when he was explaining something he considered obvious to someone he considered beneath him but useful.The alert read: *ARMED INCIDENT AT KINGSTON FAMILY RESIDENCE — MULTIPLE CASUALTIES REPORTED.*I sat up and opened the full article with hands that were steadier than I would have expected, and read it three times.Multiple armed intruders. A tactical police response. Several men in custody, others unaccounted for. The family unharmed.*The family unharmed.*I put the phone face-down on the mattr
Chapter 149CELESTE"She was at the gala," I said. "Talking to me. While men were being briefed on the layout of my house." The words came out flat. I couldn't locate the emotion attached to them yet—it was still behind something, waiting."I know.""She told me my time was running out." I set my cup down. "She was smiling when she said it. She had her hand on her stomach and she was smiling."Dmitri was quiet."Is the pregnancy real?" I asked. "Do we know?""We don't have confirmation either way. It appeared real. But Sophia Hale is—" He chose his words carefully. "She's someone who thinks about optics. About what impression she's creating. Whether the pregnancy is real or a constructed element of the manipulation, I genuinely can't tell you. What I can tell you is that Xenois will handle it either way, whatever it requires.""He said as much," I said. "Earlier. When I told him.""I know what he said." A pause. "Do you believe him?"The question landed precisely. He wasn't asking whe
Chapter 148CELESTE The boys decided, with the particular adaptability of children who have no framework for how alarming their current situation actually is, that Sloane and Dmitri's house was extremely cool.This assessment was delivered by Lake approximately forty minutes after we arrived, while he was standing in the middle of the media room with his arms spread wide like he was measuring the square footage by wingspan. Soren had already found the sectional sofa and was testing its capacity for somersaulting. Troy, who had inherited from somewhere a deeply inconvenient streak of perceptiveness, was quieter—but even he had gravitated toward the large windows overlooking the garden and pressed his nose against the glass with the expression of someone taking inventory of everything that might be interesting to explore later.Children are resilient in ways that break your heart. I'd known that abstractly. Watching it in practice, watching my sons recalibrate to a new environment with
Chaper 147CELESTE"And if the child is yours?"The question sat between us. I hadn't planned to ask it so directly but once it was out I didn't take it back, because I needed to know. Not just for myself but because there were already three boys in the media room down the hall who would be affected by the answer.Xenois turned to look at me fully. His eyes were tired and in pain and completely clear."If a child is mine," he said, "I will be responsible for that child. That's not something I'm willing to walk away from." A pause. "But that doesn't change anything about us. About what we are. About what I want.""You might not feel that way when your memories are fully back.""I might not," he agreed, and I appreciated that he didn't offer easy reassurance. "I've been thinking about that a lot, actually. About what it would mean to fully remember, whether the person who remembers everything would still be the person sitting here now." He looked down at his hands. "I don't know the ans
Chapter 146CELESTEThere was a quality to the silence that followed that I didn't have a name for."You trained," Xenois said, and it wasn't quite a question."Alina insisted.""I'm going to say something very inadequate, given everything," he said, his voice low and slightly rough. "And I know it doesn't cover what you went through today. But Celeste—""Don't thank me," I said. "They're my children."He was quiet for a moment. Then: "They're ours."Something about the way he said it, the particular steadiness of it, broke through whatever emotional containment I'd been maintaining for the past three hours. I felt my eyes sting and blinked hard, refusing to cry in the driveway while Dmitri watched from twenty feet away."The boys want to see you," I said instead, pulling back slightly. "Troy has been holding himself together by pure force of will for two hours and he's going to need to see for himself that you're intact.""Then let's go in," he said.---**Chapter 147**The reunion w
Chapter 145CELESTE"Yes," I said immediately. "Sloane told me they found him and he's on his way home.""He was kidnapped," Troy said. Not a question."He was in a dangerous situation and he got out of it," I said carefully. "He's injured but he's going to be fine.""Because Dad is really hard to kill," Lake offered from across the room, with the particular deadpan delivery of a child who'd processed something genuinely terrifying and converted it into a manageable narrative.Sloane made a sound that might have been suppressed laughter."Your father is very capable," I agreed, which felt like the most honest version of the truth available.Soren lifted his head from where he'd been burrowed against my side. His eyes were red and his hair was sticking up in four different directions and he looked very small and very young, and I tightened my arm around him until he squeaked slightly."Sorry," I said. "Sorry, baby.""You can squeeze me," he said, with great magnanimity. "I don't mind."
Chapter 114XENOIS*The return is that a fifteen-year-old boy gets to live. That's enough.*Old Xenois fell silent, and I could feel his confusion radiating through our shared consciousness. This was apparently beyond his comprehension—the idea of helping someone purely because it was right, withou
Chapter 116CELESTE Miranda squeezed my hands. "You'll do what you should have done years ago—you'll leave. You'll take the boys and build a life that isn't centered around a man who treats you like property."If only it were that simple.But I couldn't tell her about the contract. Couldn't explai
Chapter 108XENOIS I spun around, my heart racing, but there was no one there. The bathroom was empty except for me.When I turned back to the mirror, he was still there in the reflection, standing behind me like a ghost."You're not real," I said aloud, my voice shaking. "You're just my imaginati
Chapter 109XENOIS"My nature," I said, and I felt anger starting to burn through the fear. "My nature is what I choose it to be. Not what you were. Not what the past dictated. I get to decide who I am.""Do you?" he asked. "Because from where I'm standing, you're letting the situation decide. When







