MasukChapter 60Katherine’s POVKillian’s words were still sitting in the air when the night lights shifted to full transparency mode. Every corridor camera woke up. Every mic gained an extra sensitivity. The service alcove that had once felt like the only honest square foot left in the building now hummed like the rest of the house.I didn’t answer him.I walked out.By the time the morning intercom crackled, the entire warehouse already knew the new rules were not decorative.Contestant 11 was waiting outside the women’s wing with two coffees and a smile that belonged to a man who had just been handed a loaded weapon.“You look like someone who slept on concrete,” he said, holding one cup out. “I brought the strong kind. You’re going to need it. The board updated overnight. Preference points are already moving. My name is climbing. Killian’s is holding. George’s is… decorative.”I took the cup without drinking. “You’re still temporary.”“Temporary is currently first place. Temporary gets
Chapter 59Katherine’s POVI didn’t wait for morning.I walked straight into the control booth corridor with the metadata still open on the smuggled phone and the production equipment list folded once in my pocket. Two organizers were already there, one of the sharp-cheeked women from the cash-offer meeting and the older man with the headset permanently glued to his ear. Molly hovered near the monitors like she could already smell the blood in the water.I held the phone up so the screen faced them.“Device ID matches a production camera assigned to the night team. Not a contestant phone. Not a smuggled device. One of yours. The still frame of Killian and Serena was taken by someone on your payroll three days after the suite night and then fed into the house group chat like it was organic. Explain it before I explain it to the entire internet.”The sharp-cheeked woman’s mouth opened. Closed. It opened again.“Katherine…”“Don’t. The metadata doesn’t lie and neither do the equipment lo
Chapter 58Katherine’s POVThe second the name left my mouth the arena became a live wire.Killian didn’t move. He just stood under the lights with that particular stillness he reserved for the exact moment before something expensive broke. His eyes found mine across the chaos and held. No shouting. No dramatic exit. Just ice-cold fury mixed with something sharper that looked a lot like genuine hurt. I felt it land in my chest anyway.George, for once, looked almost relieved. Being the only man publicly losing had apparently been heavier than he admitted.Contestant 11 whose name I still refused to use inclined his head once, the smallest, most proprietary nod in the history of reality television. The Alliance Board updated in real time. Green lines multiplied around his name like vines claiming new territory.I didn’t wait for the post-vote interviews. I walked straight off the stage and into the first corridor that still had partial cover. He followed, of course. The new ranking cam
Chapter 57 Third person POV The photo hit the house group chat at 1:14 a.m. By 1:17 every phone in both wings had it open. By 1:22 the Alliance Board had already auto-generated a new cluster labeled Unexplained Proximity. By 1:30 Molly’s headset was buzzing so hard she nearly threw it across the control booth. Katherine sat on the edge of her bed staring at the timestamp until the numbers burned. Three days after the suite. After the ranking. After every single “the arrangement is finished” speech. She did not cry. She stood up, changed into the sharpest black set the producers had stocked, and walked straight into the main arena before the night lights had even finished dimming. Killian was already there. So was Serena. So was half the house, because the group chat had done the producers’ job for them. Katherine didn’t wait for a microphone. “Interesting photo,” she said, voice carrying clean across the empty stage. “Faces close. Hand on waist. Timestamp three days aft
Chapter 56Katherine’s POVThe second the challenge clock hit zero I walked straight off the arena floor and into the first corridor that still had soft camera coverage. Contestant 11 followed without being asked. He moved like a man who already knew the route.I stopped under the partial blind of a service doorway and turned on him.“Say it again. Out loud. Every word.”He didn’t smile. He didn’t posture. He just looked at me like we were already negotiating the price of something expensive.“I said I have proof that Killian and Serena’s arrangement was never as temporary as he told you. Nights the cameras don’t cover. Private hallway meetings after curfew. At least two occasions where she left his suite after three in the morning and the motion sensors stayed dark for forty minutes. I have still frames. I have time stamps. I have enough to make the entire paid prop story look like the biggest lie in the house.”My pulse was still high from the physical challenge. The words landed ha
Chapter 55Katherine’s POVI didn’t sleep.The note sat on the small desk like a live wire. I read it three more times under the weak night light, then folded it once and slid it into the pocket of the black athletic set I would wear tomorrow. No one else in the women’s wing needed to see it. Not yet.I waited until the hallway cameras completed their slow sweep, then slipped out barefoot and moved the way I had the night of the anonymous text, counting angles, using the shadows the producers still hadn’t fully covered. The service alcove behind the secondary arena was still the only place the feeds went soft.Killian was already there.He didn’t ask how I found him. He simply watched me step into the narrow space and close the distance until the only light was the thin strip leaking from the corridor.I pulled the note out and held it between us.He took it, read it once, then again. His jaw tightened so hard the muscle jumped.“Who gave you this?”“It was under my pillow. No signatu
Chapter 20George stood in the hallway like a sentry of vengeance, his chest puffed out with a sickening sense of righteousness. He had discarded the cold coffees in a nearby bin, feeling a surge of adrenaline that made him forget the aches of the Floor 42 bullpen.Finally, he thought, his heart ra
Chapter 4George didn't wait for her in the hallway. He paced the marble corridor like a caged animal, each sharp turn of his polished loafers clicking against the stone with metronomic fury. His phone was pressed so hard against his ear that his knuckles stood out bone-white, the tendons in his f
Chapter 3Katherine's eyelids fluttered against the assault of dawn, but the sun was merciless, a golden informant spilling secrets through the expansive glass walls of the penthouse. It wasn't a gentle awakening; it was a brutal intrusion, the light slicing like a serrated blade straight into the
Chapter 2The heavy beat of the club throbbed in perfect, cruel synchrony with the pulse beneath Katherine’s palm where the hundred-dollar bill lay flattened against the polished bar top. Killian didn’t reach for it right away. He studied the crumpled note the way a collector might examine a flawe







