LOGINChapter 55I should have known she wouldn't let it go.We were halfway down the corridor when her voice followed us. Not loud. Not desperate. Just precisely calibrated to reach us without appearing to chase."Matthias."He stopped.Slowly. Like the decision to stop was entirely his and had nothing to do with her calling his name. I stopped beside him, close, closer than strictly necessary, because if this was about to become what I thought it was I wasn't standing at a distance for it.Selene approached like she owned the floor. Her heels were measured against the marble, each step deliberate, her expression arranged into something that managed to be both warm and evaluating at the same time. She looked at me first. Head to toe, unhurried, the kind of assessment that was designed to be felt.Then she looked at Matthias like I wasn't there."So it's true," she said pleasantly."What is?" I said.Her eyes came back to me. She smiled. "That Matthias has developed new preferences.""And w
Chapter 54The building didn't announce itself.That was the first thing I noticed. No elaborate signage at the entrance, no gold lettering or dramatic facade. Just glass and steel rising thirty floors above the street, clean and severe and completely sure of itself in the way that things were when they didn't need to try.I stepped out of the car and looked up."You run this?" I said.Matthias came around the car adjusting his cuffs. "I own it."He walked toward the entrance and I followed, and the moment the doors opened the atmosphere changed around us like pressure equalising. People moved through the lobby with the focused efficiency of a place where time was understood to cost something. Conversations were short. Pace was fast. Nobody lingered.Then they saw Matthias.It wasn't dramatic. No one stopped. No one called out. But something rippled through the lobby the moment he walked in, a subtle collective straightening, a series of small acknowledgments, nods, and stepped-aside
Chapter 53I woke up warm.That was the first thing. Just warmth, and the particular heaviness of deep sleep, and the feeling of being somewhere safe that my body had decided to accept before my brain caught up.Then my brain caught up.My eyes opened.I was pressed against Matthias. Not beside him in the vague sense of two people sharing a large bed. Actually pressed against him, my back to his chest, his arm around my waist with the easy certainty of something that had happened gradually and gone unchallenged all night.I didn't move.Couldn't, for a moment.Because some part of me was doing a very calm, very quiet assessment of the situation and concluding that I had absolutely no dignified exit from this.Options.I could ease out slowly and pretend it never happened. I could lie here until he woke up and moved first. I could, theoretically, cease to exist, which was looking increasingly appealing.I shifted slightly, testing.His arm tightened.I stopped.Okay.New plan. Stay sti
Chapter 52I didn't sleep.I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and listened to the estate settle around me. Footsteps somewhere below. A door. The low mechanical hum of security systems doing their quiet work in the walls.And down the hall, Matthias.That was the real problem. Not the unfamiliar room or the situation with Caden or the weight of everything Marcus had told me sitting in my chest like something I hadn't finished processing yet. Just the simple fact of him being thirty feet away and the way the evening had ended and the things that had been said that couldn't be unsaid now.I turned onto my side and pressed my face into the pillow and told myself firmly to stop.My phone buzzed on the nightstand.I looked at the screen before I could talk myself out of it.Unknown number. New message.*Did he touch you like I thought he would?*My stomach turned.Another came through immediately.*I know you're there.*I sat up.He didn't know. He couldn't know. This was the most
Chapter 51The night air hit my skin the moment I stepped outside.Cool. Sharp. The kind of cold that was supposed to clear your head, but didn't quite manage it.I walked down the stone path away from the main house with my arms wrapped around myself and my thoughts running faster than I wanted them to. The garden stretched out on both sides, dark and quiet, the estate lights burning at a distance behind me.This wasn't how it was supposed to feel.The plan had been clean. Deliberate. Get close to Matthias, make him want to protect me, use that proximity to dismantle everything Caden had built against my family. Cold and calculated and completely under control.What was happening in that office upstairs wasn't cold.It wasn't completely under control either.And the part that scared me most wasn't him. It was the way I'd looked at him when he said *together* and felt something settle in my chest that had nothing to do with strategy.I stopped near the edge of the garden and stared ou
Chapter 50I walked out first.That was intentional.In my first life, I had been the one left standing in rooms while other people made decisions about what happened next. Waiting. Hoping. Reacting to whatever came at me instead of moving toward something I'd chosen. I was done with that version of myself. I took the exit on my own terms and closed the door quietly behind me and stood in the corridor for exactly three seconds.Then I kept moving.My body was still catching up to what had happened in that office. The weight of his hand at my waist. The way he'd looked at me when I said *neither do I.* The particular quality of his silence when I told him this wasn't over and he'd agreed without pretending otherwise.I took the stairs down and let the cool air of the lower corridor do what it could to settle things back into something manageable.This was still the plan. Protection. Revenge. Survival. My parents are safe, Caden is accountable, and the three months that had killed me i
Chapter 12Saturday shift started at ten AM. The estate had its own weekend vibe The formal hallways were quieter, but the back rooms were bustling with activity Matthias was home, so the upper floors were buzzing with activity, and the ground crew was extra cautious around the perimeter of his sh
Chapter 10Marta was a small woman who moved like someone had installed an engine where her spine should be.She was waiting for me at the side entrance at six PM exactly, clipboard in hand, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, wearing the kind of expression that said she'd trained a hundred
CHAPTER 15 The estate felt different the moment I walked through the side entrance Thursday evening. Not visibly. Everything seemed unchanged on the surface Marta's standing at the door, clipboard in hand The hallway lights dimmed for the evening The aroma of dinner prep wafting through the back h
Chapter 13I didn't sleep well.The four words kept pulling me back every time I got close to something restful. He's aware of you. I'd turned the number over three times, run it through everything I had, and come up with nothing. No match in my contacts. Caden had never seen a match like this befo







