تسجيل الدخولSERAPHINE POVThe voice on the phone gave me an address on the edge of the industrial district, a bar that looked like it hadn’t been renovated since before I was born, and told me to come alone.It had taken me most of the afternoon to decide whether the call was genuine.Diego ran the number through every tracing program his contacts could access, three times, and every search came back the same way. It was a burner phone purchased with cash two days earlier. There was no way to trace it beyond the store where it had been bought.That alone told me something.A man setting up a trap didn’t usually go to that much trouble to hide his identity unless he had a good reason to be afraid of being found himself.“It could still be a trap,” Diego had said, standing over my desk with his arms crossed while I read through the call transcript for the third time.“Careful doesn’t mean honest.”“No,” I agreed. “But careful usually means scared, and scared men don’t set traps nearly as well as th
MIRA POVI had only a few seconds to decide how much of the truth I was prepared to give Adrian.Five years was a long time to live with a secret. Long enough to learn how to lie without making it sound like a lie. Long enough to know exactly what to say, what to leave out, and when to stop talking before a simple explanation turned into something suspicious.I’d learned that skill long before Adrian came into my life.Growing up, I watched my mother change her version of the truth whenever she needed to. One day something had happened one way, and the next day it had happened completely differently. She always had a reason for it. There was always something she needed to protect, something she needed to hide.I learned from her.By the time I met Adrian Hayes at that fundraiser, eighteen months after he had just married his wife, I already knew how to recognize an opportunity disguised as a man.And Adrian had been exactly what I needed.He was lonely for a married man and He needed
ADRIAN POVI hadn’t meant to go looking for anything when I sat down at my study desk after the gala. I’d planned to pour myself a drink, stare at the wall for an hour, and try to convince myself that I’d imagined the entire encounter with Seraphine Vale. Maybe grief, stress, and five years of sleepless nights had finally caught up with me in the worst possible way.Instead, I found myself pulling open the bottom drawer of my desk, the one I kept locked and the one Mira thought contained nothing more interesting than old tax documents.It held a small wooden box instead, one I hadn’t opened in almost five years.Inside were the last few things I had never allowed myself to throw away after the funeral. There was a photograph of Aysha at our wedding, laughing at something the photographer had said. A pressed flower from the bouquet she carried that day, dried and fragile now, crumbling slightly around the edges. And a bracelet, thin silver with a small charm shaped like a bird.She had
MIRA POVReeves called at two in the morning, which should have told me everything I needed to know before he even said a word.I’d barely slept since the gala anyway. My mind kept going over the same handful of images, the color draining from Adrian’s face, the elevator doors sliding shut on Seraphine Vale’s unreadable expression, and Diego Steel’s voice in that stairwell, telling me exactly how much he already knew.I’d told myself a dozen times throughout the night that I was overreacting. Resemblance wasn’t proof, and plenty of people shared similar features without actually being related or connected in any way. I’d almost managed to convince myself of that until my phone lit up the nightstand with Reeves’s name at an hour when no honest piece of news ever arrived.“This better be worth waking me up for,” I said as I sat up in bed, careful not to disturb Adrian beside me. Though after last night, I doubted he was sleeping at all.He’d come home from the gala pale and distant, bar
Seraphine POV By nine the next morning, my desk was already buried under three separate reports, each one confirming what Diego had told me the night before in slightly more detail than I actually wanted. Reeves, the investigator out of Geneva, had filed two more inquiries overnight, both routed through a shell firm that took my legal team less than an hour to trace back to Mira personally. Sloppy work for someone who'd spent five years building a life on top of a lie, though I supposed panic had a way of making even careful people careless. "She's scared," Marcus said, dropping into the chair across from my desk with his own copy of the same report. "Good. Scared people make mistakes." "Scared people also do desperate things," I said, scanning the last page again. "I'd rather she made mistakes than desperate moves I can't predict." "You think she'd actually try something." I set the report down and looked out the window at the city stretching below, thinking about t
Adrian POV Mira had disappeared somewhere into the crowd twenty minutes earlier, muttering something about finding the restroom that hadn't quite matched the tightness in her voice, and I hadn't chased after her. I'd spent the better part of an hour watching the doors near the stage, waiting for Seraphine Vale to reappear from wherever she'd vanished to after her introduction, my glass replaced twice by an attentive server who clearly assumed I was simply enjoying the champagne rather than using it as an excuse to keep standing in the same spot. When she finally emerged, moving with that same unhurried, deliberate stride, a small cluster of executives immediately converged on her, all vying for a handshake, a word, a fraction of her attention. I watched her navigate them with practiced ease, gracious but firm, never lingering too long with any single person, until she extracted herself and began moving toward the private elevator bank on the far side of the ballroom, clearly hea
Aysha POV:"Where in the world is this man." I said to no one in particular.I've been waiting eagerly for Adrian to come home. I don't know why he's taking so long to get here."What if he decides not to come home tonight." I bite my lips anxiously."Oh fuck, I can't afford for my plans to get rui
Aysha POVI woke up with a positive mind, excited about the day already. I looked to my side and noticed Adrian didn't sleep in last night."Where the hell did he go to.""Didn't he sleep home last night?"I got up, quickly showered and got dressed. I stepped outside, trying to find any trace of hi
Aysha POV"I see you finally got that place cleaned up." Adrian said as he walked through the door.I nodded, still a little shaken up."Good. Well I need you to get dressed, there's an event this evening and unfortunately you'll be going with me. Don't embarrass me with your plain Jane look. Try t
CHAPTER ONE Aysha POV I woke up to giggling. Not just any giggling, the kind that's too comfortable, too familiar, the kind that doesn't belong in a married home at this hour. I sat up slowly, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. The sound was coming from across the hallway. Adrian, My husba







