MasukAdrian POVI'd been sitting in my car outside Evelyn's house for forty minutes before Belle Nelson opened the front door in pyjama bottoms and a silk bonnet and looked at me the way a bouncer looks at someone who's shown up to the wrong club."Give me one reason why I should let you in," she said."I hate to see Evelyn in pain, and I brought bread""One actual reason, Adrian."I held up the bag from Carmichael's. Sourdough, still warm, wrapped in paper. Behind it, two bags of groceries. Onions, garlic, fresh thyme, celery, carrots, chicken stock. Everything I needed to make my grandmother's soup, which was the only recipe I'd ever learned, taught to me by a woman who believed that feeding people was the most honest form of apology.Belle looked at the groceries. Then at me. Then at the groceries again."She's asleep," Belle said. "She's been up since four-thirty, and she's been crying for most of it, and I just got her to close her eyes ten minutes ago. If you wake her up, I will end
Evelyn POVI woke up with a gasp, my hand clutching the blanket, my body hot and slick and pulsing with the residual aftershocks of a dream so vivid I could still feel phantom hands on my skin.My bedroom was bright with afternoon light. The clock on my nightstand read two-fifteen. I'd slept for nearly eight hours. My hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat, and my t-shirt was twisted around my torso, and the ache between my legs was very real, just like it had been in the dream. Did I have a wet dream? Involving the three men in my life?I lay there for a full minute, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard, waiting for the heat to subside.Then I got up and walked to the bathroom.The mirror showed me exactly what I expected. Flushed cheeks. Dilated pupils. Lips that looked bitten even though nobody had bitten them. The face of a woman who had just had the most intense experience of her life, and it had happened entirely inside her own head.I gripped the edge of the sink and s
Evelyn POV"Are you sure?" I sobbed. "Can you really fix this?""Watch me."She got me off the ground and got me inside. Guide me up the stairs and into my bedroom, where Biscuit greeted me with frantic yips and a tail that wouldn't stop wagging. She sat me on the edge of the bed and pulled off my shoes, one at a time, then guided me backwards until my head hit the pillow."Sleep," she said."I can't sleep. The investors. The launch. I need to call—""You need to sleep. You've been running on fumes for three days, and you look like death warmed over, and I say that with love." She pulled the blanket up to my chin with tenderness, and I knew she wouldn't mind pinning me to the ground to make sure I stay in bed. "I'm going to call my team. We'll analyse the article, trace the source, assess the market damage, and build a response strategy. By the time you wake up, I will have a plan. That's what I do, Evelyn. I make plans, and I execute them, and I don't lose."She put her hand on my fo
Evelyn POVI drove home with my jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached.The streets of Crescent Harbour were starting to wake up around me. Early commuters, delivery trucks, a jogger crossing at an intersection, a bakery with its lights already on and its doors still closed. The world going about its Tuesday morning as though nothing had changed, as though Bennett Holdings' stock hadn't just cratered by twenty-seven per cent and Grace's face wasn't splashed across every financial news site in the country.I gripped the steering wheel and tried to organise the chaos inside my head into something I could manage.For three days now, my life has been in disarray and in the history of how my life has been in shambles, this was by far the shittiest.Three days ago, I'd been on a rooftop terrace with Adrian, drinking my mother's wine and talking about paintings and butterflies and another universe where we were lovers. Then the wine had done something to my blood, and Adrian had done somethi
Vincent POVI looked down at her face.Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks were blotched with tears, and I felt my heart squeeze with pain. I’d caused her part of this pain, and somehow, I regretted it.I reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was so familiar, so wired into my muscle memory, that my hand did it before my brain had agreed to let it. She closed her eyes at the touch, and a small breath escaped her, shaking and thin."You haven't lost me," I said.She opened her eyes. They were bright and wet and full of hope.Before I could see through the action, she rose on her toes and kissed me.It was tentative at first, her lips barely brushing mine, a question rather than a statement. I held still, letting her ask it, letting the choice be entirely hers. Her mouth pressed against mine, soft and warm, tasting salty and sweet at the same time.For a moment, I wanted to push her back and extricate myself, but desire coursed through my body, and I kissed her
Vincent POVThe accusation hung in the air between us.I should have been angry; any reasonable person would have been angry. The woman I loved had shown up at my home accusing me of corporate sabotage because I was the only person angry enough to do it, which meant she saw me as someone capable of destroying an innocent woman's career out of petty revenge.But I wasn't angry.Underneath the accusation and the tears and the desperation, I could see something else. I could see a woman who was running out of people to trust. Gabriel was dead, or at least she believed he was. Adrian was tangled up in complications she didn't fully understand.Her stepmother was in jail. Her company was under siege, and the one person she'd been able to rely on through all of it, Grace, had just been targeted.Evelyn wasn't here because she believed I'd done this. She was here because she was terrified that I had, and the terror of it was worse than the belief, because if Vincent Hayes was capable of this
Evelyn POVIt’s been three weeks since Vincent brought me home, since I'd discovered the full extent of Victoria's betrayal, since I'd begun the slow process of reclaiming my life.But today, I wasn't sure any of that mattered.I'd spent the past week listening to Isabella sob in the witness stand,
Evelyn POVThe first thing I felt was cold.A splash of water hit my face so suddenly that I gasped, sputtering and choking as the shock of it jolted me from whatever fragmented sleep I'd managed to find on the concrete floor.My eyes flew open, blinking against the harsh fluorescent light overhead
Vincent POVI stood up abruptly, my chair scraping loudly against the floor. Several people in the cafe glanced in our direction.My heart was thumping loudly in my chest, and it had nothing to do with whether I was afraid. I was worried for Evelyn. Situations like this require an expert and an ent
Vincent POVReconnecting with the person I'd just spoken to on the phone has got to be the best news I've heard in a week. He was someone whom I knew nothing about, except that he was a pro at finding people and keeping his word. Not to mention, he always seems to turn up whenever I am in a fix.I







