LOGINEvelyn POV
After the door closed behind Grace, I turned to Isabella with my arms crossed. "What stunt are you trying to pull now?"
Isabella's sweet expression flickered for just a moment, revealing something colder underneath. But before she could respond, the office door opened.
Isabella's eyes widened, and suddenly she stumbled backwards, falling to the ground with a cry of pain. Her hand flew to her cheek as if she'd been struck.
Adrian walked i
Evelyn POVThe large conference room had a different energy today.Usually, it was a space for quarterly reviews and strategy sessions, for meetings where people brought laptops and lattes and spent the first ten minutes making small talk about their weekends. Today, the air felt different. Charged. Like the room itself knew something was about to happen.Grace had done her job perfectly. All six of them were seated around the table when I walked in at ten o'clock exactly.Gregory Hart sat at the near end, his wire-framed glasses perched on his nose, his thinning brown hair combed neatly to one side. He had a leather portfolio open in front of him, as if he'd come prepared for a normal meeting. Linda was beside him, scrolling through her phone. Derek Simmons was reviewing something on his tablet. Priya Menon sat with her hands folded, her expression pleasant and vacant. Raymond Voss was typing on his laptop. Janet Cross was applying lip balm and looking bored.Six people. Six parasite
Evelyn POV"Gabriel!" I said quietly when I reached him. "It's such a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect to see you here because this is a new address. How did you...""C'mon, Evelyn," he cut me off, "I know things, I thought I already made it clear.""Fine." I nodded, holding his gaze for a few minutes before looking away. "Thank you for the dog, Gabriel. I think it's what I need now more than ever.""When I saw it, I thought of you instantly, and I know we have a lot of unsettled scores between us, but I have to see you today, maybe after work?""Why?" I tried to compose my features. "You're seeing me now, whatever you need to say to me, you can say it right now.""Yes, I know," He nodded. "But you're on your way to work, and I have a meeting with Adrian soon. I'll be leaving Bangria within the week and I want to leave here on a clean slate. So, can you spare me time today, please?""There's nothing to say between us, Gabriel," I sighed. "We are adults, and we can handle ourselves."
Vincent POVThree streets. Gabriel Ross was living three streets from Evelyn, and she had no idea. The thought sent something cold through my whiskey-fogged brain."Whitmore has been making his own moves," Theo continued. "Quiet ones. The resignation from Bennett Holdings was strategic, not altruistic. He's repositioning himself. Shedding the corporate entanglement so he can operate with fewer constraints. And the evidence he handed her regarding Clarke..." Theo's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "That wasn't a gift. That was a chess move. He's dismantling Clarke's position piece by piece, and he's using the Bennett woman's anger to do it. Whether he realises that's what he's doing or genuinely believes he's acting out of conscience is, frankly, irrelevant. The outcome is the same."Each word was a scalpel, cutting through layers of narrative I'd been living inside for months, exposing the machinery underneath. Gabriel. Adrian. Evelyn. All of them are moving, reac
Vincent POVShe smiled, reading the gesture as a game rather than a refusal, and redirected her attention, her mouth moving to my jaw, my ear, the spot behind my earlobe that she'd discovered made my breath catch despite my best efforts at indifference.The dark-haired woman on my lap rolled her hips slowly, grinding against me with a rhythm that matched the bass pulsing through the floor. Her fingers worked the remaining buttons of my shirt open, and she pushed the fabric aside, her palms sliding across my bare chest. Her thumbs traced over my ribs, down my stomach, following the lines of muscle with an appreciative hum against my mouth.I kissed her back, harder this time, but not because I wanted her, but because I wanted to feel something other than the hollow ache that had been sitting in my chest since I'd walked out of Evelyn's office. I wanted to drown it, smother it, replace it with something simpler, cheaper, and easier to throw away in the morning.The blonde's mouth had tr
Vincent POVTwenty-four hours earlier...The whiskey was doing its job, though it was not fast enough.Each sip filed down the sharp edges of the afternoon until Evelyn's flushed face and Adrian's creased collar and the way she hadn't been able to meet my eyes softened into something blurry and manageable. Something I could hold at arm's length instead of right against my chest, where it had been sitting like a hot coal since I'd walked out of her office four hours ago.The Velvet Room was the club that didn't exist on any map. There was no sign outside. It didn't have an online listing. Just a matte black door on a side street in the Redbank district with a bouncer who didn't ask your name because if you'd found the door, you'd already been approved.Inside, it was all low light and dark leather, the bass from the sound system vibrating through the floor at a frequency you felt in your teeth. The air smelled like expensive perfume and cigar smoke and the particular brand of recklessn
Evelyn POVHe was small enough to fit in both my hands, a ball of soft, golden-brown fur with floppy ears too big for his head and paws too big for his body. He had a black button nose, a white patch on his chest vaguely shaped like a lopsided heart, and a face that could end wars and bankrupt pet stores. He looked up at me with those ridiculous brown eyes, tail wagging so hard his entire back half wiggled, and let out a yip so tiny and so earnest that something inside my chest cracked wide open."Oh my God," I whispered.He launched himself at me. All four paws left the ground in a scramble of uncoordinated enthusiasm, and he landed against my chest, immediately licking my chin with a tongue that was warm and wet and roughly the size of a postage stamp. His tail was a blur. His whole body vibrated with joy, as if being held by a bare-footed woman in an oversized sweatshirt was the single greatest event of his short life.I'd always wanted a pet, but in between learning to become Isab
Evelyn POVThree days.It had been three days since I woke up in the hospital with no memory of how I got there. Three days since I learned about the video. Three days of damage control and media spin, and trying to piece together what had actually happened to Belle and me.Now I sat in my office w
Gabriel POVI parked at the hotel and led Evelyn inside. The restaurant was visible from the entrance, and I could see Rowan sitting at a table near the window, eating lunch alone.I guided Evelyn to a position where she could see him clearly without being obvious about it. I kept my hand on the sm
Gabriel POVI arrived at my compound and immediately began preparingRowan was part of the top 10 hit men in Bangria. If he showed up at my house, then I would take it as a sign that he wanted to do two things. Number one: kill me and take over. Number two: make peace, and things would go back to n
Adrian POVMy mind was working through the pieces of this puzzle, and the picture that was forming was alarming.As a businessman, one of the things my father taught me, earlier in life and while he was still here, was: ‘Get to know whoever you’re dealing with, it’ll help you know what they’re capa







