LOGINChapter 68: The CallLiora's POVShe called Nina back at six.Zara was in the living room conducting what appeared to be a very serious meeting between Gerald the rabbit and three other stuffed animals she'd arranged in a circle on the floor. There was a sock involved. Liora had stopped trying to understand the sock.She went to the kitchen.Closed the door halfway.Called Nina.It rang once."FINALLY," Nina said. "I've been sitting on this since this morning do you know what that does to a person""I was in a meeting," Liora said."All day.""Most of it.""With him?""Nina.""Was the meeting with him."Liora looked at the kitchen window. "It was a project meeting. There were files.""There were FILES," Nina repeated. Like this was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Okay. Files. Very professional. How did he look.""Like a person.""Liora Rose Kane.""He looked fine Nina.""Fine." A pause. "The man walked into my bookstore on a Wednesday morning, stood in the fiction section for fo
Chapter 67: Ten AMLiora's POVShe arrived at nine forty three.Seventeen minutes early.She stood outside the small meeting room and looked at the frosted glass panel and thought about the seventeen minutes and what they said about how well the not being nervous was going.She opened the door.He was already there.Two coffees on the table. The city through the window. No conference table this time. Just a small round table and two chairs and nothing between them except the coffees and the files she was carrying and the specific charged atmosphere that was always there between them.He looked up.She looked at him."You're early," she said."So are you," he said.She sat down.He watched her sit.She opened her files."The methodology framework," she said. "You mentioned wanting to understand the compound isolation process more thoroughly.""Yes," he said. "Walk me through it."She turned to the relevant page.Slid the file across the table toward him.He leaned forward to look at it
Chapter 66: The BookstoreDamien's POVHe went to the east side on Wednesday morning.Not because he'd planned to. Or not consciously. he'd told cole to take the day off and had decided to take the car for a drive to clear his mind and before he knew it, he had pulled into traffic heading east instead of north where the office was.He didn't correct it.The report had been sitting in his phone since Monday evening. He'd read it three times. The academic background. The published papers. The lab registration. The timeline that kept sitting in his chest with a weight he couldn't put down cleanly.Three years of research.Same year his insomnia resolved.This could be nothing but a coincidence but he wasn't sure.He looked at the city.The building were exactly what the report described.Unremarkable. Residential facade on a street that had three coffee shops and a dry cleaner and a florist doing morning setup with buckets of flowers on the pavement. Third floor. The lab he couldn't see
Damien's POV The report arrived at exactly seven forty-three PM. Damien was halfway through dinner with Camille at the Italian restaurant she had reserved three weeks earlier. It was one of those understated Manhattan places that didn't advertise, where the lighting was warm, the wine list intimidating, and every table somehow managed to feel private despite the crowded room. His phone rested face down beside his water glass. He always kept it that way during dinner with Camille. Not because he particularly cared about etiquette, but because a year ago, early in whatever it was they had together, she'd asked him to. "Can you keep your phone face down when we're having dinner?" It had been a reasonable request. Reasonable requests were easy. He honored them. The phone vibrated once against the white tablecloth. He ignored it. Across from him, Camille was describing a waterfront property her family was considering in the Hamptons. She spoke with the effortless co
Chapter 65: The FileHale's POVHe recognized the name the moment Demien Voss said it was like a flashback of what happened 4 years ago.He heard about the CEO's accident and him losing his memories regarding everything relating to her.Liora Kane.He'd built a forty one page report on her four years ago.He pulled it up on his second monitor while his phone was still warm from the call .He sat with that for a moment.Then he called Margaret Voss.She answered on the second ring."Hale," she said. The way she always said it. Not a greeting exactly. More an acknowledgment that he existed and was calling and she was prepared to hear why."Mrs. Voss," he said. "Your son called me this afternoon. He's asked me to investigate a woman named Liora Kane."Three seconds of silence.He counted them.He always counted them with Margaret because the length of her silences told him things her words didn't.Three seconds meant this knowledge had caught her by surprise."I see," she said."I have
Chapter 64: The Third PaperDamien's POVThe car didn't move for eleven minutes.Marcus would have known not to say anything.The new driver, a man named Cole who had been with him for three years and was competent and professional and entirely not Marcus, sat in the front seat with the engine running and said nothing because Damien hadn't told him to drive and Cole had learned in three years that instructions were instructions and silence was silence and the two were not interchangeable.Damien looked at his phone.At the third paperEngineered Olfactory Compounds and Their Application in Targeted Neurological Fixation: A Study in Psychographic Profiling.He'd found it twenty minutes into the drive back from the institute when he'd pulled up her academic profile to read the preliminary work behind the framework she'd presented and had found the three papers listed in reverse chronological order.He'd read the first one in the first ten minutes.Standard research. Rigorous. Well const
Chapter 4: RestedDamien's POVDamien hated mornings.For the past three years, waking up had felt less like rest and more like surviving another night. Most mornings came with a migraine clawing behind his eyes, half-finished whiskey, wine and pills prescribed by his doctors discarded on the bedsi
Chapter 3: The Second NightLiora couldn't sleep.Not a single wink. Not even close.She laid on her side with Damien's arm still wrapped around her waist, she had watched the city light move across the ceiling in slow, shapeless patterns while Damien slept with his body practically molding into he
The elevator doors opened and Liora stepped out into a place that didn't feel like somewhere people actually lived. The place screamed luxury from top to bottomThe floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble that reflected the city back at itself. The kind of silence that costs money to maintain. She had a s
Chapter 1The Maybach smelled like usual, something that only the elite of the elite will recognize, Wealth.Damien Voss CEO of Voss industries, had his head against the window with his eyes closed, his hair looked like he had run his hand through it multiple times and his face said it all, dark ci







