Chapter Thirteen

Fiona:

I sat in the sterile office Marcus had led me to, my fingers drumming against the glass table as minutes crawled by like hours. The silence was suffocating, broken only by the distant hum of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows. I was very angry at Dustin and Paige, but I don’t care about them right now.

“Where was Rafael? And why had that man, the one whose touch still haunted my dreams, looked at me like he'd seen a ghost?”

Something was wrong. The way he'd stumbled over his words, the way Marcus had called him "boss" with such casual familiarity, the way security had parted like the Red Sea the moment he appeared. The expensive Rolls Royce that had seemed familiar somehow.

My chest tightened with a creeping dread I couldn't name.

For years, I'd refused to look up my step-brother, I didn’t even care to know his name, knowing the name alone made my skin crawl, representing everything I'd run from, everything I'd lost. But sitting here, staring at the closed door, my fathe