Share

A mistake

Author: Toria writes
last update publish date: 2026-04-16 14:03:51

Mikhail's POV

I had made a mistake.

That was the first clear thought that arrived.

A mistake.

Plain and stated and sitting in my chest like a stone I had put there myself.

The room was quiet. The lamp had burned itself down to a low amber glow.

Beside me, Adeline's breathing had finally slowed and the hand that had been tracing absent circles against my chest had gone still.

Perhaps she was asleep. I hoped she was.

I did not deserve to know either way.

I stared at the ceiling and did not m
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Chased

    Adeline's POVThe panic arrived without warning.One moment I was sitting at my father's desk with the Cheung file open in front of me and Devon's dead line still echoing somewhere at the back of my mind.And the next my chest was tight and my hands were flat on the desk and I was breathing the way you breathed when you had forgotten how for a second.I made myself stop.Made myself go through the list.Alice Badger and whatever she was carrying, not mine to carry.Devon's phone cutting out and the voices behind it. That's not something I could fix from this desk.Mikhail -- not available, not relevant, not today.Conrad and Malinda and everything they were building in the dark, coming, but not here yet.What I could control, Cheung. The meeting. The presentation. The version of this company that still existed and still deserved to.I pulled the Cheung file closer and I worked.Hours passed the way hours did when you were actually inside something rather than waiting for it, unnoticed

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   The Burner

    Adeline's POVJackson did not look like a man with good news.He looked like a man with information. Which was different, which was sometimes better and sometimes considerably worse.And I had learned over the past several weeks to tell the difference before I decided how to feel about it."Walk with me," I said.He fell into step beside me without a word.My office was exactly as I had left it that morning.Briefing notes stacked, coffee cold, my father's view sitting outside the window like it was waiting for him to come back and reclaim it. I shut the door, dropped my bag on the chair, and turned to face Jackson."Sit," I said. "Talk."He sat. He had a slim folder with him that he placed on the desk between us but did not open yet."I'll start with the part that's most urgent," he said. "Devon Ashworth is being watched."I kept my face exactly where it was."Watched how," I said."Conrad has people on him. Has had for about a week. Maybe longer, but a week is what I can confirm.

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Good News

    Adeline's POVNatasha knew.I had not said a word. I had walked back into that room with a perfectly assembled face and set the coffees down and taken my seat beside my father's bed.And within approximately four minutes Natasha had looked at me, looked at the door, looked back at me, and arrived at the correct conclusion using nothing but whatever antenna she had been born with that had always made her impossible to keep secrets from."Something happened," she said. Not a question."Nothing happened."She raised one eyebrow.I lasted another thirty seconds before I said, very quietly, "Promise me you will not tell him."I did not have to specify who him was. She understood.Natasha looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached over and took my hand on the arm of the chair and squeezed it once."I promise," she said.I nodded. Looked at my father's face. Exhaled."Thank you."She did not ask any more questions after that. That was the thing about Natasha, she knew the difference

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Adeline Royce

    Adeline's POVThe silence on the drive back was the loudest thing I had heard in weeks.Not the silence of an empty house or a waiting room or a conversation that had run out of words. This was different. Completely still, completely mine.The silence of a woman who had decided something and had not yet opened her mouth to say it but felt the decision settling into her bones like concrete setting.I did not cry.I noticed that. Noted it the way you noted a significant change in a set of numbers.Without drama, just accurately. I had cried in a car park last night and cried in a boardroom two days before that and cried in a hospital corridor and in a bedroom and in my childhood home.And somewhere between Mikhail's front door and the dual carriageway I had apparently run out.First Conrad.Now Mikhail.I was done falling to pieces over men. I had a finite supply of pieces and I could not afford to keep distributing them.I texted the secretary general from the driveway."Running lat

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Adeline Royce

    Adeline's POVThe silence on the drive back was the loudest thing I had heard in weeks.Not the silence of an empty house or a waiting room or a conversation that had run out of words. This was different. Completely still, completely mine.The silence of a woman who had decided something and had not yet opened her mouth to say it but felt the decision settling into her bones like concrete setting.I did not cry.I noticed that. Noted it the way you noted a significant change in a set of numbers.Without drama, just accurately. I had cried in a car park last night and cried in a boardroom two days before that and cried in a hospital corridor and in a bedroom and in my childhood home.And somewhere between Mikhail's front door and the dual carriageway I had apparently run out.First Conrad.Now Mikhail.I was done falling to pieces over men. I had a finite supply of pieces and I could not afford to keep distributing them.I texted the secretary general from the driveway."Running lat

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Ambushed

    Adeline's POVDevon did not show.I waited for twenty-three minutes in the lobby of Conrad's office building, heels in my hand, the marble floor cold against my bare feet.The security desk empty because it was eleven forty at night and the building was dark except for the emergency lighting and whatever fluorescent strip was running above me like an accusation.Twenty-three minutes.I knew the exact number because I had watched every one of them on the clock above the lifts, willing them to change faster and then slower and then willing Devon to materialise from one of the elevators with a flash drive and an apology.He did not.At midnight I put my heels back on and walked out.I cried in the car.Not the quiet kind. The ugly kind, the kind I had been keeping a tight lid on for approximately six hours while I sat in that bar and ordered two more drinks than I should have.And refused the bartender's cab offer with a confidence that the floor beneath my heels had not entirely support

  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Welcome

    Author's POVConrad stood in front of the glass, his eyes scanning the road below him. The media had spent almost the whole day camping in front of his office. Finally, they had left. He could finally breathe freely.It wasn't as if he didn't want them but they were becoming too much. They weren't

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-29
  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   A fact

    Adeline's POVJackson had left a while ago and now it remained Mikhail and I. He seemed to be busy and so I sat quietly to think. My hands grabbed my phone as I began to scroll on the page again, checking to see if what I was looking for would hit me.It did, just that moment when it hit. I let out

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-27
  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   Isaac 2

    Adeline's POVDinner had gone as well as it could that night. My father had been a little quiet but as usual, Natasha had been there to make sure that he wasn't so for long. She had a way of bringing out the energy in him.We had finished eating just then and I wanted to go to bed. Mikhail had know

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-25
  • THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN   A scandal(II)

    Adeline POVWhen she left, I felt a wave of loneliness hit me. I had no idea why. It was as if now she had gone, all that was left was my fight again. I heard him come in before I heard his voice, “Why don't we go talk to Jackson?" He said.I looked up from where I had been staring into a portrait

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-24
More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status