LOGINAvery’s POVThe floor of the helicopter dropped. My stomach hit my throat.The ocean rushed up to meet us. It was a vast, black wall of water in the dark. The wind screamed through the cracks in the cabin doors, spraying cold salt rain across my face.The helicopter tilted further forward, going down nose-first. The waves were less than five hundred feet away now. I could see the churning white foam on the crests of the water."Vance!" I yelled. I threw my arms over Caspian’s chest, trying to anchor both of us to the vibrating floor.Vance pulled back on the steering stick with both hands. He kicked the floor pedals hard. The muscles in his arms were shaking under his soaked jacket. The controls were completely frozen. The computer had taken total control of the ship. It wanted us dead, and it was driving us straight into the sea."I can't break the lock!" Vance roared.The red words on the primary console screen fl
Avery’s POVThe rain was a blinding wall of needles, and the wind screamed like a dying animal. My fingers screamed in agony as they locked around the wet, cold metal of the bed frame. Beneath my boots, the concrete helipad had shattered, tilting into a terrifying, jagged slope that led straight into the thousand-foot abyss of the city skyline.I was dangling over the edge, the weight of the hospital bed and the unconscious man strapped to it pulling me down inch by brutal inch."Caspian!" I gasped, the wind tearing the sound from my throat.My knuckles turned a ghostly white. The rain made the metal slick, and I could feel my grip sliding. Below me, the neon signs of the financial district blurred into a sickening vortex of light and shadow. One slip, and we would both become nothing more than a footnote in the history of the empires we had just destroyed."Avery! Hold on!" Vance’s voice cut through the roar of the helicopter rotors and
Avery’s POVChaos erupted with the force of a physical explosion, shattering the hard-won silence of the recovery suite. One second I was holding Caspian’s hand, feeling the ghost of a heartbeat; the next, his body was arching off the mattress with such violent force that the steel frame of the bed groaned under the strain."Code Blue! Code Blue in ICU four!" the head nurse screamed, her voice a jagged blade of panic.My hands were ripped away from him as the medical team swarmed the bedside like a wave of frantic ghosts. I was shoved back against the wall, my breath hitching as I watched the clear IV tubing. The very line supposed to be delivering his life-support, cloud over with a thick, milky substance that looked like liquid marble."What is that?" I shrieked, pointing at the flashing amber light on the pump. "Stop the line! It’s turning white!""The line is obstructed! The pump is failing!" a resident yelled, his fingers fumbli
Avery’s POV Inside the room, the doctors were charging the paddles again, their faces grim, their movements a blur of desperate, clinical chaos. Outside the glass, the world had slowed down to the precise, agonizing tempo of a countdown.Elena Sterling stood less than five feet from me, her hand outstretched, her silver hair catching the first brutal rays of the morning sun. She looked entirely invincible, a vulture clad in high fashion, waiting to consume the carcass of her own son’s life's work."Sign it, Avery," Elena murmured, her voice smooth, almost soothing in its absolute lack of human warmth. "Every second you waste letting your pride dictate your actions is a second he loses to the dark. My specialists are standing right behind me. One stroke of your finger, and they step into that room to save him.""Avery, his vitals aren't returning!" Jameson shouted from behind me, his voice cracking with sheer panic as he stared at the tablet,
Avery’s POVThe digital clock on the wall glared a cruel, fluorescent orange: 5:14 AM. Dawn was bleeding a sickly grey light across the city skyline outside the waiting room windows, signaling the expiration of the only ceasefire I had left.I sat on the floor, my back pressed against the cold drywall, with the contents of Elena Sterling’s manila envelope spread around me like pieces of a broken mirror. Jameson had spent the last three hours verifying the cryptographic signatures on the bank logs, his face growing progressively paler with every string of numbers that compiled on his laptop."It’s real, Avery," Jameson whispered, his voice cracking from raw exhaustion as he stared at the screen. "Every single piece of it. In 2016, your father didn't just sign the initial merger paperwork. He authorized a private, off-book transfer of twenty million dollars directly to a shell company owned by Arthur Sterling. That money... it was moved into a sub-accou
Avery’s POVThe silence in the sterile hospital hallway became absolute. Even the relentless buzzing of the fluorescent lights seemed to cut out, leaving me in a vacuum where only the woman’s cold, gray gaze existed.She looked like a ghost, an elegant specter of the past I had only ever seen in the black-and-white photos scattered throughout Caspian’s private study. She was thinner, older, and her hair was a brittle shade of platinum, but those eyes, that sharp, predatory, Sterling gaze, were unmistakable."You’re dead," I breathed, the words barely audible. "Caspian told me his mother died in Switzerland a decade ago. He visited the grave.""He visited an empty headstone, Avery," the woman replied, stepping closer until the scent of expensive, sharp perfume permeated the air. "Caspian has always been prone to romanticizing his tragedies. It made it easier for him to build his little kingdom if he believed he was an orphan, driven by the mem
Avery's POVDebby's text had landed like a venomous snake in my palm, its words coiling around my throat. My gaze snapped from the phone screen back to Hector, who was still smirking, clearly sensing my sudden distress. He thought he'd won. He thought he had me cornered.A fresh wave of fury, hot a
Avery's POVMy mind replayed the events in Switzerland over and over during the plane ride back home. Caspian's passionate kiss, Debby's shocked face, his terrifyingly calm confrontation with her. My heart still throbbed with a confusing mix of lingering desire and raw anxiety. He had assured me ev
Caspian’s POVDebby's hasty retreat and the click of the restroom door didn't bring relief; they brought a new, sharper kind of tension. Avery was crumbling in front of me, her face pale, her hands trembling as she gripped the sink. Her panic was raw, unmasked."Oh my god," she whimpered, "She... s
Avery's POVCaspian's kiss was a whirlwind, pulling me under, erasing everything but the scorching heat and desperate longing. My hands were tangled in his hair, his arms tight around my waist, and the world outside the small restroom had ceased to exist. All the confusion, the pain, the betrayal –







