เข้าสู่ระบบ***Dominic’s POV***Juliet came in first, all focused concern and quick feet.Juliet took one look at me and the expression on Elena’s face and immediately understood something significant had happened, though she did not comment on it.Relief.Raw, immediate, and badly concealed.Juliet was good at many things. Concealing emotion had never been one of them when it came to me.For a second, she looked as though she might forget every professional boundary she had ever built and throw her arms around me anyway.She did not.Juliet had more self-control than most men in this company.Still, the joy in her face was so blatant it almost made me uncomfortable.Almost.Rook followed her, visibly tense.Then two of the medical staff.The room changed at once.Rook, however, looked at me, then at Elena, then back at me with the exact expression of a man who had decided not to ask questions because he was too busy being relieved.He leaned against the far side of the room, crossed his arms, an
***Dominic’s POV***I expected Elena to react in many ways.Shock, obviously.Embarrassment, perhaps.Anger at being caught off guard.Maybe even a sharp, offended remark about my hand being in her space while I was supposedly not yet fit for civilized company.What I did not expect was for her to stare at me for half a second, eyes suddenly shining, and then break apart right in front of me.Not metaphorically.Actually break.Her face changed so fast I almost missed it. The stunned little stillness gave way to relief so powerful it seemed to wipe the air clean from the room. Her mouth parted. Her eyes filled. And before I could decide whether I was still dreaming or just badly medicated, Elena surged forward and wrapped her arms around me like she had been holding herself together by force for days and had just been given permission to stop.I froze.That, in itself, was embarrassing.I was a man who did not freeze.Not for pain. Not for blood. Not for bullets. Not even for the sigh
***Dominic’s POV***The first thing I noticed was the singing.At first, it was only a thread of sound drifting through darkness so thick it could have passed for nothing at all. Faint. Sweet. Almost imagined.Then it came again.Clearer.Closer.And I realized, with the slow annoyance of a man being pulled out of unconsciousness against his will, that the voice belonged to Elena.I did not open my eyes.That was not because I was still unconscious.It was because I wanted to hear more.There are many things a man can prepare himself for after waking from a surgical haze—pain, medication, Rook’s face, Juliet’s practical scolding, the general humiliation of being reduced to a patient in one’s own house.Elena singing was not among them.Her voice was soft at first, almost a hum, then it rose with the ease of someone who had no idea she was standing in the middle of my nervous system and rearranging furniture.Angelic was the insulting word my mind chose.Too clean. Too dramatic.Too tr
***Elena's POV***I wanted Hartwell torn apart piece by piece.I wanted Marcus to feel what it was like to lose control of something he thought belonged to him.I wanted Vivienne to choke on whatever lies she had told to stand beside him.I wanted the board, the executives, the polished parasites, the whole rotten structure that had helped bury me, to begin to collapse under its own greed.And I had the perfect place to begin.I looked at Dominic again.He was still unconscious, still quiet, still impossibly difficult to read.“Thank you,” I murmured under my breath, though I did not know whether I was speaking to him or to the strange fate that had delivered me here.Then I stood.I went up to my room to have a nice long warm bath. Dressed up in a decent tailored gown the maids had arranged for me. One of them also helped with styling my hair and put on light makeup for me. I checked myself out in the full body mirror. I looked just like I had wanted. Quality. Superior.A woman wi
***Elena's POV***“Elena.”The sound of my name in that tone made me stop walking.“What is it?”A pause.Then, very clearly, Juliet said, “He moved his fingers.”For a second I didn’t understand.Then the words landed.My entire body went still.“Moved?” I repeated, too quickly.“Yes,” Juliet said. “Just now. It was small, but it was there.”My throat tightened.The corridor around me blurred slightly at the edges.She went on, her voice quieter now. “He may be waking more fully soon.”I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.Dominic.Waking.The idea hit me all at once, sharp and bright and terrifying.I had no idea why my eyes suddenly burned. Perhaps because I had spent so long guarding the edge of his silence that the possibility of hearing his voice again felt too large to hold.“I’m coming,” I said.“Drive carefully—”I had already ended the call.I turned and headed for the elevator so fast I nearly forgot how tired I had been a moment ago.The private black Rolls Royce was wai
***Elena’s POV***By the time I walked into the President's office, my shoulders felt like they had been carrying the entire weight of North Hill on them.The meeting replayed in my head like a flash. I had kept my face composed until the very last stakeholder had left the conference room.I should have felt triumphant.I did... a little.But under it all was something quieter.Something that had been building ever since I had walked into the conference room and realized Dominic would not be there to sit beside me.A strange ache.Not fear.Not exactly.More like the feeling of missing a wall you had not realized you’d leaned on until it was gone.I hated that feeling.It was inconvenient.The older stakeholders had finally stopped underestimating me by the end.That alone should have been enough to make me smug.Instead, all I could think about was what Dominic would have said if he had seen it.He would have probably insulted my posture.Or told me I’d talked too much.Or looked at
***Dominic’s POV***Elena spent the next ten minutes glaring at me like I had personally insulted her ancestors.It was almost impressive.She had gone from irritated to offended to dangerously quiet in the span of a single hallway walk, and I could tell exactly which part had caught under her skin
***Dominic's POV***The lower wing held the internal monitoring stations, spare weapons, backup power, and a secure room designed for situations where the house could not be trusted. Elena glanced around with professional interest, which was almost worse than if she had looked frightened.She was t
***Dominic's POV***The outer perimeter was secured, but that did not mean it had been watched properly. The two were not the same, and idiots often confused them because both involved men in dark clothing standing near walls.I moved through the side corridor and out toward the west grounds, where
***Elena’s POV***The sound of the alarm cut through the house like a wound opening.For one frozen second, nobody moved.Not me.Not Dominic.Not even the body at his feet.The intruder’s head had turned at an angle no human neck should ever know, and the sight of it hit me in a way I had not expe







