LOGIN***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
***Elena's POV***I chose a tailored cream blouse with sharp cuffs, fitted charcoal trousers, and a jacket that made my shoulders look stronger than my nerves felt. I pulled my hair back cleanly, not too severe, not too soft. Then I added small earrings and low heels that made me walk with purpose even when I wanted to crawl back into Dominic’s room and sit beside him until he woke up on his own.When I looked at myself in the mirror again, I did not look like a guest.I looked like someone who belonged at the table.Good.That would have to do.Dominic's personal chauffeur drove me to the headquarters. I was accompanied by bodyguards and the same respect accorded to Dominic was accorded to me. It felt surreal. With Ethan, I was treated like shit, never even acknowledged as his wife but with Dominic, even though our flash marriage was just based on a contract, I had supremacy.I stepped out of the black Rolls Royce, the door held open by one of Dominic's bodyguards. Rook comes out fr
***Dominic's POV***By the time we were back in the vehicle, the pain had settled into a steady burn under my ribs.I leaned back against the seat and looked out the window, jaw tight.Rook sat opposite me and very clearly decided not to speak for a full minute, which from him meant the situation w
Chapter Eighteen***Dominic’s POV***I had seen Elena in enough states now to know when she was one breath away from asking the wrong question… or opening the wrong doorNorth Hill made that worse.The old house had a way of pressing old things to the surface. It was built on memory, on discipline,
***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







