LOGINSamantha POV The sunlight hit the hotel suite with a brilliance that felt like a personal invitation. For the first time in six months, I didn’t wake up with a stone in my stomach or the echoes of my family’s insults ringing in my ears. I woke up feeling dangerous. I checked my phone. The screen was a chaotic mess—vibrating, chirping, glowing with the heat of a thousand notifications. I’d gone from a corporate pariah to the most wanted woman in tech in a matter of hours. I tossed the phone back onto the silk sheets and looked at Lucien. He was standing by the window, already dressed in a sharp black shirt. When he turned to me, his gaze softened into something molten. "You're awake," he murmured. "I'm more than awake," I said, a mischievous grin spreading across my face. I hopped out of bed, sporting nothing but a tiny, cropped t-shirt and a pair of black lace panties. I didn't care about being modest. I felt alive. I grabbed my laptop, hit the speakers, and blasted Taylo
Samantha POV The hotel door closed behind us with a sound too soft for how hard my chest was caving in. I didn’t cry immediately. That came later. At first, I just stood there, keys still in my hand, staring at the carpet like it had personally betrayed me. My parents’ voices were still ringing in my ears—sharp, precise, practiced. Like surgeons who knew exactly where to cut so it would hurt the longest. Ungrateful bitch. If we hadn’t taken you in, you’d be nothing. You owe your sister this. We can make you disappear. And the worst one—the one that kept replaying on a loop like a corrupted file: You were never really ours anyway. I dropped the keys. They hit the floor with a dull clatter that finally cracked something open inside me. “Oh,” I whispered. “That’s why.” Lucien didn’t speak. He didn’t rush me. He just stepped closer—slow, deliberate, like approaching a skittish animal that might bolt if startled. “Samantha,” he said softly. That was it. I folded.
SAMANTHA POV The development floor had been a sanctuary. For hours, I’d drowned in code—real code, clean logic, systems that responded honestly when you touched them the right way. No lies. No manipulation. Just cause and effect. It was the first time in months I hadn’t thought about Ethan. Or Chloe. Or my parents. Or Lucien. Or Sébastien. Just the hum of servers and the soft glow of monitors. I hadn’t seen the time pass. Then my phone vibrated. Once. Twice. Then again. Mom. My chest tightened like an invisible hand had closed around my ribs. I stared at the screen. Answered. “What the hell are you doing in this city?” she snapped, voice sharp with fury and something uglier—resentment. “I work here,” I said quietly. A laugh, bitter and cruel. “Don’t embarrass yourself. You used to work here. Before you ruined everything.” “I didn’t ruin—” “We know you were at a convention,” she cut in. “Strutting around like you still mattered.” “I was invited.” “You had no rig
SAMANTHA POVWalking back into a tech environment felt like slipping into a familiar language I hadn’t spoken in months. But this time, I wasn't just a fluent speaker; I was the one who wrote the dictionary.LC Corp was a temple of glass and quiet tension. Screens everywhere—alive with data, code, and intent. It didn’t feel like Ethan’s company anymore. It felt like a machine that had forgotten who built its engine.Lucien stayed half a step behind me as we entered the main development floor. He looked like a king pretending to be a CEO, a predator in pinstripes. It was unsettlingly effective—and, if I was being honest with myself, devastatingly hot.“This floor houses application development,” I said, my voice projecting a confidence that made a few developers look up. I felt Lucien’s presence at my back—a steady, radiating heat. “Security layers, predictive systems. Think of it as the nervous system of the company. Though, looking at the latency on those monitors, I’d say the c
SAMANTHA POV I woke up slowly. It wasn't the usual "panic-snap" awake where my brain immediately inventories every threat in a five-mile radius. There was no "where-am-I-who’s-trying-to-kill-me" internal alarm. Instead, there was just… awareness. Soft, high-thread-count sheets. A heavy, humming warmth in the air. The faint, rhythmic vibration of the city waking up beyond the hotel glass. And beneath it all, an unfamiliar, liquid heaviness low in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the man in the next room. I opened my eyes. The room was flooded with pale morning light, filtered through sheer curtains into something soft and ethereal. For a long minute, I didn't move. I just breathed. And then, like a tidal wave, the memories of the night before came crashing back. The bath. The total system failure of my brain. Lucien’s arms—strong, cool, and terrifyingly steady—lifting me out of the water. Oh, God. I sat up too fast, the silk sheets
By the time we made it back to the hotel, my soul had officially filed a formal complaint with HR. The convention had been a dumpster fire. Ethan was a sentient migraine. Sebastian’s "smile" looked like a shark contemplating a buffet. I had been treated like an intellectual ghost haunting the corridors of my own life's work. I kicked the door shut with a satisfying thud and dropped my bag like it had personally insulted my ancestors. "I need a bath," I announced to the room at large. "A hot bath. A scalding bath. A bath that melts the last twelve hours off my skin and erases today from the space-time continuum." Lucien removed his coat with the kind of precise, controlled grace that usually preceded a massacre or a high-end cologne commercial. If repressed rage were an art form, he’d be the Louvre. "Before you vanish into the vapors," he said, his voice a low, velvet rumble that did annoying things to my pulse, "what would you like to eat? Room service here is... adequa







