Mag-log inAURORA Sammy threw a throw pillow at my head. I let it hit me. I deserved it. "You slept with him," she said, for the third time, in the tone of a woman reading out a criminal indictment. "You actually slept with him. The man. The plague. The human equivalent of a garbage bin. You slept with Marco Alessi." "I had a moment of weakness." "You had a moment of brain damage." She was pacing the length of my room now, silk robe flying behind her like a warning flag. "Aurora. Sweetheart. What part of 'he is emotionally constipated and carries secrets like other people carry herpes' sounded like a good time to you?" "Sammy—" "No, no, let me finish, I've prepared remarks." She spun around with one finger raised. "This is the man who wouldn't tell you the truth when you asked him nicely. Then wouldn't tell you the truth when you asked him crying. And your solution to this established pattern of behaviour was to get naked with him. That's not a weakness, babe, that's a strategy. A terrible,
MARCOThe study was dark except for the lamp and the bottle.I'd been sitting in the leather chair for over an hour, whiskey untouched beside me, staring at nothing like it might finally confess something useful. My body still carried the memory of her, the warmth of her skin, the way she'd curled into me after, trusting, soft in a way she let no one else see. For about twenty minutes tonight, I'd had everything I'd spent three years pretending I didn't want.And then she'd asked me the question, and I'd frozen. Again. Like a coward. It's not what you think. That's what I'd told her. It was pathetic. The truth was it was exactly what she thought, or worse. The truth was that the night she was asking about, the night that had wrecked us both, was a night I couldn't hand her without putting a blade in her hands and guiding it to her own throat.I could still hear her voice. Say it, and I'll stay.Five words. She'd handed me the keys to everything I'd ever wanted, and all I'd had to do
The fight had drained out of me somewhere between the last punch I threw and the last word I didn't say.Marco had come back from Dominic's place looking like a man who'd lost a war he refused to name. There was blood on his knuckles and a storm sitting behind his eyes that he thought he'd hidden well enough, but he hadn't. I had spent years learning that man's face the way soldiers learn maps. Every line and every crack."You're bleeding," I said."I'm fine.""You're bleeding, Marco.""It's fine, Aurora."And God help me, instead of walking away, instead of doing the smart thing, the thing I'd
AURORAI had seen Marco at practically every level of anger, arrogance, and outright stupidity, but never—not once—had I encountered a man this fucking needy. The bastard had turned recovery into a full-time punishment for everyone around him.Viktor had started avoiding him altogether. Dominic and Lilliana were too wrapped up in their own lives to be bothered. Sammy and Mia were safely out of reach, which left me. Apparently, I was the last surviving idiot responsible for keeping Marco alive.It turned out the man had absolutely no idea how to stay in bed and do nothing. None. Zero. You'd think, in this glorious age of social media, streaming services, and AirPods, keeping an injured man entertained would be the easiest fucking job in the world.Apparently not when the injured man was Marco.Every time I stepped outside, I had to give him a detailed itinerary like I was reporting to a parole officer. Where was I going? What was I doing? How long would I be gone? And God forbid I ran f
MARCOPain was the first thing I noticed when I woke up, even before I opened my eyes. The incessant beeping of the machines was far too familiar, and that pungent smell of sanitiser was even more disturbing. I groaned, trying to move my body a little when a sharp ache settled somewhere beneath my ribs, spreading through my chest and down my side every time I breathed.I grunted, breathing through my nose as slowly as possible. The last thing I remembered—or thought I did—was Viktor’s arrogant face sneering down at me. Dominic was there, maybe Sammy too, though my brain was too fried to be sure. Through the haze, I caught the sound of someone crying and overheard faint muttering about bad timing and gunshots. Or maybe that was just the morphine playing tricks on my mind. God, I hated this. It was driving me completely out of my head.I squeezed my eyes shut, praying for the agony to dull even a little, but it didn't do a damn thing. Every inch of my body, my arms, legs, every single j
Chapter 79 SIMON I thought I understood Aurora. I thought I had learned the contours of her cruelty and the shape of her compassion, the strange and mesmerising balance she maintained between loyalty and violence, discipline and chaos. But I was fucking wrong.The Aurora I saw tonight, the woman who walked into this vengeance and bone-deep devotion, was an entirely different creature, a monster of sorts, and something too sharp to touch and too beautiful to look at for long without feeling like I was committing a dangerous sin.I watched her work with a precision that transformed brutality into a kind of art, not senseless violence but calculated, deliberate, unmarred by hesitation or guilt. Every movement she made was purposeful. I had seen killers before, assassins, soldiers, and men who hid behind bravado and false toughness. But Aurora wasn’t like them. She







