MasukAdrian’s POVThe moment Aria’s scream hit the corridor, something in me snapped into place.The anger from before had nowhere to go now except forward, and that was better. Better than standing still with the image of Julian kissing her burned into my head like a brand. Better than thinking about betrayal. Better than standing in a hallway and letting every ugly feeling decide what I did next.Leo was still in this building.Aria was still in this building.That was enough.I moved fast, low, and without the luxury of thinking about anything except the layout in front of me. Vale security was already converging, which meant my window was shrinking by the second. I used the corridor map I had half memorized while moving through the facility earlier, cutting left when they expected right, ducking through a maintenance passage I had noticed on the way in, then coming out one level below where the main sweep was happening.My shoulder still hurt from the earlier fight. My side did too. Ev
Aria’s POVI had not fully recovered from the thing inside me that had cracked open after Edmund, or from Julian’s confession, or from the stupid, impossible way everything had started to blur together into one long stretch of fear and betrayal.My head felt full of broken glass.That was the only way I could describe it.Every thought I had kept catching on something sharp. Leo. Veronica. Adrian. Julian. The lab. The chamber. The way my son had looked in that image from the message. The way Veronica had spoken like my child was a specimen. The way Adrian had looked at me, cold and distant, and said Leo would never come back to this.I could not make any of it sit properly in my mind.It all kept moving around.Changing shape.I felt like I had been inside this nightmare long enough to stop trusting the floor under my feet.Julian was beside me, still trying to act like he was the only stable thing in the room. He had put a hand on my arm a few minutes ago, said something low and stea
Julian’s POVBy the time I forced myself to stop staring at Adrian’s message, I had already gone through anger, suspicion, frustration, and something far more irritating.Respect.I did not like that part. I liked it even less because it meant I had misread him. Not fully. Not in the way that mattered. He had not walked away from Aria and Leo after all. He had been moving in the shadows while everyone else assumed he had folded. That should have made me feel better.It did not.It made everything worse in a different way.Because now I had to admit Adrian was more dangerous than I wanted him to be. Not because he was selfish in the ordinary sense or because he was careless. He was dangerous because he was capable. Capable enough to hide a rescue plan while looking like he had abandoned them. Capable enough to make Aria doubt him, then still move pieces in the background. Capable enough to make me look like an idiot for assuming I had the whole board in front of me.I hated that.I hat
Adrian’s POVEdmund’s release should have made no sense.That was my first thought.My second was worse.It made too much sense.I stood in the corridor outside Veronica’s monitoring room, staring at the red alert on my secure comms, and felt the pieces begin to lock together in a way I did not like at all. Edmund being freed on a technicality would have been bad enough on its own. But Veronica had already hinted at a deeper ally. She had already spoken as if she had more than one hand in this mess. And Edmund, for all his poison, had never been the type to let himself get released by coincidence.This was not coincidence.This was coordination.My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.Veronica had been taunting me for a reason. Edmund had not simply been rescued by an outside force. He had been moved. Managed. Used. The two of them had been working together, or at least close enough to share the same machinery. That realization hit in stages, each one colder than the last.She had not lied
Adrian’s POVFor one second, I did not move.I could hear my own blood in my ears. That was all. The noise in the corridor dropped away, and the only thing I could see was Julian’s hand at Aria’s back and Aria leaning into him like the world had finally become too much to stand alone inside.Then he kissed her.My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.I felt the hit of it all at once. Not confusion. Not hesitation. Just a clean, sharp blast of fury that went straight through my chest and left everything else cold behind it.Of all the moments to see, it had to be that one.Not when Leo was safe. Not when Aria was breathing. Not when I had something useful in my hands.Right then.I could have stayed there and let the rage take over in a stupid, useless way. I could have walked out and made the whole building hear me. I could have shoved Julian into the wall and wasted precious minutes on a fight that would not save my son.Instead I did something colder.I turned the fury away from them and
Julian’s POVFor a few minutes after I found Adrian’s message, I just stood there and stared at my phone like staring harder would somehow make the whole thing less infuriating.It did not.I had spent so long being angry at him that the idea of him being right was almost insulting on principle. Worse than that, it was inconvenient. If he was already moving on the same facility, then that meant I had misread him…badly.I hated that.I hated it because part of me had been ready to write him off as careless, selfish, and dangerous in the exact stupid way men with too much power often were.And now the evidence said something uglier and more complicated.He was still dangerous.But not in the way I had thought.He had not walked away. He had not abandoned the fight. He had not left Aria and Leo behind just because it was easier. He had gone quiet and cold and secretive, which was almost worse in some ways, because it meant he had chosen a path he did not trust anyone else with.Including
Aria’s POVI practically ran toward the back of the estate, my heels sinking into the grass with every desperate step. I didn’t really care who saw me. I didn’t care if I looked unprofessional or if I was ruining Blackwood's stupid aesthetic.Lydia’s words were playing on a loop in my head. Begga
Lydia’s POVThe sun was doing its best to ruin my makeup, but I wasn't letting it win.I stood under the shade of the primary VIP tent, smoothing the skirt of my white lace dress. It was the kind of dress that made me look like a saint—pure, elegant, and perfectly suited for the future Mrs. Blackwo
Aria's POVThe morning air was sharp and biting, but I didn’t care.I was standing just outside the glass doors of the executive wing, my lungs finally tasting air that didn't smell like sterilization and Adrian’s expensive cologne.Adrian was standing five feet away from me, a silent, brooding sha
Aria's POVThe Lego spaceship was missing a wing, and Leo was starting to melt down.I sat on the floor of our temporary apartment, my back aching and my head spinning with the weight of the latest synthesis results.It was nearly nine at night. I should have been sleeping, but the guilt of being a







