MasukAria’s POVSettling back into the Seattle apartment was harder than I expected.I had thought coming home would feel clean. Easy, even. Like breathing again after holding my lungs shut for too long.Instead, the place felt wrong in ways I could not explain at first.Too quiet.Too small.Too exposed.The walls that had once felt safe now felt like they were leaning in on me. The silence was not comforting anymore. It was loud. It made every thought echo. Every little sound had teeth. A floorboard creak. A pipe knocking. The wind brushing against the windows. All of it made me jump before I could stop myself.I hated that.I hated how New York had followed me home in my head.That morning, I took Leo back to school.He was thrilled.That part should have made me feel better. It should have settled something in me. Instead, I watched him run off to his friends with his little backpack bouncing on his shoulders, laughing like the world had never tried to hurt us at all, and my chest tigh
Adrian’s POVThe Chairman’s office was my father’s old throne, and I hated it the moment I sat down in the oversized leather chair.He used to call it built for a king.Of course he would.The chair creaked under my weight, too soft, too large, too full of everything he had left behind. The room still carried him in the worst ways. The cigar smoke that had soaked into the curtains over the years. The dark polish on the mahogany. The heavy silence that seemed to live in the walls. It all smelled like him.Not just expensive cigars.Betrayal.Rot.A legacy ruined from the inside out.I stared out through the panoramic window at the city lights below. New York looked beautiful from that height, like nothing bad had ever happened inside these walls. Like a man hadn’t tried to burn his own name to the ground just to keep his grip on power. The city didn’t care. It glittered anyway.My desk was cleared of Edmund’s things now. His old photographs, his little personal trophies, the objects he
Aria's povThe flight back to Seattle was the quietest six hours of my life.Not peaceful. Not exactly. Just quiet in that strange, floating way that makes your own thoughts sound louder than the engine.Leo was stretched across two seats beside me, one small arm thrown over his toy airplane like he was afraid someone might steal it in his sleep. His face was soft and relaxed, completely unguarded. Every so often, he made a tiny sound in his sleep, the kind that makes your chest ache for no reason at all.I looked at him, then out the window, then back at him again.The little airplane Adrian had bought him at the airport rested in his hand like a last-minute peace offering. Leo had lit up when he got it. That smile had been genuine, bright, impossible to miss.And that was the problem.It had made me smile too.Which meant now I had to sit with the complicated feeling that followed.I didn’t read. I didn’t work. I didn’t even put on music.I just stared at the clouds and let my thoug
Aria’s POVThe boardroom had been a battlefield.And somehow, we had survived it.Edmund was gone. Truly gone this time — not lurking behind contracts or whispered threats or manipulations disguised as concern. The suffocating pressure that had hung over my work, my son, my life for years had finally lifted.I should have felt victorious.Instead, I felt… quiet.Like the world after a storm — when the thunder stops but the air still smells like rain and broken things.Adrian had stayed behind to stabilize the company. The board was united now, shaken into cooperation by fear and necessity. The vaccine project was secure. Funding restored. Public confidence already being managed.On paper, everything was finally right.But emotional wounds didn’t follow corporate timelines.As I stepped into the penthouse, the silence greeted me first. Not peaceful silence — hollow silence. The kind that echoes too loudly.It was time to leave.Most of my bags were already packed, lined neatly near the
Adrian’s POVThe boardroom had gone dead quiet in that ugly way silence does when everyone is too scared to speak first.All eyes were on Edmund.He didn’t look smug anymore. That had burned off fast. His face had turned a sickly gray, and he looked cornered, like some wild thing realizing the room had walls.“These are fabrications,” he snapped at last.His voice cracked on the last word.He slammed his fist on the table hard enough to make the water glasses jump.“AI-generated. Deepfakes. All of it. Adrian, you’ve gone too far.” His finger was shaking when he pointed at me. “You’re trying to destroy me with technology. This is a smear campaign. A desperate attempt to seize control.”A few board members stirred. Murmurs started low around the table.That was the thing about men like Edmund. They always thought panic still sounded like power.I let the noise rise for a second, then lifted a hand.It died again.“I expected you to say that,” I said calmly. “Which is why I brought someo
Aria's POVThe air in the boardroom felt like static. My hands were steady, but my pulse was loud in my ears. I had insisted on being here — not because I liked drama, but because my name and the work were on the line. I’d told Adrian I’d come: “As lead researcher, I have a right to see who’s going to run the company tied to this vaccine.” He’d given me that look — the one that meant don’t make this harder than it has to be — but he didn’t stop me. Good. I needed to be a witness.Across the table sat the board, faces carved from marble and old money. At the head of the table was Edmund, smirk practically custom-made for the occasion. He looked like a man who had practiced winning in front of mirrors. Calm, polished, arrogant. A predator in a blazer.Adrian — Adrian — started with the safe play, because that’s what he does best: data first. He walked them through the vaccine results like he was reading them aloud to a jury. Careful slides, clean numbers, faces in the room relaxing just
Aria's POV The phone I'd used to receive Adrian's call was sitting on my kitchen counter, looking like a subpoena.I didn't need to read between the lines to know it was a trap. Adrian didn't do casual, and he certainly didn't care about discussing equipment requests on a Sunday morning.He has so
Aria's POV The numbers on the monitor were starting to swim.I’d been staring at the same sequence of protein chains for six hours, trying to find the bridge that would stabilize the serum before the virus mutated again.The news reports playing on the silent TV in the corner of the lab were grim.
Adrian's POV The tablet on my desk felt like it was glowing with radioactive waste.I’d watched the footage from the park six times.It was silent, captured from fifty yards away by a security detail that was supposed to be monitoring Aria’s professional movements, not her personal drama.But ther
Aria's POV The silence of the morning was a lie.I sat on a park bench, the wood cold and damp against my legs, watching Leo chase a stray butterfly through the grass.To anyone else, it was a peaceful Sunday.To me, it was the aftermath of a massacre.My head was still throbbing from the gala, th







