LOGINSelina Amber Rodriguez married Damien Whitmore at twenty-two, not because he loved her, but because his grandmother demanded it. Her parents died in a car accident pulling a teenage Damien out of the wreckage — a debt the Whitmore family patriarch considered sacred and his grandmother considered a transaction. Two years later, Selina is the most elegantly kept secret in the Whitmore empire: present at every gala, photographed beside a man who looks through her at someone else, and invisible in every way that matters. She is not stupid. She is not weak. She is simply a woman who made the mistake of loving someone before she understood the cost. Now she is pregnant. And she is leaving.
View MoreCHAPTER 125DEAN POVI arrived at Damien's office expecting urgency.The building had been running on urgency for so long that I forgot it wasn’t always the case. I walked through the glass doors prepared for another briefing table covered in surveillance photographs and someone talking too fast about a timeline that didn't add up.Instead the office was quiet; people were at their desks doing ordinary things at an ordinary pace. The building had remembered it had a daily routine and returned to it.I stood in the doorway for a moment longer than necessary. I was taking it all in. It was a nice change of pace and boy did we need it.Then I went into Damien’s office, opened my files and started working. The investigation hadn't concluded simply because the rescue had.Caleb arrived twenty minutes later carrying an unreasonable quantity of food.He came through the door with two paper bags, a tray of coffees, a box of pastries. His set face already told me he had a good explanation for
CHAPTER 124SELINA POV I told him I needed to rest. I had reached the end of what I had available for the evening, and the honest thing was to say so rather than sit in a conversation I no longer had capacity to engage in anymore.Damien nodded once. He said goodnight in the quiet, direct way he had been saying things all evening. He stood went to the door, paused and took a glance at me before he left.I sat with the silence for a moment before I moved.This was different and it felt different too. Before the kidnapping, whenever Damien walked out of a room I was in, it was always on his own terms. There was always a weight to the silence when he left.Tonight the door closed and the room was simply quiet.He had left because I asked him to. He did it willingly without trying to bargain or control the narrative.The distinction was small. It mattered more than I expected it to.I laid down on the bed but my legs still rested on the floor. My body told me it needed sleep but sleep wa
Chapter 123Damien POVThe room had grown darker without either of us noticing. Then the lamps came on by themselves and the light fell across the space between us casting shadows that seemed to have a life of theirs.We hadn’t much after, neither of us knew how or where to begin from.The conversation had reached the place where going around the elephant in the room wasn’t possible anymore. There was nowhere left to retreat to. I sat with my hands in my lap, waiting, although I had no clue what I was waiting for.Damien broke the silence first.He wasn't looking at me. He was looking out the window, staring at the landscape and when he spoke, his voice was quiet. "I noticed you a long time before I let myself."I went still. I didn't trust myself to respond, so I didn't. I just waited.He kept going. That surprised me more than the sentence itself. Damien never said anything more after he made a vulnerable confession. He always said his piece and stopped like admitting weakness took
Chapter 122Selina POVThe silence didn't feel like a wall this time. I stayed on the edge of the bed, and Damien stayed by the window, and neither of us moved to fix it. For once, it didn't feel like something that needed fixing.After a while, he stepped away from the window. He didn't ask if he could sit closer or hover at like a man seeking permission. He just walked further into the room, like it was the most natural thing in the world,"The doctor said the swelling's gone down," he said, settling into the chair near the dresser. He wants to see you again Thursday.""Marcus already told me, twice. He also told me the estate paperwork is temporary, in case I was wondering.""He can be insufferable when he's trying to be helpful.""He's insufferable most of the time."A tired chuckle laugh escaped him. I looked up sharply; the sound of Damien chuckling struck me more than it should have.He looked around, "The house still smells like paint. "I keep meaning to ask them to air it out
Chapter 8LINAYou couldn't run without money. This was the simple uncomplicated truth of life, whether I liked it or not.I thought about Lily. She had sent me that photograph last night out of care, out of loyalty, because she was still the same person who had made me her friend, immediately in t
Chapter 7LINA"Damien Whitmore, CEO of Whitmore Industries, was photographed this afternoon carrying our very own socialite Adora Cavendish into the Pemberton Medical Centre following a reported ankle injury at a private event involving the two of them, we are not yet sure of how the injury came
Chapter 6LINAThe drive home felt longer than it should have.I kept my hands at ten and two the whole way, this was the way that my father had taught me to drive when I was 15 and was learning how to drive on the quiet stretch of road outside our old neighborhood.I focused on the motion of stari
Chapter 5LINAI stared at the words written on his tombstone.*Daniel Cruz Torres. He loved without reservation.*"Hi, Dad," I said, and my voice came out small and very timid The way it used to when I was a teenager sitting in exactly this spot, after the accident, after the Whitmore had taken me


















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