MasukAdrian’s POV“You’re bluffing,” Jenna said again, quieter this time, like she was trying to convince herself more than him.Adrian looked at her for a moment, then reached into his jacket pocket and took out his phone.“What are you doing,” Jenna said.He didn’t answer. He pulled up his legal team’s after-hours line and made the call. He spoke for under a minute, gave the facility name, gave Vanessa’s full name, and waited while the man on the other end made it happen quietly and without questions.Jenna’s chair scraped back. “Adrian.”He looked up at her.“Adrian, don’t do this.” The composed harsh tone of her voice earlier was starting to crack at the edges. “Please, just put the phone down, let’s talk it out.”“Sit down, Jenna.”She didn’t sit but she didn’t leave either, and he watched her stand there with both palms pressed flat against the table while the line went quiet and the bar filled the space around them, other people’s conversations, low music, someone laughing loudly t
ADRIAN’S POVHe stood at the gate in the dark with the cold air on his neck and watched every second of the video, and when it ended he locked his phone and put it in his pocket, he stood there for quite a moment looking at the estate driveway, at the gravel and the security lights and the warm glow of the house behind him, and breathed out through his mouth until his jaw unclenched.Then he took the phone back out and called the number.Jenna picked up immediately even before the ring started, which meant she’d been holding the phone.“I want to meet,” he said.“Adrian, I think that’s really necess…..”“Not to negotiate, he cut her, the money is not an issue I just want to talk.” He started walking back toward the house slowly. “Name somewhere.”She named a bar in Midtown he’d never been to, neutral ground, the choice of someone who’d thought about this in advance, and they agreed on the following evening and he ended the call and pushed back through the front door of the estate.Ki
ADRIAN’s POV“Hi Adrian, this is Jenna.”He ended the call immediately.He stood by the kitchen door with the phone in his hand and looked at the screen for a moment, at the unknown number sitting there, and felt something move through his chest that wasn’t quite anger yet but was getting there fast, the way a temperature climbed, steady and inevitable.The phone rang again.Same number.He let it ring out.Kira was still at the table, the notepad in front of her, and she’d looked up when he stepped away and was watching him now with the careful attention she gave things she hadn’t decided how to categorize yet.The phone rang a third time.He picked up.“What do you want?” He kept his voice low and level.“Adrian, I just need five…..”“Jenna.” He moved further toward the kitchen door, turning his shoulder slightly toward the room. “I don’t know what you think you’re doin
VANESSA POV“Watch where you’re going.”The woman who’d shouldered into her didn’t stop walking, just cut her eyes back over her shoulder with a particular stern look that people in here had perfected, the one that said she’d heard the complaint and had decided it wasn’t worth her time.Vanessa squared her shoulders. “Hey. I’m talking to you.”The woman stopped.She turned around slowly, the way people turned around in here when they wanted you to understand that the slowness was intentional, and looked at Vanessa with a flat assessment like she was measuring a situation before committing to it.“Walk around me next time,” Vanessa said.A beat.Then the woman turned back around and kept walking, and the two women behind her exchanged a look, and Vanessa stood in the middle of the corridor and watched her go and felt the small ugly satisfaction of not having backed down settled somewhere in her chest.Four months and some days of this.Four months of the smell and the noise and the flu
Adrian’s POVHe’d been watching her for the better part of an hour before he admitted to himself what he was doing.She was at the far end of the Ashford estate kitchen, standing over a pot of something that smelled like the kind of food his mother had always paid other people to make, and she was on the phone at the same time, her shoulder pressed against the cabinet, writing something on the notepad she kept on the counter with the pen she always lost and always found in the same three places.He’d come to drop the kids off and stayed because Ethan had asked him to look at something on his laptop and that had turned into dinner because Elena had appeared in the doorway and said there was enough food and the way she said it left no room for a polite exit.So he’d stayed.And now the kids were upstairs and Elena and Richard had moved to the sitting room and Marcus had left an hour ago, and it was just Adrian at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and Kira at the stove, and he was d
KIRA POV“I’m landing on Thursday.”Kira set her coffee down and looked at the time on the microwave. Six forty-two in the morning, which meant it was somewhere close to eight in the evening in Seoul, and Elijah had clearly been sitting on this information for at least a day because the tone of his voice had the calm of someone who’d already made a decision and was now just delivering it.“You said you had six weeks more,” she said.“I said approximately six weeks. The Seoul team found a replacement faster than expected and I’m not going to sit in a hotel room for three weeks pretending I have something I’m doing, plus I want to help out with Marcus’s situation.”Kira pulled her chair out and sat back down at the kitchen table. Through the window the estate grounds were still grey with early morning, the kind of quiet that only existed for about forty minutes before the house started moving.“Thursday,” she said.“Thursday evening. I’ll go to my place first, I won’t come to the estate
VANESSA POVBy the time they were done at the restaurant, Adrian was way drunk.Not just tipsy nor a little buzzed, he was gone.Drunk to stupor.He could barely stand. His words were slurred as his eyes kept closing and opening like he was fighting to stay awa
ADRIAN POVThe flight to Paris took eight hours.Adrian spent most of it staring out the window. Watching the clouds. Thinking about nothing and everything at the same time.When the plane landed, a driver was waiting with a black car.The drive to the hot
KIRA POVTwo months.It had been almost two months since Kira got the kids back, and honestly, it was nice but stressful as hell.Not that she was complaining. She loved having both Lily and Ethan home. Loved hearing them laugh together, loved watching them play in the garden, loved tucking them in
KIRA POV Kira pulled over quickly. She wasn’t at the hotel yet. Still about ten minutes away. But she couldn’t keep driving. Not after reading that text. She stared at her phone screen. *Leave Elijah alone. He’s someone else’s man.* Who the hell sent this? No one had this number. It was







