LOGINCade’s POV"Interesting threat," he said, "from a man whose pregnant girlfriend is currently in the custody of my people." He said it without heat, just observation, just the reminder of the relevant variables and their current positions. "It seems to me that you have considerably more to lose in this room than I do. So I suggest you listen carefully to what comes next."I said nothing.Because he was right about the variables, and acknowledging it was less costly than pretending otherwise.He turned slightly, the movement bringing Ezra into the sightline of both of us, the three of us forming a triangle in the flat industrial light."Ezra is my nephew," he said. "As you have now established. And he has developed, in the course of his time in Houston, a genuine interest in Scarlett." He said her name with the easy familiarity of someone who had been aware of her for longer than the last several days, the familiarity of someone for whom she was not a new variable but an existing one. "
Cade’s POVThe abandoned building had a particular quality of silence between the words.Not empty silence. The loaded kind, the kind that existed in spaces where significant things were being decided, where the air itself seemed to understand that what was being said mattered and held itself accordingly, pressing in from the walls with the patient attention of something waiting to see how this resolved.I looked at the General across the distance between us.At Ezra, standing to his right with the stillness of someone who had been given instructions about what his role in this room was and was fulfilling those instructions with the disciplined absence of a man who understood that his moment had not yet arrived.And I made a decision.Not the decision the General was expecting. The other one."Fine," I said.The word came out quiet and clear and carried in it the specific quality of a man who has finished the part of the conversation where performance was useful and has arrived at the
Scarlett’s POVThe tears came first. Embarrassing and unstoppable, streaming down cheeks that were still damp from the rain. I pressed my lips together, trying to hold back the words that were clawing up my throat.But they came anyway. The way things do when you've been carrying them too long."Silvio." My voice broke on the name. "He raped me, Gio.”The silence that followed was absolute.Giovanni went so still that he looked carved from the same stone as his beloved sculptures. The colour drained from his face so completely that I was afraid he was going to collapse.Then sound came out of him. French, rapid and broken, something between a prayer and a curse that I didn't fully understand but felt in my bones."When?" His voice, when it came back to English, was barely above a whisper. "When did this happen?""That same night. After you left for your doctor's appointment." I stared at my hands. "He took me to a room. There were substances. I don't remember all of it, Gio. I don't
Scarlett’s POVCade moved.His arms came around me with the steady, unhesitating warmth of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment and was not going to miss it now that it had arrived. He pulled me against his chest, and one hand moved to the back of my head, and I let myself be held, completely, without managing it or monitoring it or performing composure for anyone's benefit.The Houston morning moved outside the windows."Your hurts are valid, my love," he said quietly into my hair. Not dismissing them. Not offering the counter-argument immediately. Just naming them first, confirming they were real, which was the thing I had needed and not known how to ask for.I breathed against his chest."But", he said, gently, "please cut her some slack." His hand moved slowly over my hair. "She is trying to navigate life also. That does not excuse the years. It does not make the absence smaller or the wedding less of a blindside. But it means she is human, and humans make choices
Racheal’s POVThe kiss was warm and brief and entirely disarming, which I suspected he knew, which I suspected was precisely why he had deployed it at this specific moment, this man who had learned the specific geography of my defences with the patient thoroughness of someone who found the learning genuinely interesting.Despite everything, despite the suitcase and the three days and the eight hundred Houston hotels I had been prepared to call in sequence, I felt something ease.The laugh came before I could prevent it, small and genuine, escaping through my attempt to maintain the serious face the situation warranted."Stop it," I said, but the authority had gone out of it.He was already moving, the hands at my waist shifting, guiding me away from the suitcase and toward the bed with the unhurried confidence of a man who had made a decision about the next hour and was implementing it with the full expectation of cooperation."How about", he said, his voice dropping into the register
Racheal’s POVI had packed half the suitcase before I fully registered what I was doing.The folding was automatic, the kind of physical activity the hands performed when the mind was occupied elsewhere, when the body needed something to do while the feelings sorted themselves into something manageable. Three blouses, two pairs of trousers, the comfortable shoes I wore when I knew I was going to be on my feet and needed practicality over aesthetics, and the small toiletry bag I kept perpetually stocked because James had taught me, in the months since our marriage, that spontaneous travel was a feature of life with him rather than an exception to it.The Louis Vuitton bag sat open on the bed, accepting each item with the dignified patience of expensive luggage that had seen a great deal and retained its composure throughout.I had not retained my composure throughout.I had not been retaining my composure for the better part of three days since Scarlett had walked out of a clinic and r
Scarlett's POV"Scarlett, darling, what do you want to share with me?"Mom's smile was evergreen, perpetual, the kind that had sustained me through childhood scraped knees and high school heartbreaks. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with fingers that still wore her simple wedding band al
Scarlett's POV"Get your filthy hands off me right now!"The words came out as a snarl, low and vicious, but Madison's grip only tightened. Her perfectly manicured nails dug into my arm through the thin fabric of my sleeve, five points of pressure that would leave crescent-shaped bruises by morning
Cade's POVI slammed the bedroom door hard enough to rattle the frame.Madison stumbled as I released her arm, catching herself against my desk with both hands. She turned to face me, and that infuriating smile was still plastered across her face as she had just won some kind of prize."What the fu
Scarlett's POVWe exited Madison's guest room like thieves in the night, me first, Cade following after checking the hallway twice. The house was dark, most lights extinguished for the evening, the kind of heavy silence that came after too much drama and not enough resolution.My heart hammered aga







