LOGINThird Person POVAndrew’s eyes go wide as panic sets in and seizes his heart in a vice grip. He looks at Eleanor, and for once she doesn’t have to put on a fake expression.Great. This is the last thing she wanted: Melissa finding out about her secret and ruining everything. If she manages to go here, if she sees her….“I’m going to hide,” Eleanor snaps, holding Andrew by the collar as he stands frozen by the door. “Andrew! Snap out of it! Don’t let her find me, and please hide Lottie!”Andrew nods, but his mind is already numb with panic. He searches around the room and leads Eleanor to the closet, closing the door. Grandpa is screaming and crying, messing up his bed, oblivious to it all.But Melissa has already pushed through the maids and the guards that Nadia tried to set upon her. She’s determined to see Grandpa once and for all. Once she heard everything from Wendy, she dropped everything just to be here.“Are you sure it’s wise to show up alone?” Zane asked when she insisted to
Third Person POVEleanor stares at Andrew, not really knowing what to say. Suddenly the ring on her finger begins to burn as though it wants to tell Andrew everything that happened.She can still feel the effects of what she did with Hunter. Her inner thighs burn, her skin still tingling. Memories of the night fill her with excitement even with what happened.But she searches her heart, knowing that she should never stray away from the mission.“Andrew,” she begins to say, shaking her head. “Of course not. I’m not cheating on you. You know I would never do that.”Andrew backs off, relieved to hear her words. Eleanor never really gave him a reason to think she was cheating, even from the beginning. She always stuck to her side, calling him and only him for help. If she had been cheating, then she wouldn’t need him, right?And very clearly, she still does.“Good,” Andrew just says, hating the smell of cigarettes in her hair. “Whoever that friend is, I want you to stop talking to him. Ye
Melissa’s POVSweetness hangs in the air like a perfume, and as I inhale to prepare for the kiss, it fills me up with an emotion I never felt in a long time.Hope.Hope that all of the bad things will pass. Hope that the good things stay the same. Hope that someday, when the storm has finally blown over, I’ll get to spend it with the person who’s constantly been on my side. The person who made all the good things happen.The person in front of me right now, tenderly holding my cheek and pulling me closer.Zane.I let myself relax. I melt against Zane’s touch as he rests his palm on my cheek. I wait for the kiss, anticipating it, needing to get a taste of happiness after everything that just happened….But just when I start to feel his cool, minty breath against my lips, hesitation hits me.I feel like I’m using him because he makes me feel good.I freeze, opening my eyes. I put my hand on his chest, my own heart clenching at the sight of his relaxed handsome face about to lean in. I a
Third Person POVEleanor swallows hard, feeling Hunter’s hand continuously tightening against her delicate throat. She puts a hand on his wrist, trying to get him to stop, but he doesn’t seem to care.“So after I put a baby in you, you decide to run away?” His face is too close to hers, only this time the illusion of romance and sex is gone.There’s only danger, something that she found so attractive now making her shake all over.“And now you parade around in the city wearing that bastard’s ring on your finger, like I didn’t exist?” Hunter laughs. “Like our child doesn’t exist. She’s blonde too, huh? You fucking dye her hair to hide where she came from?”Eleanor can only nod. Hunter is too smart to lie to, and she’s smart enough to know not to lie to him. She values her life. She knows that he won’t hesitate to kill her if she said the wrong thing. She knows that the only way to get out of this is to appease him.Slowly, she reaches between them and puts her hand on his shaft. He imm
Melissa’s POVI’m back to work now, and everything just feels so… surreal.It doesn’t even feel like I should be here. Suddenly my hand doesn’t know how to make designs. I’ve been staring at my sketchpad for four hours now, and nothing is coming to mind. All I have here is an outline of a body. For a man. Which I guess is making things more challenging, but know that I can usually rise to the occasion and do something good.Except now.“Fuck,” I whisper to myself, squeezing my own hands like I’m going to extract some kind of beauty from it. “Come on, work with me….”I take a deep breath. The clock chimes for the end of the work day but I didn’t get up from my seat, I stay there, staring at my empty paper, desperate to create something so that the day doesn’t feel like a waste.But it’s already heading in that direction, it seems.And it’s all because my thoughts are going haywire.I didn’t sleep last night because of Andrew. I was so bothered by his emotions and his confessions that I
Third Person POVGrandpa’s days are a blur now.Sometimes he wakes up when it’s bright out. Sometimes, he wakes up when it’s dark out. There’s no in between, and it’s disconcerting.But today, he wakes up when the sun just started to set. He gets up from his best and goes to the balcony, enjoying the view. He missed watching the sun set like this.However, instead of seeing beauty, he sees sadness in the sky. He remembers going to the lake with Allie and Melissa, when Andrew was still complying to everything he ever asked for. Allie sat next to him beside the lake, wanting to dip her toes into the water.“You can’t reach it from the dock yet,” he told her. She was what, only three years old? “If you try, you’re going to fall and we’re all going to have to find you because it’s getting late and the lake is deep.”The little girl got scared. She jumped into his lap and hugged him. “Please don’t let me fall, pee-paw.”He laughed. It was so silly to be the king of a business empire and be







