EvelynI hadn't slept. Again. Three cups of black coffee into the morning and I still felt like a sleep deprived ghost dragging herself through the motions of another impossible day. My kitchen was too quiet too pristine. Everything in its place, warm sunlight bleeding across spotless marble countertops. And somewhere down the hall, Bianca was still asleep. For once. She'd been jumpy the last few nights, even with the guards posted at the gates. Couldn’t say I blamed her. If I were in her shoes, I’d be sleeping with a damn baseball bat too. Not that I would tell her that. I didn’t necessarily like having her around. But I didn’t hate it either. Not anymore. She was quiet. Grateful. Still bruised emotionally, and maybe a little physically from everything that had happened. And despite everything in me that said she shouldn’t be my problem, I couldn’t help but see pieces of myself in her. A girl thrown into a world she wasn’t built for but trying like hell to hold her ground.
It had been seven days since I got that message from Michael. Seven days since I moved into Evelyn's state of the art prison otherwise known as her penthouseSeven days since my life twisted into something that felt more like a high-stakes hostage situation than a safety plan.Dean called it protection.Evelyn called it protocol.But to me it felt like exile.Evelyn’s Penthouse was elegant, sterile, and suffocating. There were security guards stationed outside the doors, and the housekeeper only spoke when spoken to. Evelyn herself had only been home twice in the past week, breezing in and out like a ghost her lipstick never smudged, her heels always sharp. Apparently, she had another residence in Massachusetts where she handled her private affairs. I was never told more than that. No details. No explanations.Dean came by twice. Both times, he looked exhausted and distracted, only staying long enough to ask if I needed anything before vanishing into some endless crisis. I never told
BiancaIt had been 2 hours since we had all termed Micheal a suspect in all this. Evelyn went back to her place to do some further digging and investigation. I was still a bit shaken so I decided to go see what Dean was up to I shut the door quietly behind me, my fingers still trembling. Dean was pacing near the window, his shirt sleeves rolled up and phone forgotten on the desk. He looked up when I came in, eyes immediately scanning my face.“You okay?” he asked softly, his brows pinching together.I gave a tiny nod but didn’t answer. Not really.“Not really, I just can't stop thinking about Micheal” I began, sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to sound calm. “That Evelyn called him. But she didn’t. And you didn’t. So how the hell did he know I was at that bar?”Dean’s expression shifted into something unreadable somewhere between concern and that quiet anger he always wore like a second suit.“You think he’s following you?”I shrugged, but my chest was tight. “I don’t know. But
Bianca POVThe next day passed in a blur. Evelyn had stopped by again, this time dressed in her usual tailored sharpness, her lips painted like blood, her perfume faint but commanding, that i was used to. I’d barely had two bites of my breakfast before she launched into updates.They'd caught one of the guys.Correction—her guys had caught him.I was sitting on the couch, clutching a mug of now-cold tea, while Evelyn mirrored the screen from her phone onto the massive TV on Dean’s wall. What played on the screen felt like something out of a movie. Or a nightmare.The man was tied to a chair. He looked familiar same frame as one of the intruders from the CCTV footage. There was a faint smudge on his left wrist where Dean said he wore a rehab band.His face was swollen. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth.“This is the one Dean mentioned,” Evelyn said calmly, sipping her coffee. “We tailed him overnight. Picked him up just before noon.”The video cut to her people two of them c
BiancaI was dripping with sweat by the time I made it back to my apartment. My lungs burned and my legs felt like jelly, but I didn’t stop until I reached my building and dragged myself up the stairs. Running was supposed to help me clear my head, to burn off the mess of emotions tangled in my chest after everything that had happened but I still felt knotted up inside.I wiped the sweat off my forehead as I fumbled with my keys. The hallway was quiet, the way I liked it. Still. Normal. Comforting.I turned the knob.And froze.My stomach dropped.Drawers were pulled open. Cushions overturned. Books and papers strewn across the floor. Every cabinet had been rifled through. Even my laundry basket was spilled open, my underwear embarrassingly visible near the coffee table.What the hell I stumbled inside, my breath catching in my throat. My living room looked like it had been hit by a tornado. My chest tightened. This wasn’t just messy this was a full-on break-in.A surge of panic hit
BiancaI never wanted my life to come crashing down like this. I decided to take some days off work after everything to stabilise myself. My life honestly felt like it was practically slipping through my fingers The email first caught my eye that morning an alert flagged in my inbox. My heart raced as I clicked it open. Numbers, figures, accounts I’d barely glanced at before. Something was wrong. The more I stared, the less I understood. A cold dread settled in my chest, tightening with every click. I tried to tell myself it was a mistake. A glitch. But the emails that followed made it impossible to ignore questions I couldn’t answer, people reaching out with vague accusations, unexplained transactions traced back to me or my work. I sat at my kitchen table, staring at the screen, the morning sun failing to warm the chill that spread through my bones. Why? How? It couldn't be. it wasn't there yesterday when I checked. Or was it and I had just missed it Was I careless? Or worse