All Chapters of Tangled in His Web: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Morning sunlight spilled across the safe house, bleaching the world in sterile calm — a quiet that felt too still to be real. Lily hadn’t slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard that voice. Her stepmother’s voice — low, deliberate, too calm — threading through her dreams like smoke.By the time the clock hit eleven, she was dressed, sitting on the edge of the couch, her phone in hand, staring at the message she’d reread a dozen times:Tomorrow. Noon. Same house.Her fingers hovered above the screen. She could call Alex. Tell him she’d changed her mind. But she knew she wouldn’t.The only way to stop her stepmother’s shadow from creeping any closer was to face her head-on.____________The black car purred down the Pacific Coast Highway, sunlight flashing across the tinted windows. Alex sat behind the wheel this time — silent, watchful — his focus glued to the road.Lily hadn’t asked him to come, but he hadn’t offered her the choice, either.She kept her gaze fixed outside

The first light of morning crept into the penthouse, washing over glass and steel until every surface glowed pale gold. The city outside was already alive — car horns, construction clatter, the distant whine of a siren — yet inside Alex Knight’s safehouse, everything felt unnaturally still.Lily woke slowly, the silence pressing against her like a second blanket. For a few seconds, she didn’t know where she was. Her eyes drifted over the clean, angular lines of the room — black leather, chrome, glass — the kind of place designed to feel impersonal. The kind of place where emotions didn’t belong.Then she remembered.The estate. Her stepmother. The words that still echoed like a curse: He’s so much like your father.Lily sat up, the blanket sliding from her shoulders. The ache behind her eyes reminded her she hadn’t slept properly in days. She looked toward the window, where dawn light split across the floor in perfect, sharp-edged rectangles. Even the sunlight seemed to have boundar

The penthouse had no name on the buzzer and no receptionist to interrupt the quiet. It existed off maps and off ledgers — a place for people who moved like ghosts to convene, and for plans to be folded in half and sharpened. Sebastian stood with his hand resting on the glass, looking down at the city as if he could read its nervous pulse. The bank of monitors behind him threw cold light across his face. Knight Enterprises blinked across the screens — blue grids, pulsing nodes, the slow red threads where his program had found traction. He didn’t watch the corporate map so much as the single, smaller panel he’d left open: the live feed of the safe house—the unlisted residence Alex used for emergency operations. It had been quiet for months, then a camera had gone dark when Alex tightened security. Sebastian’s people had been patient. They had a way of waiting until someone thought a thing was safe, and then turning that certainty into a vulnerability. On the monitor, Lily moved in th

The elevator ride to the lobby felt like sinking. Lily stood perfectly still—hands clasped tightly, jaw locked even tighter—while the mirrored walls reflected a version of herself she didn’t recognize. Her eyes looked tired. Her skin too pale. Her posture too rigid, like someone bracing themselves against a storm that hadn’t fully hit yet. But the storm had hit. It hit the moment she saw her name disappearing from Alex’s systems. It hit the moment he lied to her face. It hit the moment he watched her leave, expression carved from stone. And now the aftershock was settling in her bones. Elara’s message replayed in an endless loop in her mind. “He doesn’t trust you anymore. Come home.” Home. What a cruel word. There was no home left for her in that mansion. Not after what her stepmother did to her father. Not after the silent, poisonous years that followed. Not after Lily discovered the truth. Not after the night she tried to run, and Elara let her. No—Elara di

Lily couldn’t remember the last time her own apartment felt this silent.Not the peaceful kind— but the hollow, stretched-out quiet that feels like the air is waiting for something to break.Her fingers hovered over the message glowing on her screen.“He doesn’t trust you anymore. Come home.” — ElaraThe words were poison dripping straight into her chest.Her stepmother’s voice wasn’t there, but Lily could feel it— the smugness, the false sweetness, the calculated cruelty meant to slice between her ribs.Her breath trembled.She knew better. She knew Elara wanted exactly this. Distance. Suspicion. Cracks forming in the one place Lily finally felt safe.But after the last twenty-four hours… after Alex’s sudden withdrawal, his clipped tone, his refusal to meet her eyes, his quiet deletion of her system access…The message didn’t feel like a lie.It felt like confirmation.Lily moved to the window, pressing her forehead against the cold glass. LA glittered below her—alive, loud