All Chapters of under his control : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

POV: LiamThe boardroom had never felt so small.Every seat around the long, glossy table was filled. Faces, old and sharp like carved stone, watched me with that same mixture of suspicion and resentment. The air smelled faintly of cologne and coffee, but beneath it was something fouler—fear. Fear of me. Fear of Ava. Fear that Carter West, after everything, was still slipping through their fingers.“Liam,” Harrington said, folding his arms, “with respect, placing Ava Steele as executive director is… reckless.”The word reckless rolled around the room like a grenade waiting to explode.“She’s inexperienced,” another chimed in. “Our reputation is fragile, and you hand power to someone with no corporate background. What message does that send to investors?”I didn’t blink. “It sends the message that Carter West isn’t run by cowards who cling to old rules while the world changes around them.”The tension snapped tighter. I could see some of them biting their tongues. They hated me for thi

Liam’s POV The office was too quiet when I walked in that night. The city glowed beneath the glass walls, but inside, the silence pressed down heavily, like a warning. I was used to long nights at Carter West. My life had been built on them—numbers, contracts, battles I couldn’t afford to lose. But tonight, the stillness wasn't calm before victory. It was a sharp pause before something broke. I knew Ava had stayed late again. I had felt her slipping away from me these past few days, like she was carrying weight she wouldn’t share. I’d heard her crying the other night when she thought I wasn’t listening. And now, after the bomb scare, I was done pretending things were fine. Something was wrong. I was going to find out. I pushed the door to my office open and froze. Someone was inside. The lights were low, but I could see the figure standing at my desk, rifling through drawers with a speed that didn’t belong to someone who had a right to be there. My hand tightened on the d

The night after Ava’s tears in the hospital, I sat in my office alone. The glass windows stretched wide across the city skyline, but I didn’t see the lights. I didn’t see the roads below or the stars above. All I could see in my mind was the blood on her skin and the sound of her voice when she whispered “I’m sorry.”Those words kept circling inside me. She thought she had to apologize, as if she had been the one to blame. But it was me. Every bruise on her body, every bullet that flew near her, every shadow that had crawled too close—it was all because of me. I had dragged her into my world. I had made her my center, my weakness. And now enemies knew it.My hand tightened around the glass of whiskey I hadn’t touched. I needed answers, and I needed them now.So I called in the men I trusted most. Not bodyguards. Not the board. Not Morgan, not anyone with blood ties or corporate masks. I called the private investigators. Men and women who worked in silence, who lived in the dark, who o

The call came like a knife in the dark. Not from her, but from the silence. I had left her only hours ago, pacing my office until dawn tried to break through the glass walls. Every second without her tasted wrong, like poison in the air. I had told myself I would give her space, that if she wanted to leave, I would let her but the truth was I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe knowing she was out there, carrying everything alone, and maybe hating me for it.So when the message on my private line lit up, coded from the security sensors in her apartment, my heart went still. Unauthorized entry. Movement detected.Ava.I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. I grabbed my gun, grabbed my keys, and drove through the city like a man possessed. By the time I pulled up to her building, I was running on something darker than adrenaline. I was running on pure need the need to get to her, to see her alive, to feel her under my hands.The elevator was too slow. I took the stairs, three at a time, my chest po

Liam's povHer words were still burning in my ears.“Your father destroyed my family.”They had left her lips like a blade. Not shouted, not screamed just spoken with the kind of quiet certainty that cut deeper than fury ever could. And I had no shield against it. Because I saw it in her eyes the way her world had cracked open, the way every piece of her past had suddenly turned sharp.I wanted to reach for her, to tell her she was wrong, that it wasn’t my father, that it couldn’t be. But even as I tried to form the words, I knew I had no proof. And that silence, that hesitation, had been answered enough for her.Ava had turned from me, her shoulders trembling, her hands still clutching those papers like they were evidence of my bloodline’s sins. And the distance between us had grown into a canyon I couldn’t cross with a touch or a kiss.So I did the only thing I knew. I went searching.The West estate held shadows most people never saw. My father had kept records of everything: con