บททั้งหมดของ No Way to Win Me Back: บทที่ 451 - บทที่ 460

Celeste’s POVI waited until the building had gone quiet before I asked them to stay.Rosemary Atelier at night was different, no phones ringing, no footsteps echoing from the workshop, no interns whispering by the elevators.It felt safer this way.Grace dropped her bag on the long conference table first, already tense. Jenny wheeled her chair backward and perched on the edge of it, legs crossed, phone in hand like an extension of her body.Rachel stood near the window for a moment, watching the city lights before turning back to us. Ryan came last, shutting the door carefully behind him.I didn’t sit at the head of the table. I took the chair beside it.“That can’t be good,” Jenny said lightly, though her eyes were sharp. “Whenever you gather us like we’re the Avengers, someone’s about to bleed.”I huffed out a breath. “Leander Voss came to me with a proposition today.”That got their attention.Grace’s jaw tightened instantly. “The Avalon Club guy, right?”“Yes.”“The one who refuse

Celeste’s POVNicholas’ words were still echoing through me until it was bed time.Ryan was busy again tonight and I missed him. After the day, I just wanted to hide myself in his arms.I knew sleep would be hard to come, but then Jenny sent me a file and any concept of sleep fled my body.The file contained information about the Avalon Club.It wasn’t just a place, it was a mechanism. A carefully engineered ecosystem built on anonymity, favors, silence. No paper trail. No public faces. Word of mouth only. Membership by invitation. Discretion enforced not by contracts, but by consequences.Andre Cox wasn’t an anomaly in that world. He was a byproduct.I stared at my laptop long after midnight, the glow painting my hands an unhealthy blue.Jenny’s message sat open, highlighted sections blinking like warnings. Any criminal case tied publicly to Andre wouldn’t just expose him, it would unravel Avalon entirely. Clients. Employees. Decades of carefully cultivated secrecy collapsing under on

Celeste’s POVRyan showed up past midnight.I heard the knock before my phone buzzed with his name, already standing in the hallway, already bracing myself.Grace’s door was closed. Molly’s nightlight cast a soft crescent under her door. The apartment felt held together by quiet agreements, don’t wake the child, don’t crack what little calm we’d managed to stitch together.I opened the door and Ryan stepped in like he belonged there. Like he always did. Jacket still on. Jaw tight. Eyes too alert for the hour.“You okay?” he asked.I shut the door behind him and leaned back against it.“I was,” I said. “Before you knock like that.”He exhaled through his nose, a tell. “I didn’t mean—”“I was just kidding,” I murmured with a smile, pressing a small kiss to his cheek.He watched me for a beat, then glanced down the hall. “Molly asleep?”“Yes.”“And Grace?”“In her room. Also asleep. Which means if you’re here to interrogate me, you should lower your voice.”That earned me a faint, humorle

Vivian’s POVI noticed it halfway through the meeting.Steven had gone quiet, not distracted, just… absent in that particular way that meant his mind was somewhere else entirely.He still nodded at the right moments, still signed off on the final figures for Aurora’s Belgium branch, still shook hands with the client like a man who had done this a hundred times before.But I’ve worked with him long enough to know the difference between composure and weight.The moment the conference room doors closed behind us, I slowed my steps.“Are you alright?” I asked gently.Steven exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since before the meeting even started. We were in the corridor now, glass walls on one side, Antwerp’s gray sky on the other.“I’m worried about Ryan,” he said.There it was.We walked toward the elevators, our footsteps echoing softly against the marble floor. I didn’t rush him. Steven only spoke when he’d already turned the problem over a dozen times in his head.“He hasn’t to

Damien’s POVI hadn’t slept properly since the station.Days had passed, but the man’s voice still slid under my skin at the worst moments, when the house was quiet, when Atlas cried at three in the morning, when Bonnie asked why the baby had my eyes even though he didn’t.How’s my baby doing?The words had been tossed so casually, almost playfully, from between steel cuffs. Blue eyes. Sharp cheekbones. A smirk that suggested ownership, not curiosity.Andre Cox.I sat at my mother’s dining table, hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had long gone cold.She watched me the way she always did when she knew something was wrong, head tilted slightly, eyes sharp, no patience for half-truths.“You’re spiraling,” she said flatly. “Tell me why.”I exhaled through my nose. “At the station. After my statement. They were escorting a man out in handcuffs.”“And?”“He looked at me,” I said. My jaw tightened. “Smirked. And asked, ‘How’s my baby doing?’”Pauline didn’t blink.She set her cup down wi