All Chapters of The heart Beneath the Thorn : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The air inside Max Carter’s office was unnaturally still.Outside, the city pulsed with life—honking cabs, distant sirens, wind tearing through the skyline—but here, time had frozen into a glacial silence, sharp and unforgiving. Max stood with one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped tightly around a crystal tumbler of untouched bourbon. His jaw ticked with the rhythm of a barely-contained storm.Sebastian Blackmoor leaned against the doorframe like he owned it.Like he’d already won.“You’re hard to pin down these days,” Sebastian said casually, eyes sweeping across the rich interior. “Funny how that happens when one’s empire starts cracking beneath their feet.”Max said nothing. Just stared into the glass like it might give him answers he couldn’t voice aloud.“You look tired,” Sebastian added, stepping inside. “Is it the board? Grace? Or is it Emilia that’s keeping you up at night?”Max’s head snapped up, and just like that, the mask slipped.His eyes—green, stormy, fractured—flas

The ballroom was carved out of fantasy.Golden candelabras dripped soft wax onto marble pedestals. Gilded mirrors stretched from floor to vaulted ceiling, reflecting a thousand twinkling lights like stars trapped in crystal. At the far end, an orchestra played beneath a domed ceiling painted in frescoes of twilight skies and forgotten gods. Strings swelled, harps shimmered, and a grand piano anchored the melody like a steady heartbeat.The chandeliers above glowed like constellations.It was Beauty and the Beast reborn—only the roses were black.And every guest wore a mask.Emilia stood near the grand staircase, lips slightly parted, breath catching in her throat.Her gown was a flowing work of art—deep emerald green, cinched at the waist with black velvet ribbon and cascading in layers of silk that moved like water around her ankles. Her skin glowed beneath soft lighting, and her back was bare save for two delicate, crisscrossing satin straps. Tiny emerald beads lined her neckline, c

The music had stopped.But the room still pulsed—pulsed with silence, shame, and venomous stares.Emilia’s ears rang.She couldn’t hear the murmurs anymore, not even the buzz of the headlines or the cruel clicks of camera phones. Her feet were already moving—heels scraping against marble, breath coming too fast.The photo on her phone was still burned behind her eyes.That’s not me.That can’t be me.She shoved past a couple whispering behind their fans. Another pair turned away from her like she was diseased. Someone sneered, “Guess poverty teaches you how to climb, doesn’t it?”Her throat closed.Her mask was gone. Her face was naked. Her shame—broadcast in real time.She looked for the door. Any door.But the ballroom had become a maze. Candles flickered like mocking flames, gowns twirled, masks turned, but no one met her eyes. No one helped.No one saw her anymore.They only saw the headline.They only saw the lie.“Sleeping her way up.”She couldn’t breathe.Her hands shook as sh

The ballroom lights dimmed just enough to cast a golden hue across the hushed crowd. The screen above the stage flickered, and then—like a guillotine slicing through expectation—the first image appeared.A photo of Sebastian Blackmoor.In bed.With a woman easily twice his age, draped in diamonds and silk, her lipstick smeared and her champagne glass half-empty on the nightstand.Gasps erupted.Then came the second photo.And the third.A parade of wealthy women, powerful matrons of old-money families, caught in Sebastian’s web. Every image was timestamped. Dated. Labeled with names that made the ballroom quake—senators’ wives, European nobility, and a tech magnate’s widow.The silence shattered into scandal.Sebastian stood frozen, the smile stripped clean off his face.Max Carter walked to the center of the ballroom, no longer masked, no longer subtle. In his hand was a thick leather folder. Under his boot was the shattered glass of Sebastian’s once-immaculate image.“This,” Max sai

The chandeliers still sparkled above, but the light had gone cold.The music had long since faded. The ballroom stood in disarray—empty champagne flutes on gold-rimmed tables, smeared footprints on polished marble, whispered echoes of a night that would be written about for years. Yet in all that grand chaos, Max Carter only saw one thing.A single, crimson mask.Lying abandoned in the center of the floor like a fallen rose.His chest tightened as he walked toward it. The delicate ties curled loosely around its edges like limp ribbon tendrils. He picked it up gently, turning it over in his hand as though it might still be warm from her skin.It wasn’t.Max stared down at it, this fragile piece of silk and sequins that had hidden Emilia’s face—and yet revealed everything. Her wide, stunned eyes. Her trembling lips when she saw the photos. The way she looked at him when the truth unraveled.And then she vanished.He hadn’t seen her leave.Hadn’t stopped her.Hadn’t even said goodbye.He