جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 90

The warehouse smelled of cold iron and damp concrete. The kind of place that ate sound, where even your own breathing felt too loud. Talia sat rigid in the bolted chair, wrists raw from the ropes that bound them, trying not to shiver. The air wasn’t freezing, but fear had its own kind of chill.Hours had blurred. She couldn’t tell if it was midnight or dawn. The bare windows showed only darkness, and Zane moved through it like a predator who didn’t need light to hunt. Every time she closed her eyes, he was there. Sometimes silent. Sometimes speaking in that calm, silky voice that made her skin crawl.“Do you know what I hate about Jaxon’s little empire?” he said at one point, leaning against a pillar, watching her like she was something caged in a zoo. “He treats people like assets. Polished. Groomed. Protected. But he forgets that assets can be stolen. Broken. Rebranded.”Talia bit the inside of her cheek to keep from answering. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. N

The penthouse door swung open just as dawn began bleeding pale gold across the skyline. Raven was already waiting, pacing barefoot in the living room, her arms crossed tightly against her chest. She’d heard Jaxon’s voice on the phone, low and lethal, but she hadn’t been allowed to go with him. Now, seeing him stride in with Talia leaning weakly against him, she exhaled a shaky breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding.Talia looked… wrecked. Not in the way bloodied fighters look wrecked, but in the way someone does after staring straight into hell and walking out alive. Her dark hair hung in limp waves, her face pale, her wide eyes scanning the room like a trapped animal. Raven crossed the space in three quick steps, catching her before she could stumble.“Oh my God, Talia.” Raven’s voice cracked. She wanted to squeeze her friend tight, never let go, but the tremor in Talia’s limbs told her not to. So instead, she gripped her shoulders gently, steadying her. “You’re okay. You’

Later that evening Jaxon put on his jacket. "I'm going to the club. You coming?"Raven looked at him, his voice wasn't cold but neither was it soft. She knew that in the club he was in his domain. The club was alive as they walked in, greeeted by Viktor, the low, thrumming pulse that seeped through the walls was like blood through veins. Raven could feel it under her skin as she followed Jaxon through the hallways of Eden, his stride clipped, every line of his body coiled tight as a drawn bowstring. The lights cast his face in sharp planes, the shadows darker tonight, and though his men nodded and stepped aside at his approach, Raven could sense the shift.They knew their Don was wound tight. So did she.Inside his office, the bass dulled into a distant heartbeat. Jaxon didn’t offer her a seat; he strode straight to the shelves, selecting a cut-glass decanter of aged cognac. He poured two fingers into a glass with a hard snap of crystal, then another. One he placed in front of her,

The silence in Jaxon’s office was suffocating, stretched so thin it felt like it could shatter under the weight of a single breath. Raven’s hand rested on the envelope, Viktor standing like stone at her shoulder, while the investigator’s gaze flicked between them all, waiting for the Don’s word.Jaxon’s jaw clenched, the sharp edge of his control visible in the taut lines of his face. His hand hovered near the paper, fingers curling as though he could strangle the truth itself before it was spoken.“Do it,” he said at last, voice low, guttural, the sound of a man forcing the world into obedience.The investigator nodded once. With deliberate precision, he slit open the envelope Raven had carried back from the clinic. Papers slid free with the whisper of secrets long hidden. He scanned quickly, lips thinning as his eyes moved across the lines of medical jargon, genetic markers, signatures.Raven’s chest tightened. Her nails bit into her palms as she studied his face, searching for any

The silence after Natalia’s confession was a knife-edge. Raven felt it bite into her skin, cold and merciless, as the woman sat trembling across from them in Jaxon’s office. The city lights bled through the windows, fractured shards of gold that painted Natalia’s pale face in fragile strokes. She clutched her hands in her lap, twisting the fabric of her dress as though she might wring the guilt out of herself.“Speak,” Jaxon said at last, his tone a low growl that scraped through the room. He stood like a shadow at the edge of the desk, broad shoulders rigid, his entire body poised as though waiting to strike.Natalia flinched. Her eyes darted to Raven, then back to Jaxon, as though she were a cornered bird choosing which predator might devour her slower. “You don’t understand what he did to me,” she whispered. “To all of us.”Raven leaned forward, her voice steady but edged. “Then make us understand, because right now, Natalia, all I see is a woman who let Zane use her. Who let him m