Alle Kapitel von Unworthy No More : Kapitel 141 – Kapitel 150

Isla I did not sleep much after Alexander told me about his love for me and why he chose me. Even after he had held me, even after I had felt his breath steady against the back of my neck, the revelation replayed over and over, the eleven-year-old girl in muddy boots, dragging a boy out of the water, yelling at him not to die. No one dies on my watch. I used to have dreams like that. Dreams so vivid I would wake up with my heart racing, as if I had swallowed someone else’s memories. I had always dismissed them as childhood fantasies, but now they had a name. A face. A boy with storm-gray eyes who grew into the man who had become my anchor. By sunrise, my chest felt full, not heavy, not aching, just… overflowing. We drove back to Chicago in comfortable silence. Alexander’s hand rested on my thigh, thumb brushing gently, like he was reassuring himself I was still there. And maybe I was doing the same, reminding myself that after everything we had survived separately, we had finally

IslaIf someone had tapped my shoulder a year ago, when I was standing on a flooded street with rain in my hair and mud splashed up my legs, and told me that someday I would say “yes” to Alexander Langston, I would have laughed. Or cried. Or both. Mostly because I did not know back then that something beautiful could still happen to the pieces of me I had left.Tonight feels unreal. Not because he proposed. But because I accepted… easily. wholeheartedly. Like the word was never forbidden to me. And now, in the quiet of my bedroom, the word yes echoes inside me. Soft. Warm. Terrifying. Healing.For most of my life, at least the years I spent with Nathaniel, I learned to brace myself for disappointment. Happiness was something I tiptoed around, afraid that wanting it made me greedy. Afraid that reaching for it made me foolish.But Alexander has this strange way of holding up a mirror to me and refusing to let me see myself as broken or foolish or “less than.” His belief in me has always

Author's POV The black van did not stop until the city lights had thinned into nothingness. Viola did not know how long she had been inside, minutes, hours, days? Her wrists were bound. Her throat was raw from screaming. The twins had been taken from her arms somewhere between the Blake mansion and the first checkpoint of Nathaniel’s private security compound.At first, she had begged. Then she had fought. Then she had broken. Now she sat hunched on the cold floor of the van, trembling, her silk nightrobe muddied and torn. She had left the Blake mansion barefoot, clutching her babies, thinking she could outrun his wrath. She had not made it past the estate gates.When the van finally lurched to a stop, the door slid open, and harsh white light spilled in. Viola blinked through swollen eyelids. A forest. A steel fence. A concrete building with no windows. Nathaniel’s “off-the-books” holding facility, she had heard of it only in whispers. She had always thought it was a rumor. A myth.

Isla HartFor years, silence had been a punishment , something thick and cold that crept into the corners of a house and reminded me that I wasn’t wanted. Nathaniel’s silences had been sharp, strategic. A weapon more painful than his words.But here, in Alexander’s home, my home now, though the thought still made my chest bloom with something fragile and new, silence had become a blanket. A soft hum beneath the rhythm of daily life.The kettle whistled. Sunlight spilled through the windows. Sophie hummed under her breath as she colored in her workbook at the dining table. And somewhere behind me, I could feel Alexander watching me as though I was his entire world wrapped in a simple blue sweater.I still did not know how to absorb that kind of tenderness. “You’re staring,” I murmured without turning around, because the warmth prickling at the back of my neck gave him away every time. He didn’t deny it. “I’m admiring,” he corrected

Author's POV The city no longer belonged to him. Nathaniel Blake had ruled Chicago like an invisible hand around its throat, not with applause, not with admiration, but with fear. The kind of fear that did not vibrate loudly, only settled into bones. Quiet, absolute and inevitable.But now, even the skyline felt different. Not because his power was gone. But because her presence had rewritten the streets. He stood near the window of his top-floor office, watching cars crawl like obedient ants below, the glass reflecting half of his profile, half the city, and half the ghost of a man he used to be.His phone chimed. Another notification. Another headline. Senator Isla Hart Pushes New Bill Forward Amid Growing Support from Independent Voters He did not open it immediately. He did not have to because he had already seen it twice on television. Once in a forwarded email from the board. Again in a political digest he’d never bothered with before, until now.Isla. Her name slid into his mi