All Chapters of Shadows of Desire: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

The idea started as a rumor at the edge of a shift change—three words passed like a candle from hand to hand: public apology scene. I was slicing limes in the bar prep nook when Nadia murmured it. She didn’t elaborate, only glanced toward the stage where the curtain hung like a held breath. I felt the room tilt in that way Elysium does when something important is about to happen; conversations softened, pulse music smoothed to a thrumming undercurrent, and people’s bodies turned even when their heads pretended not to.Public scenes are part ritual, part weather. When they’re announced, the air changes pressure. This one carried a charge I could taste.Marco appeared at my elbow without seeming to cross the floor. “Tonight needs precision,” he said, voice low enough to register as instruction, not announcement. “She’s been approved for a single, supervised return. My rules. Elise on standby. Andre to run perimeter. You stay behind the bar unless I move you.”“Jennifer?” I asked, though

The text from Marco arrived as I was still tasting the ghost of Adrian’s cologne.Sweep. Now. Don’t mention in hallways. Side door.I put my phone face down and breathed in for four, out for six, the way Elise taught me when the air gets too small. The city clattered outside like cutlery in a drawer—ordinary life, loud with its ordinariness. I told my hands to stop shaking, then told them again, then stuffed them into my pockets and let the walk to Elysium wring the nervous energy out of my calves.Andre opened the service door without asking; he had the look of a man counting to himself. “Upstairs,” he said. “He wants the team in the control room and no one else.”The stairwell smelled like bleach and old wood and, faintly, clove syrup—memory stitched into air molecules. At the landing, I paused long enough to steady the part of me that had been rattled by Adrian’s “Ms. Monroe,” then stepped into the blue glow.Marco had stripped the control room to its bones. Cables snaked like dark

The lounge had always felt like a quiet harbor—velvet couches, low lamps, a place to catch your breath between storms. Tonight it held its breath with us. The curtain of the mezzanine muffled the music from the main hall; below, laughter rose and fell like a tide we were no longer part of. Up here, time narrowed until it fit inside Lena’s shaking shoulders.She sat curled in the corner of the sofa, knees drawn up, eyes glossy with the kind of panic that doesn’t flare anymore—it just burns. Leo remained on one knee in front of her, steady as furniture; Marco stood with his shoulder to the door, body angled so no one could wander in by accident or mistake. I hovered a step back, my chest full of sand, wanting to go to her and not sure I had the right.“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” Lena said. The words came out like a cough, jagged, too big for her throat. “You have to believe me.”“We’re here,” Leo said. It wasn’t a promise. It was a ground note. Elise had taught me there’s a differe

The control room felt more like a war room than ever before. The corkboards were no longer just cluttered with schedules and incident logs—they’d become maps of betrayal, threads of wire connecting names, locker numbers, burner phones. The air smelled faintly of coffee gone bitter on the hotplate, of static from equipment running too long without rest.We sat in a half-circle: Leo perched forward on his chair, elbows on knees, all restless energy; Jennifer leaned back, arms folded, hiding tension behind her practiced mask; Elise sat straighter than usual, as if professionalism could be armor; Lena hunched small, hands clasped in her lap, a shadow of herself. And Victor—Victor was a storm in human form, pacing behind us, silent, controlled, but with an anger that crackled like lightning waiting for a tree to split.Marco was the only one who seemed composed, calm in the way a surgeon is calm when the patient is still bleeding out. He pushed his glasses up, set a folder on the table, an

The control room glowed with the cold light of monitors, everything humming with quiet precision. Marco’s equipment was lined up neatly along the console—like surgical tools waiting for an operation—while Leo and Andre cross-checked the locker timings. Jennifer leaned against the far wall, phone in hand, the ghost of a smirk pulling at her mouth.And then there was Victor.He stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the weight of his presence, but not close enough to touch. He spoke in short sentences, clipped, efficient, as though every word risked spilling into something messier if he let it run too far.“Cross-reference the draft with the tabloid’s publication history,” he said, eyes fixed on the screen. “We need the tone to match their style—sloppy enough to feel authentic.”I nodded, scrolling through headlines. “They like sharp verbs. Victor St. Clair explodes. Leo storms out. Drama over detail.”His gaze flicked toward me, then away again. “Then give them drama.”The sil