All Chapters of Crossed Lines: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

POV: ElaraIt should have been a routine day.Elara had wrapped a long strategy session with Damon’s senior engineers, hours spent tracing the threads of the cyberattack that had nearly crippled CrossTech weeks ago. By the time she left the boardroom, she was bone-tired, head filled with lines of code and contingency maps. All she wanted was to go home, brew coffee, and sink into silence.The lobby was crowded, but not unusually so. A handful of suited employees moved briskly past the security gates, their badges flashing. The only anomaly was the subtle hum of outside noise; voices bleeding through the glass doors, too loud, too many.She didn’t realize what was happening until Damon stepped out of the elevator behind her.The instant his tall frame came into view, the lobby erupted. Cameras flashed, shutters clicked, voices barked questions in rapid succession.“Elara! Elara Duval…are you confirming the rumors?”“Mr. Cross! How long have you and Ms. Duval been seeing each other?”“I

POV: ElaraSleep refused to come.Elara lay on her back in the dark, the faint hum of the city filtering through the windows, and all she could see was Damon’s hand over hers.It wasn’t just the touch itself, it was everything it carried. Steady. Grounded. Uncharacteristically gentle. A man who was supposed to be a weapon had steadied her instead.She turned, pressing her face into the pillow as if she could smother the memory, but it only played clearer in her mind: the low hum of the servers, the dim blue light against his profile, his voice when he said her name, like it wasn’t a challenge for once, but a tether.“Get a grip,” she muttered, shoving back the sheets.It was after three in the morning, but she shuffled barefoot to small desk in her living room anyway. Work was safer. Code didn’t ask questions. Code didn’t make her heart stutter.She opened her laptop, half expecting to see a message from him. Nothing. Of course. Damon Cross didn’t text at ungodly hours, he commanded,

POV: ElaraThe morning after the launch felt deceptively calm.CrossTech’s offices gleamed as always, all glass and steel and order, but beneath it, Elara could feel the shift. The city’s gossip columns were already ablaze with photos of her and Damon: the poised smiles, the hand at her waist, the perfectly timed glances. The kind of staged intimacy that made headlines.Except the kiss hadn’t been staged. And that was the part she couldn’t stop thinking about.She’d spent half the night replaying it, hating that she remembered the warmth of his hand more vividly than the taste of champagne. It lingered, on her lips, under her skin, in every shallow breath she took as she leaned back in her chair. It wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t part of their carefully drawn contract. Yet here she was, replaying it in her mind like a secret she both wanted and feared to keep.A knock at the glass wall of her office startled her. Damon didn’t wait for permission; he rarely did.“You’re here,” h

POV: DamonHe’d barely slept.Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her, the flash of her gaze before she’d kissed him back, the sound of her breath when they broke apart.He’d spent the entire night trying to convince himself it was nothing. A mistake. A moment. Something that would fade by morning.Except it hadn’t.Now, as he walked into the conference floor, coffee in hand, she was already there, efficient, focused, every inch the composed strategist he had hired. Not a trace of what had happened in that elevator.“Elara,” he greeted.She looked up from the files. “Morning.”No hesitation. No tremor. Just business.For a second, Damon hated how easy she made it look.He set his cup down beside her tablet. “About last night—”“—didn’t happen,” she said flatly, eyes still on the screen.“Elara.”She finally looked at him, and the cool steadiness in her expression hit harder than any argument. “We agreed on boundaries, Damon. Let’s not rewrite them now.”He studied her for a long mom

POV: DamonHe hadn’t seen her in four years.But the moment Isabelle stepped into his office, the air changed, like glass under pressure, one breath away from shattering.She looked the same: the immaculate poise, the diamond smile honed for boardrooms and headlines. But there was something brittle beneath the gloss this time as though the performance had started to cost her.“Hello, Damon,” she said softly. “You look… older.”He leaned back against his desk, arms folded. “And you look like trouble.”Her lips curved faintly. “You always did have a weakness for it.”He didn’t answer. He’d learned not to feed her games.When she finally sat, crossing one perfect leg over the other, she wasted no time. “I heard about your new… arrangement. The partnership. The girlfriend.”His jaw ticked. “You didn’t come here to gossip.”“No.” Her eyes flicked over his face. “I came to warn you.”That word again. He’d heard it too many times lately, from investors, from rivals, from ghosts.She slid a s