Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 61 - Chapitre 70

The silence came first.Not the peaceful kind. The kind that made Marcelline check her phone more often than she wanted to admit, scanning for names that refused to appear.Rowan had gone quiet.No messages. No late-night calls that pretended to be about logistics but were really about something neither of them wanted to name. No sudden appearances that disrupted her routine and irritated her carefully maintained sense of order.Selene too. The woman who'd been a constant shadow, a threat hovering at the edges of Marcelline's awareness, had simply... vanished.It shouldn't have mattered. She told herself it didn't matter. Told herself she was relieved to have one less complication to navigate while everything else was trying to destroy her.The elevator doors slid open onto the executive floor. The familiar glass-and-steel corridor reflected her back at herself, composed, precise, untouchable in her tailored cream suit and perfectly styled hair. Or at least, that was the version she p

By Monday morning, the company felt like a house with too many mirrors.Every surface reflected something back at Marcelline—screens displaying her name in headlines, glass walls showing her isolated figure, whispered conversations that stopped when she approached. Nothing was loud yet. Nothing had exploded. But pressure had a way of announcing itself softly first, like a hand settling on the back of your neck before it tightened.She arrived early. Earlier than usual, before the sun had fully committed to rising, when the city outside the glass walls was still yawning awake. Lights blinked off one by one as morning claimed the darkness. Traffic crawled into its weekday rhythm. Inside Odette Global Holdings, the air-conditioning hummed too evenly, as if trying to convince everyone that nothing was wrong.The kitten—she still hadn't named it—had mewed pitifully when she'd left the penthouse at 5 AM. The sound had followed her into the elevator, into her car, into this office that sudde

Marcelline was already at her desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair pulled back with the kind of ruthless precision that came from habit rather than calm. She'd slept barely three hours, the kitten had knocked over a lamp at 2 AM, and after that, sleep had been impossible. The ownership numbers from the night before kept running in quiet loops behind her eyes, each iteration feeling more inevitable than the last.Her phone vibrated once against the polished desk surface.Then again, more insistent.She glanced at the screen, coffee cup halfway to her lips.Harrington CapitalHer stomach tightened—not panic, not yet, but the body's instinctive recognition of danger. Harrington didn't call directly. Harrington sent lawyers with briefcases. Or assistants with carefully worded emails. Or polite letters with dangerous attachments about "strategic realignment."She set down her coffee and answered."Marcelline Odette.""Ms. Odette." The voice was male, professionally smooth,

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, Adrian Cole knew without even asking who those steps belonged to."NO..No...no..." He exclaimed as he continued typing furiously on his laptop as if the answer he needed would miraculously appear.Fun fact, it didn't.The steps stopped shortly at the door, soon the door to the security room was opened. Adrian turned slightly from where he was on his seat, his lens perched loosely on his nose.Rowan stepped in followed closely by Damian Holt. He stood few distance from where Adrian was staring at the set of monitors in the room."Good morning Sir" Adrian greeted. Whether he heard it or not, he didn't reply. He wouldn't. Not when someone close to him betrayed him and got away with it."Any updates on him?" He asked staring at a particular system as if something there was of interest to him."I'm close.." Adrian replied.It was a lie. And Rowan hated lies, especially inefficient ones. Silence."Any updates on him?" He asked again, his voice lower.Adr

Selene sat on the bed for three hours, the wine in her hand long forgotten.If sitting in one place could turn people into ghosts, then she'd likely be one by now.The suite was silent except for the hum of the air conditioner—the one that had just been fixed after she met the weapon fashioned against her.Kenneth Dunlap.It felt like a mockery. Everything working perfectly in this tiny space while her entire world crumbled outside these walls.Cherry's face haunted her.That smile. That dress. That lie she'd told on camera about business school and Rowan Adair.Their mother had won.Or she was about to.Unless Selene did something.“Hmmmmm.”She sighed heavily, setting the wine glass down on the nightstand with a soft clink.Her phone sat beside it, screen dark, waiting.She stared at it for a long moment, her chest tight.She didn't want her sister dragged into this life. This ugly, suffocating world of manipulation and power plays and people who smiled while they destroyed you.Cher