All Chapters of Lost In Pain: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

— The Obsession CurveThe days after that night were eerily quiet.No messages. No late-night summons. Not even the occasional passing glance that used to send heat curling through Aurora’s veins. Zane had vanished behind the cool mask of professionalism — polite, detached, untouchable.It should have been a relief.Instead, it felt like punishment.Aurora told herself she would focus on work, bury herself in the endless tide of proposals, deals, and client meetings. But his absence followed her like a shadow. Every room he wasn’t in felt wrong, every silence echoed with something unsaid.By Wednesday, she couldn’t stand it anymore.She went to his office after hours, telling herself it was about business — a project update, a contract revision, anything to justify the impulse. But when she opened the door, she froze.Zane was there. Alone.And he looked… undone.His jacket was discarded, his tie loose, his e

Before the Storm BreaksThe rain didn’t stop for two days.It fell like grief — relentless, heavy, unending — as if the city itself was mourning him.Zane was gone. The sound of that gunshot still lived in Aurora’s bones, replaying over and over until every heartbeat became an echo of that single, deafening moment. The police called it an “incident,” the kind that conveniently disappeared from reports before sunrise. No body was found. No suspects. No proof.Just a smear of blood on the rain-soaked alley floor.But Aurora knew better. Zane wasn’t the type of man to vanish without reason. He was the storm — chaos and control in a single breath. If he was gone, it was because someone had forced his hand. Or worse — because he was playing a game she hadn’t yet learned the rules to.She hadn’t slept. The walls of her apartment were covered with printouts, maps, corporate connections, and photos — a web of ink and red thread that pulsed like a second heart in the room. Every line led back

 The Fire We Start The key felt impossibly heavy in Aurora’s palm. It had seemed like a trinket when Zane gave it to her — a private joke about destiny and doors and futures. Now, in the thin light of her safe house, it was a detonator. Every legend she’d never asked to be part of, every bargain she’d signed in ambition’s name, converged into the cold metal between her fingers. Elara watched her without comment, the hum of the laptop like the heartbeat of an engine at idle. “You ready to burn it all down?” she asked. Aurora swallowed. “If it’s the only way to find him.” Her voice was calm, but beneath it was a furnace of fear and fury she could no longer ignore. The files had been merciless; Project Lyra had mapped her life like a constellation — intended to be predictable, controllable. She’d been a designed asset, a blade