Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

Elizabeth's PovI push open my apartment door and almost jump out of my skin.“What the hell?”Red leans against the opposite wall, arms crossed, mimicking my tone back at me with an infuriating smirk. “What the hell?” he parrots, then uncrosses his arms, his strange eyes raking over me. “What’s happening?”Why is he looking at me that way? Like I’m a bug under glass. A fascinating, stupid bug.He shakes his head slowly, a theatrical gesture of disappointment. “What were you thinking?”“It was the way you were staring at me,” I snap back, my heart still thumping from the scare. “It gave me goosebumps.”Red scoffs, reaching out to tap my forehead with one cold finger. “This lump of clay is the last thing that’ll ever happen to me. You’re not my type.”I raise an eyebrow, a flicker of my old defiance surfacing. “Do… angels of death date too?”“Scheduler, you fool,” he corrects, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Get it right. And no, we don’t ‘date.’ We observe. Occasionally collect. Rarely,

Jason's Pov The whiskey in my glass tasted like ash. I swirled it, watching the amber liquid catch the low, expensive light of the restaurant booth. I was here to talk business. To secure the future. So why did my gut feel like it was full of lead?Across from me, Marcus Kane smiled. It was a perfect smile. White, even, utterly charmless. “You look tense, Jason. The deal is solid. The numbers are in your favor. You should be celebrating.”“I am,” I lied, taking a sip. The burn did nothing to settle me.Marcus watched me over the rim of his own glass. His eyes were the color of a winter sky—clear, and just as cold. “It’s the final push that makes men hesitate,” he said, his voice smooth as the silk of his tie. “The moment before you claim what’s yours. It’s natural.”This wasn’t natural. None of it was. The planning, the lies, the way I’d looked at Elizabeth’s father across a boardroom table just hours ago and smiled while I plotted to gut his life’s work. The way she had looked at me

Three days.The words hung in the air.The room still smelled of ozone from Red’s little entrance. Claire’s terror was a live wire in my chest.One of you must surrender. Or you both die.Red stood there, looking at us like we were a disappointing science experiment. “Well?” he drawled, that infuriating smirk finally creeping back onto his face. “Don’t look so shocked. You knew the terms were temporary. You just sped up the expiration date.”“You didn’t tell me this!” I snapped. “You didn’t say I was killing her just by being here!”“Technicalities,” he waved a dismissive hand. “The point is, the clock’s ticking. Seventy-two hours. Two options.” He held up a crimson-clad finger. “One: you, little ghost, convince the original tenant here to pack her bags and vacate her own mind. A voluntary surrender.”A fresh wave of Claire’s panic washed over me. No. Never.“Or,” Red continued, his smile turning sharp and cruel, “Option Two: at the end of seventy-two hours, if she’s still being stubb

Diana Frost’s POVNumbers didn’t lie. They whispered. And in the sealed, silent tomb of Wakefield’s post-merger financial archives, they were screaming.My fingers flew over the keyboard, the blue glow of three monitors painting my glasses in reflected light. Robert Wakefield had hired me for a standard post-acquisition audit. “Due diligence,” he’d called it, his smile not quite reaching the grief-haunted eyes he’d become famous for since his daughter’s accident. Standard, he’d said.There was nothing standard about the trail of digital breadcrumbs leading from Jason Collen’s executive discretionary fund.It was clever. I’d give him that. Not a blatant theft. More like a slow, meticulous bleed. Funds allocated for vendor contracts in Singapore siphoned through a shell corporation in the Caymans. “Consultancy fees” paid to a Luxembourg entity that dissolved three months later. Small amounts, scattered across different projects, easy to miss in quarterly reports. But I was paid to miss

Elizabeth's Pov Sunset feels like a sigh.One moment, I’m anchored in the warm, solid weight of Claire’s body, feeling the ghost of Rashford’s embrace like a brand on my skin. The next, the world turns to watercolor. Colors bleed, sounds soften, and I’m slipping… up. Out.It’s not a choice anymore. It’s a law. Like gravity in reverse.The city passes beneath me in a smear of light and shadow. I don’t control the direction. I’m a leaf on a current, pulled toward the one place my soul still recognizes as home.St. Augustine’s Hospital. Room 407.I pass through the wall like it’s mist. The room is dim, lit only by the cold, green glow of monitors. The air smells like antiseptic.And there I am.Elizabeth Wakefield. Or what’s left of her.She’s paler than the sheets. A sculpture carved from wax and wire. Tubes and lines snake from her arms, her nose, connecting her to the machines that go beep… beep… beep… in a rhythm that’s supposed to mean life. It sounds like a countdown.I float clos