جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 160

He closed the distance. His lips pressed against mine and stayed there. Unhurried. Certain. Like everything he did. His hands stayed on my face, holding the angle exactly where he wanted it, and I stood completely still with my hands at my sides and my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. He pulled back slowly. His thumb traced my lower lip once. "Be good," he said. He let go. Turned and walked out. The door clicked shut behind him. I stood exactly where he'd left me. My face still warm where his hands had been. My lips warm. The room suddenly very quiet. I pressed my fingers against my mouth and stood there in the silence. Why me. That was all. Just those two words sitting in the middle of my chest like something that had been there a long time and finally gotten too heavy to ignore. Why me. I was so tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixed. The other kind. The kind that went down into the bones and stayed there. The kind that made the idea of just s

Killian left the meeting at one in the morning. The warehouse on the edge of the city was still thick with cigarette smoke and half-finished arguments about shipments, but he didn’t care. The deal could wait. Something had been sitting wrong in his gut since he’d driven out that afternoon, a low, restless pressure he couldn’t name and didn’t try to. He stood up mid-sentence, buttoned his dark jacket, and said, “We finish tomorrow.” No explanation. The other men just nodded, eyes lowered. They knew better than to ask.The drive back took almost four hours. Rain started halfway, drumming against the SUV. Killian sat in the back, one hand resting on his knee, staring at the black road ahead. Marco rode shotgun and kept quiet. The estate gates finally rolled open at two seventeen. Killian stepped out before the driver could circle around. He wanted to see her. That was all. Just walk into her room, look at her asleep, and let the tightness in his chest ease the way it always did.He went

Killian turned the key in the study door with a slow, deliberate twist. The lock clicked into place, heavy and final, and just like that the chaos of the mansion outside disappeared. No more boots hammering across marble floors. No more radios spitting orders. No more engines growling to life in the drive. It was all gone. Only silence remained, thick enough to press against his skin. He stood there with his back against the wood, hands hanging loose at his sides, and let the quiet wrap around him like a second skin.The room smelled of old leather, dust, and the faint trace of whiskey from the decanter he hadn’t touched in weeks. Moonlight slipped through the gap in the heavy curtains and painted a thin silver line across the rug. He stared at it for a long moment, breathing in, breathing out, letting the emptiness of the house settle into his bones. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t anywhere in these walls. And that fact was starting to eat at him like acid.He crossed the room slowly, sh

LUNA POV:I kept running.The forest closed around me the second I left the gate behind, thick and black and full of things that grabbed at my clothes. Branches slapped my face and arms. Roots caught my shoes. I didn’t slow down. My lungs burned and my legs felt heavy already, but the only thing in my head was forward. Keep going. Don’t stop. The bundle Irina gave me dug into my spine with every step, money and phone and the promise of a new life if I could just make it far enough.I ran until the mansion lights disappeared completely. No more yellow glow through the trees. Just me and the dark and the sound of my own breathing. At some point the ground sloped down and I half-slid, half-ran, grabbing at saplings to keep from falling. My shirt tore on a sharp branch. I felt the sting across my ribs but I didn’t stop to look. I just kept moving.The night stretched on forever. I walked when my legs gave out, then forced myself to jog again. The cold settled deep in my bones. My teeth st

The dogs sounded closer now, their barks cutting through the rain like they had picked up my scent for real. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. My left ankle had swollen so bad inside my shoe that every step felt like someone was driving a nail through the bone. I limped hard, one hand pressed to a tree trunk for balance, the other clutching my side where a branch had ripped my shirt open earlier. Mud sucked at my feet and the rain kept pouring, cold and relentless, turning everything into a blur.I pushed through a thick patch of brambles that tore at my arms again. Fresh scratches burned. I didn’t feel them the way I should have. Everything had gone numb except the pain in my ankle and the heavy ache in my chest that kept saying this was it. This was how far I got. I stumbled out of the brambles and there it was, half-hidden behind a cluster of old pines: a small wooden hut, sagging like it had given up years ago. One wall leaned sideways. The roof had holes in it. The door hung crooke