chapter 61

Mira’s POVI pushed Adrian’s door open quietly and stood in the doorway for a moment. He was asleep, properly asleep, his breathing slow and even, his face finally relaxed in a way it hadn’t been all day. I pulled the door closed softly.The house was unusually still. Jessica and Camille had buried themselves in their respective rooms since the confrontation and hadn’t come out once, no footsteps, no voices, nothing, which was honestly the most peaceful the house had felt since Jessica arrived, and I wasn’t going to waste it by standing in the corridor thinking about it.I grabbed my bag, went downstairs, and headed for the front door.The moment I stepped outside, I stopped.There was a small commotion near the gate, one of the security guards standing firm with his arm partially extended, and Julie on the other side of it, dressed like she was going somewhere important, gesturing with her hands and talking at a volume that suggested she had been at this for a few minutes already.“

chapter 62

Julie’s POVI slammed the door behind me.I dropped my bag on the couch and stood in the middle of the living room trying to calm down, but my body wasn’t cooperating. I was hungry, I was angry, and the combination of the two was making everything worse than it needed to be.I couldn’t believe it.Mira of all people, Mira had stood at that gate and looked me dead in the eye and dismissed me like I was nobody, like I was a stranger who had shown up at the wrong address, like the years we had spent in the same house meant absolutely nothing, and the worst part wasn’t even the dismissal, the worst part was how calm she had been about it, no anger, no raised voice, nothing, just that flat unbothered expression that I had never seen on Mira’s face before in my life.Mira used to be easy.That was the thing I kept coming back to, standing in my own living room. Mira used to be the easiest person to handle, soft and trusting and always willing to believe the best about people, even when thos

chapter 63

Adrian’s POVI woke up, and the first thing I noticed was that I could breathe properly.Not the shallow, careful breathing from yesterday, where every inhale felt like it cost something, just normal breathing, easy and quiet, my body finally deciding to cooperate after everything it had been put through.I sat up slowly and tested how I felt, still tired around the edges, but the weakness from yesterday had pulled back enough that I could move without feeling like the floor was going to come up to meet me.I swung my legs off the bed and stood.That was when I saw a plate sitting outside my door on the small table in the corridor, covered neatly with a cloth to keep it warm, and beside it a folded piece of paper.I picked up the note first and read the context. ‘Asked the maid to prepare something light. Hope you rested well.’That was definitely from Mira. I stood there and looked at the note for longer than I probably should have.James knocked and came in a few minutes later whi

chapter 64

Camille’s POVI sat on the edge of the bed and watched Jessica throw things into her suitcase.Just grabbing clothes, folding them badly, and forcing them in with an energy that had nowhere proper to go, so it was going into the luggage instead, her jaw tight, her movements sharp and fast.She was talking the whole time.“This isn’t over,” she said, not really to me, more to the room, to the situation, to whatever version of events she was running through her head, “I have been through worse than this and I have always come back, always, Adrian thinks he can push me out and that will be the end of it but he doesn’t understand how this works.”I watched her grab a dress from the wardrobe and fold it in three seconds flat. “What exactly are you planning, Jessica?” I asked carefully, “Because right now we are being walked out of the house, and from where I’m sitting, I don’t see a clear next move.”“That’s because you’re sitting,” she said. She stopped moving for a second, her hands goi

chapter 65

Mira’s POVI walked into the conference room and knew immediately that something was off, but I pushed it behind my back. I sat down, and Jace came in behind me, and I watched his eyes do the same sweep mine had done, landing on the stranger, then on the folder, then on Mr Cowell, who was sitting at his usual spot looking at his phone like he hadn’t noticed us arrive.Jace looked at me briefly.I looked back at him and said nothing.Mr Cowell cleared his throat and set his phone down. “Before we begin, I’ve taken the initiative to bring in an external consultant to do a review of the company’s current direction. I thought it would be useful to have an outside perspective, given the transition period we’re in.”He said it casually, like it was something he had mentioned before, like it was a detail that had simply slipped everyone’s mind and not a deliberate move made without telling either Jace or me about it.Jace’s jaw tightened. I could see it from where I was sitting, the small m

chapter 66

Mira’s POVAnn walked through the front door and stopped dead. She stood in the entrance and looked up, then left, then right, then up again, taking in the ceiling height, the staircase, the width of the hallway, the way the light came through the windows, doing a full, slow assessment with her eyes the way she did whenever she walked into a space for the first time and wanted to understand it completely.“Ann,” I said her name behind her.“Give me a second.”“You’re staring.”“I’m observing,” she said, still not moving, “there’s a difference.” She took two steps forward and looked into the sitting room. “Mira, this house is enormous.”“I know.”“Like genuinely enormous,” she turned to look at me, “how many rooms?”“I haven’t counted.”“You haven’t counted.” She stared at me, “You live here, and you haven’t counted the rooms.”“Ann, I just got here myself….”“How many staff?”“I don’t know exactly….”“You don’t know.” She turned back to look at the sitting room again, shaking her hea