Chapter 126

DOMINIC I woke to the soft weight of Valerie’s body against my side and the sight of her face turned toward me on the pillow. Her lips were still slightly swollen, her cheeks faintly flushed, hair a messy halo across the sheets. The most beautiful properly fucked face I had ever seen. Something tight and possessive loosened in my chest at the sight, a quiet unraveling I had stopped trying to fight sometime in the dark hours after the party. I leaned in and pressed a slow kiss to her forehead, breathing her in for a second longer than necessary, the faint scent of her skin, the residual of everything we had done, then slipped out of bed without waking her. She shifted once, a soft sound escaping her throat, but did not open her eyes. I stood there longer than I should have, watching the rise and fall of her breathing, before I forced myself to turn away.I made my way back to my room and hopped in the shower, the hot water sluicing away the last traces of the night, the careful sh

Chapter 127

DOMINIC The words hit me like a physical blow.“I want a divorce.”I stared at her like she was a totally different person. Something in my chest daggered at my heart, then daggered again, like a piece of me was being struck over and over by the same precise fist. I had expected anger. I had expected her to yell about the press, about Calvin, about the blood still faintly staining the edges of my knuckles. I had expected the usual storm of accusations about control and temper and the way I handled threats to what was mine. I had not expected divorce. The sentence sat between us like a blade that had already drawn blood and was simply waiting to see how deep it would go.“Why?” My voice came out rougher than I intended, stripped of the careful polish I used in boardrooms and negotiations.“The contract no longer serves its purpose.” She crossed her arms, chin high, the posture of someone who had already decided the conversation’s ending. “You already have the board. The succession is

Chapter 128

MADELINE I had had enough of the bullshit.Enough of watching Dominic look at Valerie like she was the only woman left on the planet. Enough of being dismissed, threatened, and told I was nothing compared to her.Spoken with his hand around my throat as if the words needed physical weight to hurt harder. Enough of waiting for people to remember I was the one who had always belonged next to Dominic, the one who had shaped herself into the exact shape his life required while that bitch stumbled into it by an unfortunate one night stand and a fucking contract. If Dominic refused to see reason, then I would simply remove the reason. The solution had always been simpler than I had allowed myself to admit. Cut out the variable that distorted everything else, and the equation returned to the form I had spent years perfecting.Ethan was the softest target left.I found him at the small café he still used when he wanted to pretend he lived a normal life, the kind of place with mismatched cha

Chapter 129

VALERIE Julian’s text had been short and almost excited.Julian: Come to the old pier warehouse district. Bay 14. I want you to see what your money is actually building. You’ll feel better once you do.I almost didn’t go. The last few days had left me raw, because honestly the past few days had me... uncomfortable. Dominic’s refusal to give me the divorce, the marks he had left on my skin that still ached when I moved the wrong way, the way he looked at me and agreed to do something only to have deceived me. I kept replaying the arguments, the moments when his control slipped into something darker, the way my body had responded even when my mind screamed that I needed out. Sleep had been fragmented. Yet the chance to see proof that Julian wasn’t gambling everything away again pulled me out of the room again. Nothing else would've but that. I needed one thing in my life to be exactly what it claimed to be. Something honest. Something I could point to and say, at least this is real.

Chapter 130

ETHAN The hospital waiting room smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee. I had been pacing the same stretch of linoleum for almost an hour, hands shoved in my pockets so no one would see them shaking. Every time the double doors to the treatment area swung open I stopped mid step, heart slamming against my ribs, only to watch a nurse walk past without looking at us. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright, the kind of light that made everything look sick. Somewhere down the hall a machine beeped in a slow, relentless rhythm. I counted the steps from the vending machine to the window and back again, then started over, because if I stopped moving I was going to start remembering the warehouse the way Valerie’s face had gone slack, the zip ties cutting into her wrists, the blood on Madeline’s chest, the controller skittering across the concrete.If I hadn't been there they would all have blown up. Dominic stood near the window like a statue someone had dropped there. His

Chapter 131

VALERIE The next few days passed in a strange, muted blur.I was discharged from the hospital with a clean bill of health and a list of soft food recommendations I ignored the moment the nurse turned her back. The bruises on my wrists had faded to yellow green shadows. The ache in my shoulders from the zip ties had settled into something dull and manageable. Physically I was fine. Everything else felt like it had been hollowed out and left to echo.The manor felt larger than it ever had. Rooms that used to pulse with tension now sat quiet and cavernous. Dominic and I moved around each other like polite ghosts. We exchanged the bare minimum good morning, Hawthorne left the updated security schedule on the counter. Nothing more. No arguments. No charged silences that ended in his hands on my skin. Just the careful distance of two people who had run out of ways to hurt each other without finishing the job. The silence was heavy, but it was also the only thing keeping me from falling