Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 71 - Chapitre 80

Chapter 71I knew it was a trap before I took the first step.I went anyway.The message was still on my screen when I moved. *You're running out of time.* The photograph of my father's section of the maintenance wing. And underneath both of those things, the weight of what I knew from my first life. What happened when I waited? What it looked like when I did nothing and believed the people around me would handle it.My parents' jobs are gone. Their savings burned through. A mountain road in the dark.I was through the door to the lower levels before rational thought had a chance to catch up with my legs.The maintenance wing was wrong immediately.Too quiet. Half the overhead lighting was off in a section that was always fully lit during evening hours. No staff movement, no sound from the equipment storage rooms, no low hum of anyone working late.I slowed down.Every instinct I had was telling me to stop. To call Dante. To go back and do this properly.I kept moving because I hadn'

Chapter 73I was moving before I'd decided to move.The photo was still on my screen. My father, walking alone in the maintenance corridor, the timestamp reading recent enough to matter. And below it the message that had turned something cold and deliberate in my chest into something that didn't calculate anymore.Next time, we won't miss him.I was through my door and into the hallway before the rational part of my brain caught up with my legs to tell me this was probably what they wanted. I already knew that. I went anyway because knowing a thing was a trap and being able to stop yourself walking into it were two completely different skills and I had apparently reached the limit of the second one.Down the stairs. The past two security staff who said my name. Through the corridor that connected the main house to the service wing.The maintenance section was louder than it should have been at this hour. Multiple people working, metal on metal, voices overlapping.I stood in the entra

Chapter 75I knew it was a trap before I took the second step into the east corridor.I went in anyway.The corridor was too quiet in the specific way that spaces went quiet when someone had cleared them deliberately rather than because nothing was happening. No ambient noise from other parts of the building is bleeding through. No distant voices or footsteps or the hum of the ventilation system doing its ordinary work. Just the particular silence of a space that had been prepared.I slowed my pace but didn't stop.If the internal source had been watching my responses to threats against my father, they were building a profile. What I did when afraid. What I did when angry. How I moved under pressure.The way to disrupt a profile was to do something unexpected.So instead of retreating or calling Dante, I kept walking. Slowly. With the deliberate patience of someone who had decided they were going to understand the shape of what was in front of them before reacting to it.The lights o

Chapter 77The medical wing had the particular smell of places that existed for emergencies. Antiseptic and something underneath it that was harder to name. The smell of a space that had been built for the worst moments and had seen enough of them to carry it in the walls.I stood outside my father's room and watched the door and didn't let myself think about my first life. About watching from a back seat and not being able to reach anyone and the cold that came when there was nothing left to fight against.He was alive. The doctor had said it clearly. Stable.I kept having to remind myself of that because the image of the blood on his shirt kept replacing it.Matthias came to stand beside me.He'd been on calls for the last forty minutes. I'd heard the quality of them through the corridor even at low volume. Not the measured CEO voice. Something colder and more direct, the voice of someone who had decided that careful management of the situation had reached its limit, and what came n

Chapter 79 “I want you to suck it,” he whispered, voice low and rough, as he shoved his boxers down his thighs. I nodded, heat flooding my cheeks. A slow, satisfied smile curved his mouth. “You are a very obedient girl,” he murmured, stepping closer until his hips were level with my face. The scent of him, skin and salt and pure male, hit me hard. He didn’t ease in. He took. One hand fisted in my hair as he pushed forward, sliding thick and heavy across my tongue. I wrapped my lips around him, pressing just enough, letting my tongue swirl over the head the way I knew would make him lose control. A deep growl rumbled out of his chest, vibrating through me. I looked up at him through my lashes and something raw and electric passed between us. For once, I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow or yesterday or the thousand reasons this was insane. There was only the weight of him on my tongue, the way my jaw ached, the way his fingers tightened in my hair like he was anchoring himself to ear