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Chapter 1: The Night They Broke Me

Serena’s POV“You really outdid yourself this time, Serena. I have attended every Rhodes event for the past three years and this is by far the best one yet.”I smiled at David Chen, Rhodes CFO and head of partnerships, and raised my glass. “Three months of planning. Every detail matters.”“Three months.” He shook his head, laughing. “Killian is the luckiest man in this industry and he doesn’t even know it.”I laughed with him because it was easy and because I believed it. Killian knew. He always knew. He had told me once, very quietly, that the company would have been dead in the water without me. That I was the reason any of it worked. I had held that sentence close for three years like something precious.David moved on to greet someone else and I stood at the edge of the ballroom and looked at everything I had built.The white dahlias on every table. I had spent eleven days sourcing them from a farm in California because Killian had mentioned once, years ago, that his mother grew t

Chapter 2: Pieces out of place

Killian’s POVThe gala was still going.That was the part that didn’t make sense. Three hundred people still laughing, still drinking, still moving through a room that felt completely different to me now, like a house after a fire where everything looks the same but nothing is. The music was still playing. The champagne was still flowing. David Chen was telling a joke to a group of investors near the bar and they were laughing like the last twenty minutes had not happened at all.I stood at the edge of the dance floor with a drink I had not touched and watched the door Serena had been taken through. “Killian.” Vivian’s hand found my arm. “Stop looking at it.”“She said she didn’t do it.”“I know what you’re feeling right now. I know how much she meant to you. But you have seen the evidence with your own eyes. The wire transfers. The leaked documents. Three weeks of forensic accounting with her name on every single transaction.” She searched my face. “You did not imagine that. You did

Chapter 3: The girl in the mirror

Serena’s POVThe first thing I noticed was the ceiling.White. Smooth. A water stain in the far left corner shaped like nothing in particular. I stared at it for a long time before I understood that I was staring at it, that my eyes were open, that I was somewhere.I turned my head.Machines. Tubes running from my arm to something beeping steadily beside me. A window with pale winter light pressing through half open blinds. A chair pulled close to the bed with a blanket folded across it, creased in the specific way blankets got when someone had been sleeping under them for a long time.A hospital.I tried to sit up and the room swung sideways so violently I fell back against the pillow, gasping. My head was full of something thick and heavy. My mouth was dry as paper. I lay still and breathed and waited for the spinning to slow.Something was wrong with my hands.I raised them slowly and held them above my face. Stared at them. Turned them over. Pressed them together. They were smalle

Chapter 4: The Long game

Serena’s POV“I just want to say for the record,” Chloe said from the bed, watching me step into my heels, “that the Elena I know would rather eat glass than attend a work gala.”“People change.”“You keep saying that.” She sat up and crossed her legs. “Before the accident you wouldn’t even work at Dominic’s company. You said corporate events made you want to disappear into the wallpaper. You once left a dinner party early because someone started talking about quarterly projections.” She tilted her head. “Now you’re the one asking to go?”I picked up my earrings and put them in one at a time.The dress was deep green. Fitted. I had chosen it three weeks ago specifically for tonight. That was also not something Elena would have done. Elena apparently chose her outfits the morning of and changed her mind twice. I knew this because Dominic had mentioned it once with the particular fondness of someone describing a habit they loved. He had looked at me after he said it with that expression

Chapter 5: Ghosts Don’t Introduce Themselves

Serena’s POV“Have we met before?”Killian’s question didn't just hang in the air; it wrapped around my throat like a silk noose.For one terrible second, my body forgot its training. Forgot the name Elena Reyes. Forgot that I was supposed to be a woman with a plan, not a girl with a broken heart. My ribcage caved, a traitorous collapse, because Killian’s eyes—God, those eyes—used to look at me like I was the only thing holding the world together.Then Dominic’s hand settled at the small of my back. The heat of his palm was a bucket of ice water, snapping me back to the present.“My wife unfortunately only just developed an interest in corporate circles,” Dominic said, his tone easy, conversational, oblivious. “So I doubt it.” He glanced at me with a small, private smile. “Or do you know him, honey?”I swallowed, the question tasting like copper on my tongue.Did I know Killian Rhodes? Intimately. Historically. Painfully.How could I not know the exact shade of grey his eyes turned

Chapter 6: There’s a catch

Serena’s POVRain hammered against the windshield, a violent drumming that made my body shake with terror.My hands slipped on the leather steering wheel. I could smell the ozone, the wet pavement, and the metallic tang of fear rising in the back of my throat. I pressed the brakes.They screamed once—a high, mechanical shriek of protest—and then gave way. There was no resistance. No control.“No, please.”The car swerved. Metal shrieked against the guardrail. Glass burst inward like a shower of rain. And then, through the hiss of rainwater flooding the dying engine, I heard it.Footsteps.A tall, male shadow moved beyond the fractured spiderweb of the windshield. The flicker of a streetlamp caught his face; the face of the person I could never quite make out leaning over the hood.I reached out, my hand trembling, my vision fading into black.“Mummy, something is burning!”I jerked violently, my lungs pulling in a sharp, ragged breath that tasted of burnt dough instead of wet asphalt.

Chapter 7: The problem of Elena Reyes

Killian’s POV“You strike me as the kind of man who likes winning so much he forgets to ask whether the prize survives you.”The sentence replayed in my head with brutal, mocking clarity.Again.Again.Crack.The yellow tennis ball slammed against the concrete wall, ricocheting back with a vicious spin. I caught it on the sweet spot of the racket, sending it flying right back.Crack.“Then perhaps great men are less original than they think.”Crack.My shoulder burned. My wrist was a dull ache of overexertion, and my shirt was plastered to my back with sweat. The private rooftop court glowed beneath the weak Manhattan dawn, but I barely registered the skyline.I was chasing silence. I hadn’t found it in two weeks.“You’ve been out here almost two hours.”The voice broke my rhythm. I caught the ball against the strings, the sudden halt vibrating up my arm. I glanced toward the edge of the court.Marcus Webb stood there, arms folded over his broad chest. My head of security usually move

Chapter 8: Fleur Narcotique

Serena’s POVThe first time Killian showed me this building, we’d stood across the street in the freezing November rain while he grinned like he’d personally conquered Manhattan.“We own it,” he had said, laughing breathlessly as taxis splashed dirty water onto the curb beside us. “Jesus, Serena. We actually own the damn thing.”At twenty-seven, we had been exhausted, ambitious, and arrogant enough to believe sleep was optional. I had kissed him right there on the sidewalk, tasting rain and victory.Now, I sat across from that same building inside my car, my hands clenched around the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.One year later. One new face later. One funeral later.The silver lettering—RHODES INCORPORATED—gleamed against the glass tower like a taunt.My phone buzzed. I inhaled a sharp breath before answering. “Hi, Dom.”“You’re already there?” He asked. “The meeting doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.”“I like arriving early.”“I know. You nervous?”Nervous im

Chapter 9: Just a coincidence

Killian’s POVThe scent wouldn't leave the room.Long after Elena Reyes left, the sharp, intoxicating note of Fleur Narcotique remained suspended in the air.It was a phantom. A cruel, sensory hallucination.I stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass, my fingers digging into the fabric of my pockets. My chest felt tight, the skin stretched thin over a ribcage that suddenly felt too small for my lungs.I was losing my mind. There was no other logical explanation. I was a rational man, a man who built a multibillion-dollar empire on cold, unyielding data, and yet I was being unraveled by the posture, vocabulary, and fragrance of a married woman I had met exactly twice.I spent the rest of the afternoon crouched over my laptop like a man possessed. I blew past my three o’clock budget review. I ignored two calls from our European expansion directors. Instead, I was staring at a glowing screen, obsessively reading chemistry articles about perfume composition.I dragged a hand through my hair,

Chapter 10: Keep your enemies closer

Serena’s POVThe problem with pretending to be someone else was always feeling like you were on death row the moment you had to spend time with the people who actually knew them.I realized this approximately twelve minutes into drinks with Chloe Laurent.“…and then he had the audacity to tell me he wasn’t emotionally unavailable.” Chloe stared at me across the table like she had just witnessed the collapse of Western civilization. “Elena, do you know what that man actually said to me?”I blinked.Because I had stopped listening somewhere at some point. My mind was still trapped in that boardroom, haunted by the memory of Killian’s grey eyes cracking wide with suspicion.“…what?” I offered weakly.Chloe’s mouth dropped open. She slowly set her cocktail down. “Oh my God.”“What?”“You weren’t listening.”“No, I was.”“You absolutely were not. You have that face.”I frowned, adjusting the collar of my blouse. “What face?”Chloe pointed dramatically at me, her red-manicured finger waveri

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