جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

DMITRI’S POVRemembering something like that hurt every single time, without fail, no matter how many years had passed. It felt like a small, deliberate punishment handed down from somewhere far above me, a quiet penance for the harm I’d caused that day, one I was never meant to fully put down.I knew what my closest friends would say if they were sitting here with me right now because they’d said it so many times over the years that I could recite it word for word. It wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid. There was no way I could have known something like that would happen. I’d honestly tried, more than once, to believe every word of comfort the people who knew the full story had offered me. But something deep inside me, some stubborn, unshakable part of my conscience, refused to accept it. No matter how many kind words people used to soften the truth, I always believed I was the one who had caused it.If I had just listened to my mother’s warning that night, none of this would have hap

MILES’ POVGrandfather’s office always had a particular smell to it, old leather and expensive cigars, a scent that had settled permanently into the walls over decades of use. I sat across from him at his desk, half listening as he ran through the quarterly numbers, half wondering how long it would take before I could steer the conversation somewhere useful. “Our shipping division underperformed again this quarter,” he said, sliding a folder toward me. “I want a full breakdown by Friday. If we’re bleeding money on logistics, I want to know exactly where.” “I’ll have it ready,” I said, nodding, though my mind wasn’t entirely on shipping margins. We spent the better part of an hour going back and forth over the business, discussing projections, cost-cutting measures, and a handful of contracts that needed to be renegotiated before the end of the quarter. It was the kind of conversation we’d had a hundred times before, comfortable in its familiarity, and for a while it almost felt lik

CIERRA’S POVI settled deeper into Roman’s arms, my cheek resting against the warm expanse of his chest as I listened to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear. His mansion wasn’t nearly as extravagant as Miles’s. It was smaller, more understated in every way that actually mattered to people who cared about that sort of thing. Still, there was something about the quiet of this room that I found myself craving more often than I probably should have admitted, even to myself.“You’re distracted tonight,” Roman said, his fingers trailing lazily along my shoulder, tracing idle patterns against my skin.“Just thinking,” I said, tilting my head up to look at him. “About the Black Tier Gala coming up. Have you heard about it?”Something shifted across his face, and a small, pleased smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.“Heard about it? I actually got an invitation this year.”I sat up slightly, genuinely surprised.“You did? That’s incredible, Roman. How?”“The casino had an exc

ANABEL’S POVI sat cross-legged on Chloe’s bed, picking at a loose thread on the comforter while I waited for her to finish up in the shower. The sound of running water filtered faintly through the cracked bathroom door. I’d been bursting to tell her everything since the moment it happened, and the whole drive over here I’d rehearsed exactly how I wanted to say it. Now that I was actually sitting here waiting, all that rehearsed calm had mostly evaporated into restless energy.“Hurry up in there,” I called out, loud enough for her to hear over the water. “I have actual news, Chloe.”“You’ve been saying that since you walked in the door,” she called back, her voice slightly muffled. “It can wait two more minutes.”“It’s been like fifteen minutes already.”“Then it can wait one more.”I huffed and flopped back against her pillows, staring up at the ceiling while I waited. My mind kept circling back to the moment I still hadn’t fully processed. The water finally shut off a moment later,

ANABEL'S POV"Mind if I join?" he said, stepping into the elevator just as the doors began sliding shut, his voice easy, casual, like the question was barely worth asking at all. The second it left his mouth, though, it struck me as strangely funny, almost cringeworthy in its own small way. It wasn't as though I could have stopped him even if I'd wanted to; the doors hadn't closed yet, and he'd clearly already decided he was getting in regardless of what I said back.I'd genuinely wanted to see him again before I left for the day, some small, stubborn hope I hadn't quite managed to shake, sitting quietly in the back of my mind through every folder I'd filed and every hallway I'd walked down. But I never expected it to actually happen like this, caught off guard in an elevator neither of us had planned on sharing at exactly this moment. It felt like every single time our paths crossed, it happened in the exact instant I least expected it, some strange, recurring pattern that was gettin