جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 89

CIERRA’S POVMy first time walking into this gala, somewhere I thought I’d never be, somewhere I thought I’d never walk into, even while I was still with Zach. Back then, events like this were completely out of my reach, an entirely different world reserved for a class of people I could only watch from afar.And now, I was here, solely because of how smartly I had handled the situation back at the mansion. I had been able to save Miles and myself from the massive mess we were about to get into while still managing to bend the entire narrative in my favor. Against all the odds stacked against me, my quick thinking had paid off, and now I was actually here, standing right in the center of it all.My eyes moved around the grand gala hall, taking in every lavish detail. I could tell the champagne glasses were dipped in gold from the way I saw them glinting beneath the warm, oversized chandeliers hanging high from the ceiling. The air smelled faintly of expensive perfume, aged wine, and un

ANABEL'S POV “I get your point,” Dmitri said, his voice calm and steady, though something in his tone suggested he’d already anticipated exactly how I’d react to whatever he was about to say next. “I’d probably feel the same way if I were standing in your shoes right now. But I know that in the little time we actually spent together before all of this came out, you enjoyed my company just as much as I enjoyed yours. There’s still so much I don’t know about you, and honestly, I want to change that. I’m not saying we need to become best friends at work. No, there should still be limits, still some level of professionalism between us. That’s exactly why I got your number in the first place, hoping that at least over text, you wouldn’t feel the need to talk to me like I’m your boss. I’ve told you many times to put all that aside when we’re not in the office or talking about anything official. But that’s clearly not working either. You’re so stiff around me now, even outside the office, e

DMITRI’S POVI hadn’t planned on saying anything at first. If it had been entirely up to me, I would have simply excused myself and walked away the moment things started tensing up between Anabel and her husband, or soon-to-be ex-husband—whatever the correct term was at this exact point in their unraveling marriage. It wasn’t my place to insert myself into something so personal, something that had clearly been building between the two of them long before tonight, long before I’d ever entered the picture. But the moment she reached out and tugged lightly on my sleeve, silently asking me to stay without saying a single word, I’d decided to simply stand quietly beside her instead, present but uninvolved, a silent buffer rather than an active participant in whatever was unfolding.But now, this woman had walked up out of nowhere and opened with that particular word, aimed squarely at Anabel, and something about the sheer boldness of it shifted my earlier resolve to stay out of things enti

DMITRI’S POVI watched both their faces as realization slowly kicked in over what I’d just said. This was what happened when someone operated entirely on confidence and absolutely no actual thought behind it. If they’d paused even for a moment to consider things properly before walking over here, they wouldn’t have ended up looking quite this foolish in front of me.“Or are you going to say I rented my way in here too?” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.They both fell silent, the truth of it settling heavily over them, the realization that their entire assumption had been built on nothing but careless arrogance. And I wasn’t finished yet.“Arthur really needs to sit the two of you down properly,” I added. “Does he even know what’s going on between you both?”Their expressions hardened instantly, anger and surprise tangled together.“How do you know Grandfather?” Miles demanded, then, without waiting for an answer, spun toward Anabel instead. “And you, have you been going aroun

MILES’ POVDmitri climbed the steps to the stage with the same unhurried, easy confidence he’d carried all night, and the entire hall erupted into applause around him, a wall of sound that seemed to press directly against my chest. I stood frozen, my mind struggling to catch up with what my eyes were telling me, the pieces refusing to settle into any shape that made sense.The chairman of Ambercaz. The man Cierra and I had spent the last several minutes tearing apart, mocking, calling broke, calling nothing, an empty barrel with all talk and no substance. And he’d stood there, taking every single insult without a single flicker of retaliation, without once revealing the truth that would have silenced us instantly.He’d had the perfect opportunity, right there in front of us, to shut us both down with a single sentence. Instead, he’d let us keep talking, kept letting us dig ourselves deeper, and now, standing on that stage in front of the entire room, he’d found an infinitely more deva