All Chapters of The Enemy Alpha's Beta | MM Romance | 18+ : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The restaurant reopened faster than anyone expected, though the lingering scent of fresh plaster and harsh industrial paint couldn't entirely erase the ghost of crushed glass and cold terror.Ethan stood in the doorway on the first morning back, staring at the freshly painted walls, the new tables arranged in the exact same layout his father had insisted on for twenty years, the front window replaced without a single crack left to remind anyone of what had happened there. The morning light filtered through the clean glass, bright and unbothered, casting long shadows across the spotless floorboards. He turned slowly, taking it all in, and something in his chest tightened painfully, a slow, suffocating weight pressing against his ribs."This shouldn't have been possible," he said quietly, mostly to himself.His mother stood beside him, a stack of paperwork clutched tightly against her ribs, her eyes red-rimmed but dry now, exhaustion carved deep into every l

Ethan stared at the screen a second too long before finally sliding his thumb across it, rising from the chair and stepping quietly out into the corridor, the heavy door clicking shut softly behind him.He pressed the phone to his ear, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Hello?"There was a small delay, the faint hollow static of a call traveling across an ocean, and then a voice — familiar in a way that ached, older now, roughened by years and distance, but unmistakably his brother's."Ethan." A pause, heavy with something Ethan couldn't quite name yet. "It's me."Ethan's throat tightened instantly, old, complicated feelings rising up all at once — relief and resentment tangled so closely together he couldn't separate one from the other. He leaned back against the cool corridor wall, the fluorescent lights humming faintly overhead in the empty hallway."I know it's you," he said, quieter than he meant to. "I still recognize your voice. Even after — how long has it been now?""Too

The waiting room on the sixth floor smelled like burnt coffee. The same sterile combination Asher had grown to associate with every worst hour of his life over the past several weeks. He sat hunched forward in one of the stiff plastic chairs, elbows braced on his knees, watching the clock above the nurses' station tick forward in slow increments.7:14.The operation had started at seven. Nobody had told him how long it was supposed to take.Ethan sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, a paper cup of hospital coffee going cold and untouched in his hands. He hadn't said much in the last hour. Neither of them had. Every breath felt borrowed, heavy with the terrifying awareness that a few doors down, a team of strangers held his mother’s life in their hands, paring away at mortality with cold, precise steel.Leo paced a slow, restless circuit near the window, his usually pressed suit rumpled at the collar, his phone clutched in one hand even though he hadn't loo

"You can't keep doing this to yourself, Ash," Ethan said, his voice gentle but laced with an unyielding firmness that cut straight through the heavy fog in Asher's mind. He stepped out in front of him, catching Asher firmly by the upper arm before he could take another aimless step down the cold hospital corridor. "Look at you. You haven't slept in three days, you're barely eating, and you're carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. Your mom's finally stable, Ash. The doctors said so themselves. You need to breathe. You need to step away for just a few hours and go back to actually living, even if it feels fake at first.""How am I supposed to do that, Ethan?" Asher asked, a bitter, bone-deep exhaustion bleeding into every single word. He dragged a hand down his face, his skin pale and clammy under the flickering fluorescent lights. "How do I just walk back into a lecture hall, sit at a desk, and pretend like my whole life isn't tearing apart at the seams? Like none

Asher's hands weren't quite steady as he broke the heavy burgundy wax seal, a sudden, cold tremor running straight through his fingers. Some bone-deep part of him was already dreading whatever nightmare waited inside before he’d even unfolded the thick, cream-colored cardstock. The paper felt heavy, smooth, and unforgiving between his trembling hands.The calligraphic silver ink practically gleamed under the warm light of the mahogany desk lamp, each stroke razor-sharp and agonizingly deliberate:The Cross Family requests the pleasure of your company at the Annual Founder's Gala, honoring Dominic Cross.A date. A time. An address in the most secluded, ultra-wealthy enclave of the city—an estate he didn't recognize, though the sheer weight and gold-embossed texture of the paper alone told him it belonged somewhere far more expensive and dangerous than anywhere he had ever set foot in his entire life.His stomach turned over, a sharp wave of nausea