Semua Bab How To Wreck An Empire: Bab 1 - Bab 9

I woke up already listening for footsteps.The bed was too soft. The sheets were too clean. The silence was the kind that existed in houses where no one worried about being heard. For a few seconds I laid still, waiting to see if it would feel like safety.It didn’t. It felt like a countdown. I sat up. The short black slip I’d slept in had ridden high on my thighs. I didn’t pull it down. In the mirror across the room I looked exactly like what I needed them to see for a little while longer—soft, slightly lost—except my eyes were already clear.Calculation had settled in before the sleep even left my body. I was inside the house. That was the only fact that mattered.I showered in the marble-tiled bathroom, used products that looked like they cost more than my weekly grocery budget, and chose my clothes with deliberate care. Another short dress—burgundy. Thin straps. No bra. A hem high enough to make a point without trying too hard.I left my hair down and kept my expression soft. Not

I was awake before the rest of the house, staring at the ceiling.For a few minutes I wondered if anyone had heard me last night.The thought kept me still longer than I wanted to admit.After Owen kissed me I had gone back to my room determined to shut the whole thing down. Instead I had spent hours replaying it—the heat of his hand at my waist, the way his lips had moved against mine, the soft, broken sound he made when I kissed him back. My body had remembered him too easily. It wanted more.I hated that.I had tried to ignore it at first. Then I gave up and reached for the small rose toy I kept in the bottom of my bag. The first orgasm had been quick and angry, hips lifting off the mattress while I bit the inside of my cheek to stay quiet. The second had been slower, meaner; I held the toy harder against my clit and let the images come—Owen’s mouth, the lust in his eyes, the weight of him, the way he had looked at me like he still thought he could have me. By the third time I was

The car was quiet.I sat in the back seat with my bag on my lap and my hands folded over it, staring at the dark road without really seeing it. The driver didn’t speak. Neither did I. The only sound was the low hum of the engine and the occasional soft click of the indicator.My body still felt him.Not in a romantic way. Not in a soft, lingering way. It was physical and crude—the exact pressure of Owen’s cock against my palm, the way it had jumped when I stroked him, the rough sound he made when I told him we should take it slow. My fingers still remembered the thickness of him. My wrist still remembered the heat.I shifted in the seat.A part of my brain registered the slickness between my thighs, but I refused to look at it directly. I told myself it was nothing. A physical reaction. A leftover. Something that would fade by the time I reached the estate.It didn’t.By the time the car pulled through the gates and stopped in front of the house, the awareness had sharpened into somet

By Wednesday the office had settled into a new rhythm around me.Jakob no longer treated me like someone temporary. He didn’t announce the change. He simply began including me in shorter, sharper conversations that used to happen without me in the room. A question about a timeline. A quiet request for my read on a junior analyst’s proposal. A folder left on my desk with no instruction beyond the expectation that I would already understand what he wanted from it.I did the work cleanly. I kept my answers short. I did not reach for more than he offered.After the minor inconsistency he had noticed on Monday, I moved with greater care. No more adjustments inside the system for now. The first friction had been enough to draw his eye which meant that the system was not as blind as I needed it to be. Anything louder would be stupid. Instead I returned to the slower work—small, spaced purchases through the hidden account, each one modest enough to disappear into ordinary market movement. Ano