Chapter: Chapter 74CHAPTER 74SELINA POV — The OpeningI had stopped counting the days and started to measure time by the change in the guards rotation and the time my food was brought to me.Routine kept the panic contained and I was able to able to function.As long as I'm alive, I told myself, there's still a chance.I had also been watching covertly. I'd learned early that obvious observation got me more scrutiny, placed the guards on alert which gave me with less room to work. So I watched in sideways and stolen glances rather than long stares or looks.I knew which guards were disciplined and which weren't. The younger one with the mohawk hair checked his phone every time he thought no one was looking. The muscular guard stepped out for cigarettes at the same interval like clockwork. One of them talked too much to the others, filling silence out of nervous habit, which meant his attention split constantly between conversation and duty.And then there was Sefu.He wouldn’t hold my gaze. Discomfort
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 73CHAPTER 73DAMIEN POV I had spent the better part of a day suspecting the wrong man and it was almost impossible to say that out loud.The operations room had thinned out around us. I had the immigration records open on the screen beside me and a travel history that placed him on another continent for every single date that mattered.He hadn't done any of it. I closed the file and looked at him. "I was wrong about you."I didn't dress it up further than that. Cain didn't strike me as a man who needed cushioning. "The evidence pointed at you. I followed it. I was wrong, and I don't have time to be precious about admitting that."He held my gaze for a moment. "If our positions were reversed," he said, "I'd have done the same thing."Cain was a man who understood more than most, the cutthroat nature of our world. "I need your help," I said."You have investigators," he answered."Investigators are useful for tracing money and reading documents. They don’t understand or the world he ope
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 72CHAPTER 72DEREK POVMy office had stopped looking like an office somewhere around midnight. Now it looked where someone was having a breakdown. Documents covered every flat surface and three laptops open to different windows of the same investigation.Nobody had said much in the last hour. There wasn't energy left for conversation. We'd given up chasing symptoms my lawsuit, Caleb's fraud, the tabloid stories and started digging for whatever sat underneath all of it. So far, every thread circled back to one name. Wren Castillo. So we went began the hunt.Dean had dragged in a whiteboard from somewhere and was building a single timeline. I was halfway through a registry search when Caleb went quiet in a way that made me look up."I never signed this," he said.I crossed the room and read over his shoulder. His name was on a company document I'd never heard him mention. It got worse, he was also listed as director, not investor. He checked the incorporation date twice, like exhaustion
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 71CHAPTER 71KAYDEN POV I closed the door quietly behind me. There was a frown on my face. Why didn’t see the logic in what I was proposing? I thought she was smarter than this! I clenched my fist and slowly released them.I walked the corridor mulling why the planned failed. It wasn’t supposed to, after all, I had built the entire framework around her surveillance reports. How loyal she was, how lonely and sometimes unnecessarily kind she was to strangers. The strategy should have worked. It hadn't.Cain had no idea how stubborn she was or could be. I had never met her before the night my men brought her in. That was the truth nobody in this building understood, not even Wren.I didn't know Selina Whitmore, I only knew a file that contained photographs taken across eight months, several surveillance transcripts, financial records connecting her to the Foundation. A psychological profile assembled from pieces of conversations picked up during survelliance.She meant nothing to asides
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 70Chapter 70Selina POVI sat down on the bed, slowly rubbing my stomach as my attention was held by a gown laid out on the bed. I stared at it, it was a latest release from some designer line I couldn’t quite remember. There was also some vitamins on the table besides me with a bottle of water. I looked at my stomach, sighed and reluctantly took the medicine.I never felt so angry for doing what was right for myself. The door opened and a guard came into the room while his counterpart stood at the door. They were beginning to relax their vigilance. Before now, two of them entered to ensure I didn’t do anything unruly. They obviously concluded I wasn’t a threat and I wasn’t going to try anything. They were right…for now.He dropped the tray and as he was about to leave. I asked a question. “Where is Sefu? I haven’t seen him around.” He paused for a second too long before he glanced at the second guard. They exchanged a look too quickly for me to understand what was passed and he nodded
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 69CHAPTER 69Kain POVI had been in Damien's company for exactly eleven minutes and nothing about it made sense yet.The operations room was serious in the way that only rooms containing real problems ever were. There were photographs pinned to boards with the particular organization of people who had been working without sleep. I had walked in half-expecting an explanation that would resolve itself quickly — some administrative confusion, a security breach in the building, something that would allow me to be upstairs and horizontal within the hour.Instead, I was sitting at a table watching a man I considered one of my closest friends look at me like he was still deciding something."Damien." I kept my voice even. "Whatever you think happened, I've been out of the country for four weeks. Marcus pulled the records. You've seen the passport.""I've seen them," he said."Then what are we doing?"He didn't answer immediately. He reached across the table and placed a photograph face-down in
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Too Late: She Is Gone With Your Baby
Three years into a contract marriage, Elena Voss had made peace with the truth: Adrian would never truly choose her. So when Vivian returned — beautiful, ambitious, and everything Elena feared — and Adrian carried that woman to the hospital while Elena quietly dressed her own burns alone, Elena made a decision. She would be the one to walk away first.
She signed the divorce papers. Gave up nearly everything. Booked a flight to somewhere Adrian would never find her.
She never made it to the airport.
When Elena wakes up, she doesn't know her name, her past, or the man who has apparently been tearing apart an entire city looking for her. What she does know is the tiny heartbeat she's carrying, the worn tan line on her ring finger, and the damaged document in her bag that tells her she once fled an unhappy marriage to protect her child.
Five years later, Elena renamed Aria is a celebrated musician on a national tour, a mother to a little boy who asks for a father with heartbreaking persistence, and almost a wife. Julian's ring is on her finger. The wedding date is set. Her life, rebuilt from nothing, is finally whole.
Then the tour brings her to Adrian's city.
He sees her across a crowded room and loses every rational thought he has. She looks at him the way you look at a stranger and it nearly breaks him. Because Adrian has spent five years believing she was dead. He has spent five years knowing, too late, that he loved her. And now she is here, wearing another man's engagement ring, raising a child who has his eyes, and she does not remember him at all.
He acts like a man losing his mind. He probably is.
Read
Chapter: Chapter 27Chapter 27ARIAI was coming out of the small grocery store two streets from the hotel with Eli's hand in mine and a paper bag of fruit balanced against my hip when I saw her standing by the entrance.Ava.She was not dressed for coincidence. She was standing too still, too deliberately positioned near the door, the kind of waiting that told you a person had been waiting specifically for you and not for anything else."Aria Vale," she said, and her voice had none of the warmth I had seen in the park that day with Julian. "Or should I say Aria. I don't actually know what to call you.""Excuse me?" I said, my grip on Eli's hand tightening slightly without my deciding to do it."I think we should talk," she said, stepping closer. "Woman to woman."Eli looked up at her, then at me, his small face doing the thing it did when he sensed adults behaving strangely around him."Mum, who's this?""Nobody, sweetheart," I said. "Go stand by the window for a second, okay? Look at the puppies in the
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 26Chapter 26JULIAN POVSomething had shifted in her and I did not know what.She had been quiet since the day I ran into Ava in the park, quiet in a specific way that I had learned to recognize over five years, the kind of quiet that meant she was holding something and deciding whether to hand it to me or keep carrying it herself.I gave her the space I usually gave her. That had always worked before. Aria needed time to arrange her own thoughts before she could speak them, and pushing only made the process longer, not shorter.But three more days passed and the quiet did not lift.I found her in the dressing room after the Thursday performance, sitting in front of the mirror with her violin still in her lap, not changing yet, staring at her own reflection like she was trying to find an answer in it."Hey," I said, closing the door behind me. "You played beautifully tonight.""Thank you," she said, but it came out distant.I sat in the chair beside her."Aria. Talk to me."She was quie
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 25Chapter 25ARIAI told myself it was nothing for three days.It was a reasonable thing to tell myself. Julian had a life before me, a full life, with relationships and history that had nothing to do with the woman he found half-conscious and nameless in a hospital bed. It would have been strange if he didn't. I had no claim on the years before I existed to him as anyone at all.But the stone stayed where it was, and on the fourth day, while Julian was at a meeting with the venue about the final performance logistics and Eli was occupied with his tablet under the stage manager's supervision, I found myself in our hotel room going through a box of his things.I was not looking for anything specific. I told myself that too.The box had come with us from city to city for the length of the tour, a small archive box of business files and old photographs Julian kept for sentimental reasons, things he sometimes pulled out to show Eli, university photos, early agency photos, the small artifact
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 24Chapter 24JULIANI had Eli's hand in mine and a bag of his favourite crackers from the kiosk in the other when I heard my name called from across the path."Julian? Julian Hale?"I turned. A woman was walking toward us quickly, her face breaking into the kind of surprised smile reserved for people you have not seen in years and did not expect to see again.Ava.It took me a second to place her fully, the years had changed her hair, her style, but the face underneath all of it was the same. We had dated for almost a year, a long time ago, before any of this, before Elena, before any of what my life had become."I don't believe it," she said, stopping in front of us, eyes moving from me to Eli and back. "It's actually you.""Ava." I said her name carefully, the surprise genuine. "It's been a long time.""Years," she agreed, laughing a little. "You look exactly the same. Older, but the same." Her eyes dropped to Eli. "And who is this?""This is Eli," I said. "A friend's son."Eli looked
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 23Chapter 23Vivian had said as much. My mother had said something similar, in the way my mother said things, with less gentleness and more specific instruction about what I ought to do instead.I picked up my phone and put it down again.Julian had threatened to call the police and he had meant it and he had the standing to follow through. I had grabbed Elena's wrist at a public event and it was still circulating online and the narrative was not flattering. Another incident would move from gossip to something with legal weight.I needed to be rational.I was going to be rational.Being rational lasted until Saturday afternoon.I had gone to the park near my building because it was a thing my doctor had suggested in a way that implied I was not managing stress adequately, and I was trying to demonstrate to myself that I could follow reasonable advice.I had been walking for fifteen minutes when I heard him."If you go that way, the ducks get angry. I found that out already."I stopped.
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: Chapter 22Chapter 22ARIAThe Monday reception was where it happened.I had not wanted to attend and Julian had said it was professionally important and I had agreed and regretted agreeing for the full hour before we arrived. It was a smaller gathering, perhaps thirty people, the kind of event where distance was not available as a strategy.Adrian found me near the windows.He was different that evening. Something slightly less controlled about the edges of him. He had come from somewhere else before this, I thought, some other engagement, and whatever composure management he usually applied had worn thin.He did not start with pleasantries."I want to ask you something," he said."You can ask," I said. "I reserve the right not to answer."Something almost like humor moved across his face. Brief and then gone."Before Elena disappeared," he said, keeping his voice low, "she was injured. Her hand." He looked at my hands where they rested around my glass. "A burn. The back of her right hand. It w
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
LOGIN
