LOGINđ€ Alexandra đ€âSame time next week,â Iâd said, like it was simple, like it was just a sentence and not the kind of promise that rearranges something quietly in your chest when you make it.Jacob had smiled at me the way heâd been smiling at me all day the one that didnât have any performance behind it, the one I remembered from before everything and then heâd crouched down to say goodbye to each of the kids individually, and Iâd stood there watching him do it and trying very hard not to feel every single thing I was currently feeling.My phone buzzed in my pocket.I pulled it out, half expecting Jen, half expecting a Saito update, and saw Papaâs name on the screen instead.{I found Stella.}Three words. I read them twice, standing in the golden late-afternoon light of a park where my children had just watched their father accidentally kiss me and announced it to the entire surrounding area, and felt the day split cleanly in half the soft, uncomplicated half that was ending, and the
đ€ Alexandra đ€I want his lips on mine. The thought arrived completely uninvited, sitting itself down in the middle of my brain with the casual confidence of something that belonged there, while I stood in the doorway watching Jacob crouch down and kiss each of my babies on the forehead, one after the other, Loveth first, then Freddy, then Dean, then Lilly, who grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him back on the nose before he could straighten up.God, Lex. Get your head out of the gutter.I crossed my arms and made my face do something neutral while Jacob stood up, and the kids swarmed around him the way theyâd been doing all week like gravity had simply reassigned itself the moment he came back into their orbit, and everything now naturally tilted in his direction without asking anyoneâs permission first.âHave fun, guys,â I said, already stepping back toward the door, already constructing the next three hours in my head files, calls, the Saito update Papa had promised me b
đ€ Jacob đ€The second Jackâs âUnderstood, bossâ landed in the air between us, something else landed right alongside it something I hadnât let myself think about until exactly this moment, maybe because the Grey family revelation had shoved everything else clean out of my head the moment it hit.I stood there with my jacket half on and my car keys in my hand, and let the full shape of what I was now holding settle into place.My grandparents. My parents. All of them, apparently, moving freely through the world while Iâd spent five years visiting an empty stage set and believing I was maintaining a relationship and even felt guilty for keeping g them there. All of them knowing exactly where Stella was and what she was doing and choosing, month after month after careful month, to perform confusion and frailty for my benefit while she used everything the Grey name had ever stood for to build something I hadnât even known existed until last week.And they were just out there. Right now. S
đ€ Jacob đ€One full week. Seven days of round-the-clock digging, seven days of Jack and my new team running down every lead, every shell company, every ghost address that Stellaâs name had ever been attached to and nothing. She was everywhere in the paperwork and nowhere in the world. The woman had built herself a life so thoroughly off the visible grid that even people whose entire profession was finding the unfindable were coming back empty-handed.The fake Stella in Lexâs custody still hadnât woken up. Which meant the one person physically within our reach, the one person who could theoretically give us a room number, a city, a single concrete detail about where the real Stella was operating from, was still lying in a hospital bed doing absolutely nothing useful for anyone.Iâd spent the week at the Airbnb Jack had extended indefinitely, working through files during the day and driving to see the kids every evening, which was the only part of any given twenty-four hours that felt
đ€ Jacob đ€She took my home from me.Iâd said it to Lex on the phone before I fully understood how true it was, and now, sitting alone in an Airbnb that wasnât mine with a folder full of my fatherâs betrayal still open on the table in front of me, I understood it completely.Stella hadnât just dismantled the Grey family business. Sheâd used the Fisher-Hale familyâs own power to do it Lexâs family, the family Iâd married into, the family Iâd loved enough to lose everything else for. My sister had reached across two empires, turned one against the other, and walked away with the only thing that actually mattered to her: control of everything both families had spent generations building.This shit is till unbelievable, how did she plan this? And what if my father being involved is also a lie? God I donât even know what to believe anymore.I sat back in the cheap kitchen chair and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until colored static bloomed behind them.Five years of belie
đ€ Alexandra đ€Stella is a pure evil genius. I have to give her that much, even sitting here furious enough to put my fist through a wall. How does one woman play this many people her own family included, and make every single move look like grief, like coincidence, like bad luck, instead of what it actually was?I walked out of Papaâs office with the entire sack of files heâd handed me, and instead of going to my room, I went straight to my own office down the hall the one Iâd had set up here since I was a teenager, separate from the basement office downtown, because some habits of needing my own space to think had started long before I ever needed an empire to run.I didnât know what to believe anymore. That was the part sitting heaviest in my chest as I shut the door behind me. Iâd walked into that basement hours ago thinking I had Stella in custody, thinking I was back in control of something after five years of feeling like Iâd lost my grip on all of it. Now I understood that th
đ€ Jacob đ€Yesterday changed something. I donât say that lightly. I am not a man who wakes up and suddenly believes in emotional shifts or invisible bonds forming out of nowhere. I deal with facts. Results. Consequences. But what happened yesterday, the attack, our deep conversation, the way Alexa
đ€Alexandrađ€I picked up the spoon again, taking another bite of the food like the conversation wasnât important, even though I was watching him from the corner of my eyes.âControl,â I added, âcontrol is real. Control keeps things where they should be. Predictable. Stable.âThatâs what I understa
đ€ Alexandra đ€I donât even remember when I fell asleep.One minute I was in the car, forcing my mind to stay sharp, forcing my body to keep up like nothing had happened, and the next⊠everything just went quiet.Now the first thing Iâm aware of is my body. My stomach twisted in a way that made it
đ€ Alexandra đ€The car had barely cleared the next intersection when something felt off. The kind of wrong you donât ignore if you plan to stay alive.I straightened slightly in my seat, my eyes moving toward the side mirror, then the rear view, taking in the cars behind us, the ones ahead, the mo







