LOGINš¤ Jacob š¤The second Jackās āUnderstood, bossā landed in the air between us, something else landed right alongside it something I hadnāt 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 Iād 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 hadnāt even known existed until last week.And they were just out there. Right now. S
š¤ Jacob š¤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 Stellaās 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 Lexās custody still hadnāt 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.Iād 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
š¤ Jacob š¤She took my home from me.Iād said it to Lex on the phone before I fully understood how true it was, and now, sitting alone in an Airbnb that wasnāt mine with a folder full of my fatherās betrayal still open on the table in front of me, I understood it completely.Stella hadnāt just dismantled the Grey family business. Sheād used the Fisher-Hale familyās own power to do it Lexās family, the family Iād married into, the family Iād 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 donāt 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
š¤ Alexandra š¤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 Papaās office with the entire sack of files heād handed me, and instead of going to my room, I went straight to my own office down the hall the one Iād 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 didnāt know what to believe anymore. That was the part sitting heaviest in my chest as I shut the door behind me. Iād 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 Iād lost my grip on all of it. Now I understood that th
š¤ Alexandra š¤āHi, Papa,ā I greeted, walking into his home office after making sure my babies were tucked in bed, safe, sleeping, alive in a way that had felt impossible just hours earlier today.āI was told you went back to work,ā Papa said, smiling without looking up from the files spread across his desk, the lamp light catching the silver at his temples in a way that made him look older than he had the last time Iād sat in this room.āAnd I was surprised by how much I missed that lifestyle,ā I responded, taking the seat across from him, the same worn leather chair I used to sit in as a teenager waiting to be told I was too young to understand half of what was happening around me.He looked up then, something soft and a little sad moving behind his eyes. āYou sound like my Jay right now. Sometimes he wanted something so badly, and still chose the safe option most times, for the sake of the people around him.āI felt the familiar ache settle into my chest not sharp anymore, not the
š¤ Jacob š¤Thereās another Jacob Grey.I sat with that sentence the entire drive back from the basement, turning it over and over like a stone I couldnāt get a clean grip on. What the hell was actually going on. I didnāt even understand the shape of the plot I was supposedly living inside anymore, five years of running from a danger I thought I understood, and tonight alone had already rewritten the rules of it twice.āHmm. Lex, can I ask you something?ā I said, turning to look her directly in the eye once we were back in the car, because if I was going to start pulling at threads, I wanted to watch her face while I did it.āAsk away,ā she said.āFive years ago,ā I said slowly, āwas your family the only one responsible for the Grey familyās downfall? Or did you have help from the inside. Someone close to me.āShe didnāt flinch, didnāt look away, just considered the question with the same level focus she gave everything tonight. āI genuinely didnāt have anything to do with your family
š¤ Alexandra š¤āFollow me closely,ā I said as I turned to look at Jacob standing behind me.He didnāt argue for once. Maybe seeing Dean and Loveth lying unconscious in those hospital beds had reminded him that we had bigger problems than our complicated history.Or maybe he simply knew better than
š¤Jacobš¤ āAmara,ā I said, and I gave her the nod of a man who was too worried about his children to stop and talk, which was both a performance and completely true, and kept moving. I found Alexandra outside Room 14. She looked exactly the way I expected her to look and nothing like I wanted
š¤ Jacob š¤Stepping back into this city was not something I had planned to do today.Not today, not this week, not anytime in the near future if I was being completely honest with myself, because New York had a specific kind of energy that I had spent five years deliberately putting distance betwe
š¤Alexander š¤I looked at him for a moment.And then I said the only honest thing I had.āNone of this makes sense,ā I responded instead.Because it didnāt.It genuinely, completely did not make sense, and I needed someone else to sit inside that fact with me for a second before I could start buil







