로그인Eliana
The office felt different when I walked in Tuesday morning.
My phone had been buzzing non stop since I had gotten out of the cab but I had ignored them all. Theo had wanted me to stay home, had demanded for me to take more time off, but I did not need my co workers in my case for missing a day and work was the one thing that still felt like mine.
Or so I had thought.
The elevator ride to the
TheodoreShe had her back to the door when I came in.The evening light cut sideways across the room, hitting the lilies on every surface. The smell of them reached me before I was fully through the door. It had been a week of having them sent every morning.Eliana was looking at her phone, legs crossed on the bed, hair loose. She heard me and the amused expression on her face turned into a blank slate.How much longer would we have to do this?"Stop sending more flowers. The ward is huge but the flowers everywhere are making it look too small." She nodded at the lilies surrounding the room.I set the food I had brought on the bedside table and pulled the chair close. "Eat.""You say that every time.""Every time because you haven't eaten yet."Her mouth pressed together bu
Third POVTheodore himself, still in his suit jacket from the meeting they had pulled him out of walked in to take in the scene. His eyes swept the room once and found Eliana on the bed, his daughter on the floor. He moved to Eliana without looking at anything else, his hands going to her face, her wrist, the torn IV line hanging loose and bloody from her arm.Maxwell was already on the floor with two men on top of him, face down, his cheek against the hospital tile, arms wrenched behind his back. He strained against the hold until the third man put a knee in his back and he went flat on the ground.Theodore sat on the edge of Eliana's bed and put both arms around her, tugging her into his chest. She dropped her forehead against his chest and closed her eyes.In the corner Serena sat on the floor with her back against the wall, both hands at her throat, her phone in her lap still recordin
Third POVMaxwell had to give it to them.Blackwell's PR team was good. Really good. He had watched them work over the past months and he had to admit, the way they pivoted the narrative, slowly and then all at once, pulling focus from the scandal and redirecting it toward some global launch was a smart move. The board had gone quiet. The investors had retreated, satisfied that they would be making money and all his schemes to take down Blackwell had ended flatly.He sat in his study with the lights off and his drink untouched, admitting to no one but himself and only because there was no one else in the room that he was losing.Everything he had built toward was falling apart. Leslie was in prison, The mole operation was gone. The legal fees he had paid for Leslie's case and the public humiliation of watching his daughter get dragged out of Serena Blackwell's house in handcuffs while half the
ElianaThe hospital ceiling was the same one as last time.I knew it before I fully came back to myself, that particular pattern of tiles and fluorescent light. Damn, I was becoming a regular at the hospital, wasn't I? First the fire incident, now getting my shit rocked in the alleyway by Damon.Everything hurts. If I hurt in one place, that would have been manageable. But everywhere hurts, my ribs when I breathe, my cheekbones when I move my face, my hands when I try to close them and my legs.I lay very still on the bed, keeping my eyes glued to the ceiling. When would the painkillers kick in again?Theo had brought me in. I remembered that much. The car, his arm around me, his voice talking to someone, then the lights of the emergency entrance, a wheelchair and hands that weren't his taking me away. I remembered him standing at the edge of whatever they were doing to me wa
TheodoreHer door was wide open.I pushed through and stopped. A box was overturned near the kitchen counter, books scattered across the floor, her phone against the floor with the screen shattered and a chair knocked on its side. I was back on the street before I could think, glancing for any other sign of struggle.Someone had attacked her."Help! Somebody help me!"Fuck, was that coming from the alleyway down the street? I raced down without thinking twice with Steve getting out of the car and following behind me."Eliana?!"I came around the corner and everything in me went cold and still. Damon had a metal pipe raised above his head, both hands wrapped around it. Eliana had her back flat against the wall with nowhere left to go, both arms up in front of her face."HELP-" 
Third POVVivienne's number went straight to voicemail.Damon stared at his phone screen in the fluorescent light of the motel room he had been hiding in for four days. He called again- Voicemail- and threw the phone onto the bed.He stalked to the window with his hands on the back of his neck and looked out at the parking lot. He had no money, no plan, and a woman who had just used him and discarded him as if she were throwing a receipt away.Those two bitches had betrayed him. He should have known better than to trust them when they approached him in Atlanta. Not like he was living a decent life back in Atlanta anyway. He was on the run from loan sharks dammit and when Vivienne had approached promising him a load of money and one last dig at his soft dumbass ex girlfriend, he hopped on that ride faster than anyone could blink.And he had done his part. He threat
Eliana"Is that what you think this is?" His voice was deadly quiet."I don't know what this is!" Tears burned my eyes but I blinked them back. "I don't know anything anymore except that I'm suffocating and I need you to back off!"Th
ElianaMy phone buzzed for the fifteenth time that weekend. Theo's name flashed across the screen, again.I stared at it until it stopped ringing, then shoved it under a couch cushion where I couldn't see the light and wouldn't have to talk to him. If I s
ElianaThe words blurred together, black ink swimming across the white paper."We have your mother,"My knees buckled but the older nurse caught my elbow. I barely felt her touch, barely felt anything except the ice spreading through
Eliana"I wish you didn't have to go." Theo's voice was muffled against my neck, his lips tracing the curve where it met my shoulder. His arms tightened around my waist, pulling me back against his chest even as I tried to button my blouse."I have to." M







