LOGINCaspian The folder rested on the passenger seat the entire drive. I never looked at it and I didn't need to.Every page inside had already carved itself into my memory.Victor's letter, Henry's records, the altered medical report, and the financial ledger. Years of lies compressed into a stack of paper that weighed more than it had any right to.By the time I reached Elias's office, I wasn't angry anymore, anger had burned itself out somewhere along the way.What remained was colder.“I'll let him know you're here.” The receptionist looked up as I approached. "He's expecting…..""I know where his office is."She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it.I didn't stop.The hallway felt strangely familiar now, every step reminding me of my last visit. The visit where I'd walked away with questions, but today, I carried answers.I pushed the door open without knocking and Elias looked up from behind his desk.For a fleeting moment, surprise crossed his face, then it dis
Caspian I didn't speak.I couldn't, not when the single name lying on the desk between us seemed to swallow every other thought inside my head.Elias.For days, I'd suspected him, for weeks, I'd questioned his motives and now suspicion had become something far heavier.Proof.I stared at the folder, waiting for my mind to reject it, to tell me there had been some mistake, but it never did.Instead, the investigator quietly walked around the desk and stopped beside me."I know what you're thinking."“Really?’ I tore my eyes away from the file. "Do you?""You're wondering whether this is enough.""...Is it?" I looked back at the papersInstead of answering, he opened the folder completely."We're not looking at one piece of evidence." He pulled out the first document. "We're looking at years of it."Without warning, he placed an old envelope on the desk. Its paper had yellowed with age, and the edges looked as though they'd crumble if handled too roughly."The handwriting was confirme
Caspian The conversation refused to leave my head. No matter how hard I tried, every word Elias had spoken found its way back to me."She came back to you.""Interesting.""You're running out of time."I slammed my office door harder than I'd intended and the sound echoed through the room before silence settled once again. For what felt like the hundredth time that morning, I crossed the length of the office.Then I turned, walked back and turned again. Pacing had never solved a problem and it was no surprise that today wasn't any different.Every answer Elias had given had somehow managed to reveal absolutely nothing. Or maybe...I stopped beside the window. Maybe he'd revealed exactly what he'd wanted me to know.Nothing more, nothing less.I clenched my jaw as a curse bubbled in my throat, but I forced it back down anyway. I'd walked into his office believing I was finally going to corner him.Instead, he'd walked away knowing Daisy had come back to me. Knowing we'd spoken and
Caspian Finding Elias had become a game. A frustrating one at that room .Every time I thought I was close, he somehow slipped through my fingers."He just left.""I'm afraid you missed him.""His meeting was canceled.""I haven't seen him today."Those were the responses that came from different faces and different voices, but they all had the same answer.By the fourth day, I stopped believing in coincidence. Whether he knew I was looking for him or not, the result remained the same.I never found him. So I changed my approach. Instead of chasing him, I made him come to me.His office was exactly as I remembered it. Ordeky and quiet, everything sat precisely where it belonged, from the neatly arranged files on his desk to the books lining the shelves behind him.Nothing about the room felt personal.It was a place built for conversations where one person always left knowing less than the other.I lowered myself into one of the chairs opposite his desk and waited.I didn't pace, d
Caspian For the next couple of seconds, the only thing that registered in my ears was silence. It settled over the room so completely that I could hear Daisy's uneven breathing.I didn't look at Octavian, I couldn't, so my eyes stayed fixed on Daisy.She stood frozen where she was, tears clinging stubbornly to her lashes, her chest rising and falling far too quickly.“I kissed you because I was desperate.” Her words still echoed inside my head. “I thought if I could kiss someone else... maybe I'd stop loving him.”It should have hurt less than hearing she'd fallen for someone else. Instead, it hurt infinitely more because she'd tried. She'd genuinely tried to tear herself away from me, and she'd failed.A part of me wanted to be relieved by that, while the rest of me only wondered how much pain she'd been carrying to reach that point.Before I could say anything, Octavian spoke."You heard the wrong part."My gaze shifted to him. His expression remained calm, though I knew him we
Daisy I couldn't breathe, not because there wasn't enough air, but because every breath I took seemed to hurt.I'd spent what felt like hours sitting on the edge of my bed, yet I couldn't remember sitting down in the first place.My thoughts refused to stay still and every single one of them led back to him."Please don't decide I'm guilty before you hear me."I squeezed my eyes shut.“Stop.” I willed my mind to let the memory die, but the more I tried, the harder they all came rushing by. "Have you been lying to me?" I had asked, and even till now, his answer was still shocking. "Yes.""No..." I whispered into the empty room.The memory refused to fade and this time, it wasn't just his answer, it was his face too. I'd expected guilt, I'd expected panic and I'd expected excuses. Instead, he'd looked devastated, like I'd ripped something out of him.I groaned softly, pressing both palms against my temples.Why? Why hadn't he looked guilty? Why had he looked broken?A fresh wave of
Octavian Daisy eventually fell asleep, but not all at once. It happened in pieces.First her breathing steadied against my chest, the sharp pain in the bond dulling little by little beneath my hands. Then the tension slowly drained from her body until her grip on my shirt loosened completely an
Caspian The second Daisy’s pain spiked through the bond, I knew something was wrong. It wasn't anger, nor was it the usual heat and chaos that always erupted between us whenever we got too close.This was different, this felt like something breaking.I straightened abruptly from the desk in my
Daisy I had barely made it out of the hallway before the bond started tearing through me.At first, it was just heat, sharp and suffocating beneath my skin while my legs carried me forward on instinct alone. Then came the nausea.My stomach twisted violently enough that I had to brace one hand
Caspian The second Daisy stepped into the study, everything changed, and the women noticed immediately.The one perched against the edge of my desk pulled her hand away from my chest like she’d suddenly realized she was touching something dangerous. Another straightened slowly beside me, her ex







