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The Rhodes Affair Part Two
publish date:
2026-03-28 14:24:12
Latest chapter
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession The Perfect Woman
POV: Chase SterlingThe date is Dominic's idea, which I agreed to for reasons that made sense at two in the morning after reading the grimoire and which make less sense in the daylight but which I am committed to now.The restaurant is in the West Village, the kind of place that has a wait list and no sign outside and which is therefore exactly the kind of place paparazzi park outside, and I arranged the reservation myself, which tells me everything I need to know about what I am doing tonight.Elise is already seated when I arrive, which she arranged herself, which is the first interesting thing about her. Most people in her position would arrive second, would make the entrance, would let the room arrange itself around them. She is sitting with a glass of water and her phone face-down and an expression of someone who has been here long enough to be comfortable and is not performing the waiting.I sit down."You told them we were coming," she says, not a question."The reservation was
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Elise Vanderwood Arrives
POV: Chase SterlingDominic's board events have a specific quality that his garden parties and his charity galas do not have, which is the quality of a room full of people who are there because they want something from Sterling Industries and are performing enthusiasm about the canapés while they wait to find out if they are going to get it.I go because not going would give Dominic a public narrative about instability in the current leadership that I cannot afford right now, which is the calculation that has been driving most of my professional decisions since the corruption files dropped three weeks ago.Dominic is already working the room when I arrive, which is the thing he does, and I accept champagne and begin the professional circuit, and I am twenty minutes in and thinking about leaving when Dominic appears at my elbow with a woman I don't recognize."Chase," he says, in the tone he uses for public performances of fatherhood. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."I turn.Eli
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Aftermath
POV: Chase SterlingI don't read the coverage.This is new. For nine months I have read everything, the tabloids and the gossip accounts and the entertainment blogs, because reading it was a form of control, knowing what was out there, knowing what narrative was running. I stopped doing that sometime between walking out of my own apartment on Saturday morning and now, which is Monday, and I have not read a single thing.I know it is bad because Callum has called six times and texted eleven and his messages have graduated from call me to please call me to Chase I am begging you which is three stages of Callum escalation that I have not previously reached simultaneously.I don't call him.I sit in the penthouse with the grimoire open and a glass of whiskey I poured at noon and have been nursing since and I look out the window at the city, which is doing its Monday thing of being entirely indifferent to my specific situation, which I appreciate about it.Helena came by yesterday and I di
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Breaking Point
POV: Vivian AshfordI go to him two days later.Not because I planned to. I wake up on a Saturday morning and I lie in bed for an hour thinking about the rain and the blood on his face and the way he said please like it cost him something, and then I get up and I get dressed and I get in the car.His building's security has had my name on a list since the charity collaboration started, which is a Callum decision I have never acknowledged and Chase has never mentioned, and the elevator takes me to the penthouse floor and I knock on his door at ten in the morning.He answers in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a coffee in his hand and the expression of someone who was not expecting me and is not surprised to see me, which is a combination that only Chase Sterling manages."Vivian," he says."We need to talk about the other night," I say.He steps back and lets me in.The penthouse looks lived in now, which is different from the last time I was here, the grimoire on the coffee tabl
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession The Kiss in the Rain
POV: Vivian AshfordThe film gets a standing ovation and I cry in the bathroom afterward, which I will deny if anyone asks.It is the good kind of crying, the kind that happens when something you worked for actually lands the way you hoped it would, and I give myself three minutes with my back against the stall door before I fix my face and go back out to the afterparty, where Petra is still glowing and the champagne is very good and for once I am not thinking about Chase Sterling at all.Then it rains.February rain in LA hits fast and everyone scrambles inside, laughing and holding their drinks over their heads, and I step out of the way of the rush and end up under a narrow overhang on the side of the building where the rain is hitting the concrete two feet from my shoes and the cold air is a relief after two hours of warm indoor air and champagne.I hear him before I see him.He comes to stand beside me and neither of us says anything for a moment, just stands there getting partia
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Helena's Interference
POV: Vivian AshfordI find the photograph at seven in the morning with my first coffee, which is earlier than I usually check his name but which has been my habit since my mother told him about it and which I have not broken because breaking it would require admitting it exists in the first place.Elise Vanderwood.She is standing beside Chase at what looks like a Sterling Industries event, some industry thing, and she is beautiful in the way of women who have never had to work at being beautiful, and they are talking with their heads angled toward each other, and the photographer caught them at the angle that makes professional look personal.I look at it for a while.He is not looking at her the way he looks at me.I know how he looks at me. I have nine months of accumulated data on how Chase Sterling looks at me, which is not information I sought and which I have anyway, and whatever is in this photograph between him and Elise Vanderwood, it is not that.But it is seven in the morn
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Ethan Proposes
POV: Vivian AshfordEthan books the rooftop without telling me what it is for, which should have been a signal, but Ethan takes me to dinner sometimes just because he knows I have not eaten properly and he is that kind of person, and I did not read the signal because I was not looking for it.The r
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Breaking Point
POV: Vivian AshfordI go to him two days later.Not because I planned to. I wake up on a Saturday morning and I lie in bed for an hour thinking about the rain and the blood on his face and the way he said please like it cost him something, and then I get up and I get dressed and I get in the car.H
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession The Kiss in the Rain
POV: Vivian AshfordThe film gets a standing ovation and I cry in the bathroom afterward, which I will deny if anyone asks.It is the good kind of crying, the kind that happens when something you worked for actually lands the way you hoped it would, and I give myself three minutes with my back agai
Toxic & Tainted: The Billionaire's Cursed Obsession Helena's Interference
POV: Vivian AshfordI find the photograph at seven in the morning with my first coffee, which is earlier than I usually check his name but which has been my habit since my mother told him about it and which I have not broken because breaking it would require admitting it exists in the first place.
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