All Chapters of Craving Their Touch : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

  The morning of the vote, I woke before dawn. Marcus was still asleep beside me, his arm draped across my waist. Outside, the snow had stopped falling. The sky was clear and cold, pale light just beginning to edge over the frozen lake. Somewhere downstairs, Sophia was preparing her testimony. Julian was reviewing the final documents. I dressed in the dark. The emerald blazer. The one I had worn when I bought Webb's law firm, when I confronted David in the restaurant, the night Arthur named me his heir. It felt like armor. "The cars are here." Marcus appeared in the doorway, already dressed. "Victor Hale called the meeting for nine. He thinks he has the votes." "Does he?" "Before the ledger was authenticated, yes. Before Sophia agreed to testify. Before we had proof Hale is connected to David. The board doesn't know yet. They will." 

The cell was six feet by eight feet, and David Miller knew every inch of it.He had memorized the cracks in the concrete. The way the fluorescent light flickered at three in the morning. The sound of the guard's footsteps in the corridor, thirty-seven steps from the corner to his door. He had spent months in this cage, and he had spent every waking hour thinking about Clara Sterling.The cot was hard beneath him. The blanket was thin and gray and smelled of industrial detergent. Outside his window, a narrow slit of reinforced glass, the sky was the same color as the blanket. Gray. Endless. Indifferent.He had lost the counter-offensive. The board vote had failed. Victor Hale was under investigation. Sophia had turned against him. The ledger was authenticated. His lawyers had stopped returning his calls. His remaining allies had scattered like rats from a sinking ship. For most men, this would have been the end. For David, it was merely a setback.He had been here before. Not literally

I met Daniel Cross at a coffee shop on the south side of the city, the kind of place that had sticky floors and flickering fluorescent lights and no security cameras. He had chosen the location. He said it was safer that way. He said people who talked to him had a habit of getting hurt.He was already there when I arrived, sitting in a booth near the back with a cup of black coffee and a thick folder of notes. He was younger than I expected. Early forties, with tired eyes and ink-stained fingers and the hollow cheeks of a man who had been working too hard for too long. He did not smile when I sat down across from him."Thank you for meeting me," he said. "I know you have every reason not to trust journalists.""I have every reason not to trust anyone. But you have been contacting Sophia for weeks, and she is under my protection. I want to know why.""Because she is the key. Not the whole key. But a piece of it." He slid the folder across the table. "I covered David Miller's original t

The envelope sat on Arthur's desk between us, unopened for three years, yellowed with age and heavy with secrets. I did not reach for it immediately. I wanted to hear the truth from his lips first. "Tell me about her," I said. "Not the summary. Not the sanitized version. All of it." Arthur walked to the window. Outside, the gardens were dark. The lanterns had been extinguished hours ago. The estate was silent, wrapped in the deep stillness of the early morning. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than I had ever heard it. "Margot Vane was twenty-three years old when she came to work for me. This was before Sterling Global was a skyscraper. Before the board and the shareholders and the quarterly reports. I was running the company out of a two-room office with five employees and a coffee machine that broke every Monday. Margot was my second hire. She was brilliant. Organized. She could anticipate what I needed before I kn

The invitation arrived on a Thursday morning, hand-delivered to Sterling Estate on a silver tray by Harold, who carried it like it might detonate. I was in the library, going over the latest security reports with Marcus. The room still smelled of old books and cold fireplace ash, the same scent that had surrounded me the first time I met my father. Outside, the gardens were beginning to thaw. Spring was coming, slow and reluctant, but coming nonetheless. Harold set the tray on the table beside me. The envelope was heavy cream paper, expensive and textured, the kind of stationery that cost more than most people spent on a week of groceries. The handwriting on the front was unfamiliar. Sharp. Deliberate. My full name, written in dark ink. Clara Sterling. No title. No address. Just my name. "Who delivered this?" I asked. "A courier. He left immediately. Security attempted to detain him, but he was drivi