Three days had passed since the gunshot in the courtroom shattered the world.Three days since the name Mill Washington had been dragged from the shadows of a dead man’s throat.Inside the sprawling estate, the air felt stagnant.The staff moved on tiptoe, their eyes constantly drifting toward the heavy oak doors of the master suite.Tedmond had not left his room.Food was placed on silver trays outside the door, only to be collected hours later, cold and untouched.Behind those doors, there was no sound at all, only a crushing, absolute silence.Tedmond was a prisoner of the realization that he had mourned a ghost for twenty years while his mother was likely suffering in a cage Harold had built.Persis stood in the hallway, her hand hovering inches from the door handle.The only thing separating her from Tedmond was that door, and she had been standing there for a long time, wanting to knock, unable to find the courage, endlessly deciding what to do.She wanted to give him space to c

Tedmond turned away from the mirror, and for the first time in three days, a slow, boyish grin spread across his face, a look that was almost more unsettling than his coldness.“Oh, she didn’t bring me the silver trays, Persis,” he said with a light shrug. “She used the servants’ crawlspace behind the wardrobe. Apparently, she found a way to slide snacks and takeout through a gap in the wood.”Persis gaped at him. “Takeout? Snacks? Tedmond, where would a five-year-old get—”“She must have hidden a stash,” Tedmond chuckled, his eyes dancing with a brief, rare flash of warmth. “While you were all mourning me as if I were already in the ground, that little rascal was smuggling in chocolate bars and cold sandwiches she swiped from the pantry. She told me I looked ‘grumpy’ and needed to eat my feelings.”He let out a short laugh, shaking his head.“So no, Mary doesn’t need to cook a feast. I’ve lived on sugar and Bianca’s ‘secret’ rations for seventy-two hours. I’m quite fueled.”Persis r

Persis didn’t just inhabit the room; she commanded it.She leaned over the massive desk, her body arched in a curve that spoke of both exhaustion and lethal elegance.The silk of her emerald-green blouse clung to the arch of her back, shimmering like water under the chandelier’s glow.Her raven hair, usually pinned in a professional twist, had partially escaped, cascading over one shoulder in heavy waves that brushed against the polished wood.As she reached for a pen, the movement emphasized the toned lines of her arms and the narrowness of her waist, cinched by a high-waisted pencil skirt that stopped just above the knee, revealing legs that seemed to go on forever, ending in stiletto heels sharp enough to draw blood.With a frustrated groan, she tossed a folder to the floor; the papers fluttered like wounded birds.“It is entirely too hard running a company,” Persis muttered, rubbing her temples. “I wasn’t built for this much paperwork.”A pair of small, sensible heels clicked acro

The drive into the jagged heart of the mountains ended at a secluded tactical base, hidden within a natural amphitheater of towering stone.As the SUV rolled to a stop and the engine cut out, the silence was absolute, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal.Tedmond was the first to step out.The air was frigid, sharp with the taste of pine and ancient snow.He walked to the edge of the clearing and looked out.From this height, the valley below lay bathed in the amethyst glow of twilight.A thin veil of mist clung to the treetops like spun silk, and the surrounding peaks were painted in strokes of gold and deep violet by the dying sun.To Tedmond, it was breathtaking.It felt as though the world were holding its breath, offering a moment of untainted peace before he descended into fire.“It’s beautiful,” Tedmond murmured, his eyes reflecting the vast, quiet expanse. “Hard to believe something so ugly is hiding in a place like this.”Marek stepped out beside him, gravel crunching

The rock was cold, not just chilly, but the kind of deep, biting frost that felt as though it were trying to fuse Tedmond’s skin to the slate.He reached up, his rough fingers finding a ledge barely wider than a credit card. He hauled himself upward, muscles screaming in a rhythmic, dull ache he had long since learned to find comfort in.Beside him, Marek climbed with the terrifying fluidity of a mountain lion. The man didn’t seem to use his hands so much as simply will himself higher.“You know,” Marek whispered, his voice hitching slightly as he jammed a boot into a vertical crack, “if you’d just bought a helicopter like a normal billionaire, we’d be having a drink on that balcony by now.”Tedmond grunted, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple despite the freezing wind.“A helicopter has a signature, Marek. And I’m not ‘normal’... you made sure of that. Besides, it would draw too much attention. I don’t want anything that could expose my identity or give them a reason to hide he