Days passed, as the hospital room became a second home—the beeping monitors, the sterile scent, and the endless parade of concerned faces.By the third day, she was already feeling like going home, and resuming with office work."I need to see her," Emma said, her voice brooking no argument. "I need to see my mother."Chloe looked up from her phone, eyebrows raised. "You're supposed to be on bed rest.""I've been on bed rest for three days. I'm going stir-crazy. And the doctors said gentle movement was fine." Emma swung her legs over the side of the bed, wincing slightly. "Help me find a wheelchair."Chloe hesitated, then nodded. She knew that look—the same stubborn determination she herself wore like armor. Fighting it would be useless.Five minutes later, Chloe was pushing Emma in a wheelchair down the sterile hospital corridor, past nurses who nodded with knowing smiles, past orderlies who stepped aside.Emma's fingers gripped the armrests, her eyes fixed forward, focused on the do

Rose stood frozen in the corridor, her body trembling as if she'd stepped into a freezer. The man was gone—vanished around a corner, swallowed by the labyrinthine halls of the hospital—but his face was burned into her retinas.Mark. Her ex-husband. Leif's father.The man who was supposed to be dead.Her mind raced, scrambling to make sense of the impossible. Mark had died twenty years ago. She and Frank had made sure of it. He was the loose thread—the one person who knew the full truth about the plane crash that had killed Richard. He had been Richard's business partner, his confidant, the man who had discovered Frank's embezzlement and his dealings with the arms brokers.When Richard died, Mark had started asking questions. Dangerous questions. Questions that, if answered, would have exposed Frank—and by extension, Rose herself, who had already begun her secret alliance with Frank, an affair that she knew very well was forbidden.The truth is, Rose and Frank had both been in love, l

The paper was ordinary and cheap, the kind you'd find in any hospital waiting room. But the way Leif held it, like it might burn him, made Rose's stomach clench.With shaking hands, she took the note and unfolded it.The handwriting was unmistakable. She had seen it on birthday cards, on love letters, on a hundred documents over the course of their marriage. It was thinner now, more angular, an evidence of what twenty years of hiding would do but it was undeniably his.Rose,I know you saw me. I know you recognized me. Twenty years is a long time to wait, but I've been patient. I've watched. I've learned. I know everything about Richard, about the crash, about you and Frank. I know what you did. I know what you've been doing.This isn't a threat. It's a promise. The truth will come out. Not because I want revenge, but because Richard deserves justice. Because our son deserves to know who his mother really is.I'll be in touch.MarkRose's blood froze.The paper trembled in her hands.

Rose ended the call and sat in her car for a long moment, staring at nothing. Then, with mechanical precision, she started the engine and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Her hands were steady on the wheel, but her mind was a hurricane.The drive to Frank's hotel was automatic. Lefts and rights she could navigate in her sleep, a route she'd taken dozens of times over the past weeks. The city blurred past, indifferent to the crisis unfolding in her carefully constructed world.She parked in the underground garage, took the elevator to the penthouse floor, and walked to the door. She didn't knock. She had a key.Frank was waiting in the sitting room, a glass of bourbon in his hand, his expression carefully neutral. He rose when she entered, crossed to her, reached for her—She stepped back."Not now."Frank's eyes narrowed, but he didn't push. He returned to his chair, gesturing for her to sit. She remained standing, arms wrapped around herself as if holding her body together.

Jennifer stood in the doorway of her new office, still not quite believing this was real. This was something she had always looked forward to, and here it was right before her now.She had walked past this office hundreds of times during her years at Robbins Holdings.First as an intern, then as an assistant, then as Leif's personal aide. She had always glanced inside with a mixture of curiosity and longing—wondering what it would feel like to sit in that leather chair, to look out at that panoramic view, to have her name on the door.Despite being a close friend of Emma, she had always wanted to have a taste of what it'd feel to wield power in the Robbins Holding, and now she was about to have it as her reality.Jennifer stepped inside, her heels clicking against the hardwood floor. The office was larger than she remembered—or perhaps it just felt larger because it was empty, waiting for her to fill it with her presence. A massive desk dominated the center of the room, flanked by tw