The party was already in full swing by the time Xavier and Alyssia arrived, string lights strung across Alessandro's rooftop terrace, music thudding low and insistent beneath the hum of a hundred overlapping conversations. Word had spread fast through their circle that Alyssia was alive and well and everyone was so happy to have her back She soaked it in. Xavier watched her work the room with an easy charm, laughing loud enough to be heard across the terrace, resting a hand on his arm every time someone glanced their way, and something in him—guilt, habit, muscle memory—kept slipping back into the old rhythm they used to share before Ari, before any of this had become complicated. It was easier than he wanted to admit, falling back into step with her. He told himself it was harmless. A drink here, a shared joke there, his hand at the small of her back as they moved through the crowd because that was simply how they'd always navigated a room together, long before Ari existed in hi

The emergency room at that hour was filled people with different disasters—a man in the corner nursing a bloodied knuckle, a teenager asleep against her mother's shoulder, the low murmur of a television bolted to the wall playing infomercials to no one in particular. Ari sat perched awkwardly on the edge of the examination table, face burning with a humiliation that had nothing to do with the cactus and everything to do with the small, growing audience of nurses who kept glancing at her chart and then at her with poorly concealed curiosity. The nurse working the spines free from Ari's skin had the patient, unbothered demeanor of someone who had seen far stranger things come through the emergency room on a Friday night, but even she winced in sympathy at the sheer number of them."You really sat down on that thing," she murmured, tweezers working methodically. Ari screamed at every extraction, gripping the edge of the examination table hard enough to whiten her knuckles, but the trut

Xavier stood rooted to the spot for a long moment, one hand rising slowly to touch his stinging cheek, watching Ari climb the stairs without a single backward glance, her spine straight, her steps unhurried despite everything. All he could feel was the heat still blooming across his cheek and the sick, sinking certainty that something had just tipped past a point of no return. It took him several seconds to unfreeze, to remember how his own legs worked, before he was moving after her, taking the stairs two at a time. He found her in the bedroom,kneeling beside the suitcase she'd packed and left half-hidden at the back of the closet, now dragging it out into the open with brisk, efficient movements, adding items to it with the finality of someone who had made peace with a decision days ago. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" The words came out sharper than he intended, fear disguising itself as anger the way it so often did with him. "You've been nothing but harsh with me since Al

The fashion house was a revelation. Located in the heart of the Design District, it was a sprawling modernist masterpiece of steel, glass, and exposed brick. The moment Ari stepped through the doors, she realised she had looked down so much on Henry when he first gave her his business card. In fact,if he had not given her,the chances of ever getting to work there was so low. The air smelled faintly of expensive leather and ozone, the scent of creation in its purest form. Henry Santelli himself came down to greet her personally. He was exactly as she remembered—impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit with a subtle glen plaid pattern, his dark hair slicked back, his smile confident and slightly dangerous. The man who'd rescued her from the hospital, whose number she'd held onto like a lifeline without even realizing it. He moved with the fluid grace of a predator who had long ago mastered the art of being both charming and lethal. "Ari," he said warmly, his voice a smooth baritone that

The calls started reaching Gabrielle within days, each one carrying the same uneasy undertone of fear and reconsideration. Gabrielle sat in his study, phone pressed to his ear, listening as yet another lord — this one from the northern territories, a man named Reyes who had struck a significant trade agreement with him months earlier — attempted to explain, with obvious discomfort, why he needed to withdraw from their arrangement. "I'm sorry, Gabrielle, truly. But things have changed. There's a new element in Xavier's organization now, and I can't afford to be caught in the middle of whatever's happening there." "What element?" Gabrielle asked, though he already suspected he knew the answer. "Alyssia," Reyes said, his voice dropping slightly, as though the name itself carried weight. "She called a meeting. Threatened us all with information she's compiled — financial records, personal details, things that could destroy any one of us if she chose to release them. She made it very cl