As the heavy oak doors of the Grayson estate opened,Liam’s knuckles were white, his skin pulled so tight over his bones it looked like parchment. His heart hammered a frantic, jagged rhythm against his ribs—a bird beating its wings against a cage. The rhythmic clink of silver against fine china drifted from the dining room, a cold, surgical sound. They hadn't waited for him. They never did. "I’m home," Liam said, his voice sounding thin and brittle in the cavernous foyer. His wife, Chloe, glanced over her shoulder from the head of the table, her eyes tracking him with a look of practiced disappointment. "Welcome. You’ve arrived just in time to watch us finish." "I’ll be back in one minute," Liam stammered, his chest heaving as he fumbled with his tie. "I just need to go up and change out of this suit, I—" "Is our time so beneath you now?" Victoria cut him off, her fork poised mid-air. She didn't look at him, her gaze fixed on the wallpaper as if he were a smudge on the glass. "

“Just don't let me find you,else,I'll pull out all of your hair today you slut!” Ruby muttered to herself as she went back to her room,she was infuriated and if she had seen Veronica at that moment she would have slapped her hard on the face. She was still the same, shameless and reckless. Just like how she slept with Nathan and even got pregnant. The fact that she even kissed the guy in Damian's presence irritated her more and she wished he would remember that part and just end things with her. Damian's head was banging when he woke up and it felt like it would explode soon. He groaned and held his head in his hand. “Oh my goodness!” He muttered. Then he realized he was in his room. The last thing he remembered was lying outside of the elevator and Veronica telling him she would be back so how did he get to his room? “Did I sleepwalk into my room?” He asked himself but then it sounded weird to him. “Was it Veronica?” He looked around,but there were no traces of Veronica which me

The heavy iron bolt of Liam's holding cell slid back with a clack. Liam stood up, his legs feeling like lead. "Chloe?" he breathed, his voice barely above a whisper But it was Silas Grayson who entered first, his shoes clicking rhythmically and then the rest of the family behind him. Before Liam could even exhale, Silas’s hand whipped across the air, the slap landing on his face Liam’s head snapped back, his glasses skittering across the floor. He didn't fight back,he simply stood there, a red welt blooming on his cheek, his eyes pooling with tears "You pathetic, hollow man," Silas hissed, leaning in so close Liam could smell the expensive tobacco on his breath. "I plucked you from nothing. I gave you a seat at a table you didn't belong at. And this is how you repay me? By dragging the Grayson name through the blood and filth of a hit-and-run?" "Father... please, it was... it was dark..." Liam’s voice trembled, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth. "Don't you dare use t

The next two weeks were a blur of calculated actions. Under the guise of restoring the buses, Liam spent his days at a secret warehouse he’d leased on the outskirts of the city after he hired a heavy-duty towing service to move the buses Once the warehouse doors were locked, the real work began. Liam dismantled. Armed with an industrial grinder and a heart fueled by vengeance, he carefully stripped the leaden, blue-painted shells. He began selling the gold in small, untraceable increments to various black-market brokers and high-end refineries across state lines, amassing a fortune that was more than anything the Graysons currently held in liquid assets. While he worked the gold by day, his nights were spent reviewing files from a private investigator. The high-resolution photos were damning. Chloe draped over Julian, her supposed best friend,in the back of a luxury SUV,the two of them holding hands outside,and even entering hotels together. He got all the pictures to prove her af

Xavier had rehearsed what he wanted to say to her at least a dozen times on the drive over, and every version of it evaporated the moment he actually saw her. She was standing outside the warehouse studio, laughing at something Julian had said, a garment bag draped over one arm, sunlight catching the loose strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. She looked lighter than he remembered — not just physically, but in some deeper, more fundamental way, as though some weight she'd carried for years had finally been set down. Xavier parked across the street and sat there for a long moment, hands still on the wheel, gathering whatever courage he had left before finally stepping out. "Ari." Her name left him quieter than he intended, but she heard it anyway. Her entire body went rigid, the laughter dying instantly from her face, replaced by something guarded and cold that struck him harder than he expected. "Ari, please, I just want to talk—" She didn't answer. She turned instead to