Melinda sat on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, her cheek throbbing from the last slap he had given her. The room smelled faintly of perfume and fear—her own fear—because Ramon had made sure she would not dare try escaping again. He had dragged her by the arm, forced her into the room, slammed the door, and locked it with a finality that echoed in her bones. Her wrists still hurt where he had grabbed her, and her throat burned from the words she had not dared to scream. He had taken her phone too. He had snatched it right out of her shaking hand, stared at the number that had dared call her, and his face had twisted—not in rage, which she was used to, but in something far worse: calculation. “You won’t be talking to anyone,” he had said. “Not on my watch.” Then he had walked out, leaving her trapped in a room that felt smaller with every passing second. Now she lay on the bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, her eyes aching and her head pounding. Every bruise on

The polished marble of the West estate gleamed under the overhead lights, but Damian barely noticed. His chest felt tight, constricting with every step, his hands curling into fists at his sides as he followed Rico and the patriarch down the hallway. The blood was in the Patriarch’s office, sealed in a cooler to hide its unnatural glow, to reserve it for purposes only a few knew. And Damian knew exactly what a single misstep here could mean. This was going to be more complicated than he had anticipated. Maybe—no, probably—Rico would figure out he had taken the blood. If that happened, every plan they had painstakingly built would unravel. The thought of it made Damian’s stomach twist. Finding Rico’s trust destroyed, navigating the fallout with the patriarch breathing down his neck… it was a bigger mess than he had wanted to imagine. Each footfall echoed too loudly in the hall, a grim reminder of the weight pressing down on him: the stolen blood, the shattered trust, the looming dis

Ramon rubbed a hand over his face, frustration burning like a migraine behind his eyes, and took a slow, steady sip of vodka. The liquor slid down his throat with a bitter punch, doing absolutely nothing to ease the pressure in his chest. He had asked his friend and business partner, Davis, out to a bar to talk about Silver Line Logistics—really talk about it—but so far, the conversation had spun in circles like the ceiling fan above them. The bar was loud, thick with perfume, cheap cologne, and the artificial sweetness of flavored alcohol, but Ramon barely heard any of it. His mind kept drifting back to numbers, contracts, and the cruel finality of a deal slipping through his fingers. “What do we do now?” he asked finally, his voice tight, the question scraping out of him like gravel. Davis didn’t answer immediately. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes locked on his glass as if the answer might be hiding somewhere in the bottom. Then he sighed—an exhausted, defeated soun

Melinda stayed curled on the bed long after Ramon left, listening to the faint click of the front door and the echo of his footsteps disappearing into the night. The silence that followed was suffocating—thick, heavy, pressing down on her chest until it felt like she could barely breathe. It wasn’t the peaceful kind of silence. It was the kind that settled after violence, after rage. The quiet that warned another storm was coming. Her eyes burned. Her skin pulsed. Her mind throbbed. She knew—without doubt—that this thing with Ramon wasn’t over. He wasn’t done with her. He was never done. The moment she told her mother she would come visit, everything shattered. Ramon had caught her with her packed bag and dragged her back into the apartment like she was property, not a person. Now the locked doors, the confiscated phone, the constant monitoring… all of it was a cage disguised as love. No one was going to let her leave. Not even for her own mother. That truth sat like a stone in he

Downstairs, in the mansion’s core, where the power and decisions lived, things were worse. The kind of worse that made the air thick, like it could be cut with a knife. Even though the office itself was dim, the soft glow from the desk lamp threw long, sharp shadows across the floor, making the room feel larger yet heavier at the same time. Damian stood rigid in front of the massive desk, hands clasped behind him, trying—and failing—to still the tremor that ran along his fingers. He could feel it even through the slight tightening of his shoulders. His father had always made him tense, but tonight was different. Tonight, the tension wasn’t just a lingering discomfort—it was a living thing, pressing into him, coiling around his chest, and squeezing with a quiet but merciless force. The Patriarch, Magnust West didn’t immediately look at him. There was silence in the room and Damian could hear his own pulse, loud and insistent, a relentless drum inside his chest. The faint