THE WEIGHT OF WHAT REMAINSThe night bled into dawn long before anyone inside the Hale estate felt the shift. The mansion stood in a dead, stunned silence, as if the walls themselves were struggling to absorb the aftermath of everything that had finally erupted. For the first time since Jenny had stepped into the dynasty, there was no fake elegance, no polished pretenses, no orchestrated show of power. The house felt raw, exposed almost human.Jenny sat in the corner of the guest room they’d moved her into temporarily, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around them as though trying to hold together all the pieces of herself that had been cracked open. Her eyes were swollen from a night without sleep, but her mind refused to slow down long enough to rest. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the same thing: Marcus collapsing, the gunshot echoing through the hall, the way his hand twitched once before going still. Her breath caught each time the memory surfaced, and sh

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE — THE ASHES WE CLAIMShadows draped the mansion like mourning cloth when dawn finally pushed its pale fingers across the estate. The night before had carved itself into the bones of everyone inside blood spilled, truths revealed, betrayal clawing its way through every wall until the entire Hale legacy trembled. But the morning did not bring peace. It brought reckoning.Jenny stood at the wide glass window of the east wing, watching the gray horizon, the fields, and the thin ribbon of smoke rising from the grounds where Marcus’s private guard had burned the remains of the ambush vehicles. Her reflection hovered on the glass haunted eyes, wild hair, trembling breath she fought to steady. She had survived a hundred storms, but last night had been different. Last night, the past had risen like a beast hungry for her name, dragging her into a truth she was not yet ready to face.Behind her, she heard footsteps firm, controlled, familiar. Marcus didn’t speak immediatel

THE UNMASKINGThe silence that followed Elise’s declaration was not silence at all it was a pressure, a tightening around Jenny’s lungs, a suffocating awareness that she was standing between two legacies that had spent decades sharpening their teeth against each other. And now both legacies had found their way into her flesh, splitting her heart down the middle.Elise stood in the center of the archive, poised like a serpent moments before the strike, her eyes glittering with triumph. Marcus stood before Jenny, unwavering, his posture iron and shadow, his breath steady even as the storm gathered. Rylan flanked him, his blade angled downward, ready to raise in a heartbeat. Two guards moved silently to corner Elise, spreading out to block her escape.But Elise didn’t flinch. Her confidence was unnerving, almost supernatural. She had expected this. Planned for this. And somehow, Jenny understood that Elise had arrived not to kill but to dismantle.Jenny’s pulse hammered. “Why now?” s

THE ECLIPSE OF TWO BLOODLINESThe night had deepened around the Hale estate, sinking into the kind of silence that felt less like quiet and more like a warning. The earlier hours had been chaos Elise’s intrusion, the revelations she unleashed, the confrontation that tore open wounds Jenny didn’t even know she carried. But now, as the world outside the windows glowed dim under a shrouded moon, Jenny found herself staring into a mirror that seemed to reflect a stranger.She was still trembling.Her hands hovered over the countertop of the guest suite Marcus insisted she use for the night, “just until we’re certain the estate is contained,” he’d said. But Jenny knew the truth. He wanted her in the safest room closest to his office, where he could reach her in three strides if anything happened. Where he could see her. Where he could protect her with the same stubborn force that had defined every moment between them since the day they collided into one another’s lives.But tonight, prote

THE SILENCE BEFORE BLOODThe estate lay quiet under a sky bruised by storm clouds. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, hesitant to disturb the tension that had been building for weeks, months, years. Jenny stood at the edge of the balcony overlooking the northern courtyard, the chill biting through her nightgown, but she barely noticed. Her mind was a storm worse than any wind outside.Every step, every whispered plan, every secret she had unearthed since Elise’s arrival had led to this this moment of fragile reckoning where nothing was certain, and everything hung by the thinnest thread.Marcus emerged from the shadows behind her. His presence was calm, controlled, but Jenny had learned to read the lines of worry etched into his face, the tension in his shoulders. Even at his strongest, she could see the fractures he carried within.“You shouldn’t be out here,” Marcus said, voice low but firm.“I needed air,” she said, turning to face him. Her hair fell in waves across her shou