The lobby of the dingy Queens motel was a far cry from the cozy Brooklyn brownstone Emilia Rogers had called home just days ago, a fluorescent-lit purgatory smelling of stale coffee and cheap air freshener, with faded wallpaper peeling at the edges like old skin. It was December in the 21st century, a time when the city buzzed with digital life, but for Emilia, the world had shrunk to survival mode: cash payments, fake names, and constant glances over her shoulder. Her auburn hair hung limp and unwashed, tucked under a hoodie that swallowed her slender frame. At twenty-one, she should have been worrying about her final year papers, not the phantom eyes she felt boring into her back everywhere she went. School? She’d skipped it for days, the thought of sitting in class while shadows lurked outside too terrifying to bear. The trauma of her father’s death haunted her like a relentless specter: the blood, the flames, the silence that followed her screams.Clutching a crumpled wad of bills

The penthouse elevator doors parted with a soft chime, spilling Kace and Emilia into the expansive foyer of his Manhattan sanctuary. The space was a fortress of modern luxury, with marble floors veined in gold, and walls of dark walnut paneling that absorbed the city’s ambient glow through floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the skyline twinkled like a distant galaxy, indifferent to the chaos below. But inside, the air was warm, scented faintly with leather and the subtle hum of a crackling hearth from the adjoining living room. Emilia Rogers shuffled forward, her slender frame swallowed by Kace’s oversized blazer, the fabric still carrying his clean, masculine scent, sandalwood, and resolve. She shivered uncontrollably, not just from the December chill that had seeped through her thin clothes during the frantic escape, but from the bone-deep shock that rattled her core. At twenty-one, in her final year of college, she should have been cramming for finals or laughing with roommates ove

“Damn him!” Austen Hendrix roared, sweeping an arm across his desk, sending files and an antique paperweight crashing to the floor in a chaotic symphony.He had transformed his study into a war zone of splintered wood and scattered papers, the air thick with the acrid scent of spilled ink and shattered glass. Austen rampaged through the room like a typhoon incarnate, his ocean-blue eyes wild with unbridled fury, graying blonde hair matted with sweat as he hurled a crystal decanter against the wall. It exploded in a cascade of shards, amber scotch spraying across the Persian rug like blood from a fresh wound. The stocks, his life’s blood, the empire he’d clawed from nothing, had plunged another eighteen percent that afternoon, a nosedive that screamed sabotage. Investors were fleeing, partners ghosting calls, and the market feeds on his MacBook screamed red alerts like sirens in hell. Axel Tantanam stood frozen in the doorway, MacBook clutched to his chest like a shield, his dark brow