2026-01-05 17:04:46Maya stood near the bar, a drink in her hand, her eyes fixed on the elevator. When Kai stepped out, her face flickered with surprise, then unmistakable displeasure. She’d been waiting to hear he’d been turned away. Instead, here he was, walking in like he belonged.
What the hell? Maya’s grip tightened on her glass. Those useless security guards couldn’t stop one person? They just let this loser waltz in here like he owns the place? Her jaw clenched. Fine. If they couldn’t handle him, she would.
She recovered quickly, her smile sharp as a blade.
“Everyone!” Her voice cut through the noise. Conversations stopped, heads turned. “I want you all to meet someone very special.” She gestured at Kai with exaggerated warmth. “This is Kai Walker—Lila’s new husband. It’s his first time at Apex, so please make him feel welcome.”
“Huh?! Did I hear that right—Lila’s… husband?!”
“Poor Lila. She was this close to marrying Daniel and jumping classes, and now… what the hell?”
“Does that guy have some dirty leverage on her or something?”
For a moment, all eyes were on Lila—filled with sympathy, pity, and ridicule, as if she had suddenly fallen from her place in society.
It was so suffocating she could barely stand it.
“Let’s go. Now.” She grabbed Kai’s arm.
Before they could move, Daniel Cross stepped into their path.
Daniel Cross—the sole heir of the Cross family. Seventy percent of the region’s tax revenue flows from his family’s empire, Cross Steel. This steel giant has dominated the local economy since his grandfather’s era, a true king among men. With a background like this, almost nothing is out of Daniel’s reach—if he wants it, he gets it.
But now, he was like an eggplant struck by frost—wilted and drained of all fire.
“Is it true?” His voice shook. “Is this guy really your husband?”
Lila’s face flushed with embarrassment. Daniel’s shouting was drawing every eye in the room. She stepped forward, voice sharp. “Daniel, don’t push this any further. Move aside.”
“You can’t be serious.” Daniel’s hands clenched into fists.
In his mind, this was impossible—Lila was supposed to be his, the perfect match to seal his family’s rise. He’d spent months courting her, showering her with gifts, making sure everyone knew she was off-limits. This nobody couldn’t just steal her.
“Did they force you? Did your family pressure you into this?” His voice rose, desperate. “If you can’t fight back, I will. I’ll talk to them. I’ll help you get out of this marriage. You don’t have to—”
Kai’s eyes narrowed as Daniel’s hand shot toward Lila’s arm. Another man touching his wife—forced or not. The doorman’s sneer, the crowd’s whispers, the endless underestimation since the door... it all clicked into place.
But Daniel grabbing at Lila—his wife, whether either of them wanted it or not, was a line.
“Let go,” Kai said quietly.
Daniel ignored him completely, his fingers closing around Lila’s other arm. “Just tell me the truth. Did they make you—”
The dismissal irritated him more than the words themselves. Like Kai wasn’t even worth acknowledging. Like he didn’t exist.
“I said let go.” Kai’s voice dropped lower, colder. The anger he’d been suppressing since the entrance finally started to surface.
“You have no right to speak here! You tricked her family into—”
That was it. Kai’s control snapped.
He grabbed Daniel by the collar and slammed him into the wall.
The impact rattled the picture frames. Daniel’s breath left his lungs in a wheeze. His face went red, then purple. Kai held him there, his expression carved from ice, the anger finally released but controlled—cold and precise.
“I said,” Kai repeated slowly, each word deliberate, “let go.”
He released him. Daniel collapsed against the wall, sliding down, coughing and gasping for air.
Daniel pushed himself off the wall, his face flushed dark red. He jabbed a finger at Kai, voice dripping with contempt. ‘You think that proves anything? Any thug can throw a sucker punch.’ He turned to address the crowd, playing to his audience. ‘This is the man Lila married? A nobody who can’t win with words so he resorts to violence? How pathetic. How did you do it, Walker? What lies did you feed her grandfather? What strings did you pull to trap her into this joke of a marriage?”
“What’s it got to do with you?” His voice was calm, dangerous. “She’s already married to me. What are you trying to do—steal another man’s wife?”
The crowd erupted.
“Fuck off, who the hell does he think he is?”
“Get back here! Who the fuck are you pretending to be?!”
“Don’t fucking run! If you’ve got the guts, fight me straight up. You think you’re some badass just running off after talking tough?!”
Kai raised a brow, his gaze sweeping over the hostile faces with open contempt. He snorted softly.
“You’re not even worth fighting.”The crowd completely snapped—faces flushed, necks bulging as they shouted for Kai to stop, yet not a single one dared to actually make a move.
Until Maya stepped forward, her face flushed with anger she’d been holding back all night. “Then fight me.”
The crowd fell quiet—then whispers surged back in like a rising tide.
“What did she just say? Did I hear that right—Maya’s going to fight him?”
“He deserves it. No money, no backing, and still acting all high and mighty. Someone needs to teach him a lesson.”
“Exactly! Maya’s top three in the national fighting tournament. If she doesn’t beat the crap out of this guy today, it won’t be enough to vent our anger.”
“Go, Maya! Show him no mercy—we’re all behind you!”
A bad feeling crept up Kai’s spine as the situation grew trickier by the second. He sighed helplessly.
“Okay—but I don’t hit women.”Before the words could fade, a fierce palm strike cut through the air, carrying a faint, intoxicating trace of her scent. Kai’s eyes flickered. He moved in a flash, meeting force with softness, his broad hand closing around Maya’s punch.
Her fingers were shockingly cold. “A real cold-blooded one,” he muttered.
He released her at once, retreating to safety, brushing past her flowing hair as it whipped through the air.
“Save your breath,” Maya snapped, lunging at him again. “Take it like a man.”
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Chapter 48
The pillow barrier came down on a Tuesday.Neither of them announced it. Kai moved the pillows back to the headboard stack before Lila came out of the bathroom and when she emerged and saw the bed she looked at it for a moment and then got in on her side without comment. He turned off the lamp on his side. She turned off hers.The dark was the same dark as before. The distance was different.He was aware of her in the specific way you are aware of someone when the physical boundary that had been organizing that awareness is removed. The sound of her breathing. The particular way the mattress registered her weight and position. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and thought about the legal deadline and the evidence package Patricia was compiling and whether any of it would be sufficient and then made himself stop thinking about it because that was not a useful way to spend the night.He fell asleep eventually.He woke at two-seventeen by the clock on the nightstand, sitting u
Chapter 47
The conference room was on the third floor of a building that housed family court mediation services, which meant the walls were painted the particular shade of institutional beige that communicated neutrality and produced the opposite effect. Kai sat at the table with their lawyer, Patricia Chen, and looked at the beige walls and thought about how Richard had managed to make this happen in a week.The answer was that Richard had probably been preparing it for longer than a week and had filed when the moment suited him. The gala coverage had forced his hand. A positive morning in the papers was a shrinking window and Richard understood windows.The opposing lawyer was a man named Forsythe who had the specific manner of someone who had been paid to be unpleasant and had made peace with that. He arranged his documents on the table with the deliberateness of someone who wanted you to see how many there were.The judge overseeing the preliminary hearing was a woman named Caldwell, mid-six
Chapter 46
The morning papers arrived at seven and Vincent sent the digital links twenty minutes before that. Kai read them at the desk in Marcus's study, which had been cleaned and lit properly now that the generators were running permanently, and which he had been spending more time in than the master bedroom.The coverage was better than he had expected and he understood why immediately. The venue story had leaked before the gala, which meant the journalists who attended had arrived expecting a visible failure and found something else instead. Failure redeemed made a better story than success maintained. He understood this. He had given them the narrative they needed and they had used it.The Thorne Heir's Dramatic Return, one headline read. Another called the ruins venue audacious. A third ran a photograph of the entrance arch with the string lights visible through it and a caption about legacy reclaimed. Gerald Vance was quoted in one piece saying he found the evening impressive. Mrs. Black
Chapter 45
The first cars arrived at seven-thirty.Kai watched them from the entrance arch, the headlights moving up the drive through the cleared grounds, and thought about the last time vehicles had come up this road. Ten years ago they would have been fire trucks. He let the thought arrive and pass and straightened his jacket.The transformation held. That was the thing he hadn't been certain of until this moment, standing in it with other people present. In the daylight it had looked like ambition applied to wreckage. In the evening, with the string lights running through the open roof frames and along the standing walls and across the garden where the crews had cleared a decade of growth, it looked like something else. The blackened stone caught the light differently than new stone would have. The empty window frames became architecture. The collapsed east wing, carefully bordered and left as it was, looked intentional, a monument rather than a ruin.He heard a woman near the entrance say i
Chapter 44
The decision came at eleven-thirty at night, which was probably relevant to how it got made.Kai was sitting in Eleanor's study with a list of venues Vincent had compiled, each one annotated with capacity, availability, and the specific way it fell short of the Aldridge. A hotel ballroom that could manage the numbers but carried the aesthetic of a corporate conference. A private club that was technically available but whose membership list overlapped significantly with the people most likely to interpret the change as retreat. A rooftop space that was too small and too casual and would reframe the entire event in a way that served Richard's narrative rather than dismantling it.He set the list down and thought about the property Eleanor had returned to him.Lila was at the other end of the desk when he said it. She looked up from the catering contract she had been trying to salvage."The Thorne estate," he said.She looked at him for a moment. "Kai.""It's my property. It's large enou
Chapter 43
The rehearsal dinner was Lila's idea, framed as a practical necessity. Twelve guests, people who would be at the gala and who carried enough social weight that getting them wrong on the night would have consequences. A dry run, she called it. An opportunity to practice before the actual event.Kai understood the logic. He did not enjoy the three days leading up to it.Lila had constructed a system. Index cards, which she presented without irony, each one carrying a name, a face pulled from a social directory, a brief history of the relevant relationships, and the specific things that should not be said. She went through them with him at the desk in Eleanor's study each evening, running the stack like flashcards, asking questions, correcting errors, starting again.He was not good at it.The problem wasn't retention. He could retain information. The problem was that the information felt constructed, a scaffolding of social facts assembled to simulate familiarity that didn't exist, and
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