2026-10-03 19:27:54
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Chapter 36 Part 3
"I know what it gives you." Vivian's amber eyes held his without flinching. "If I'm going to ask you to open your mind to me, then I'll put my life in your hands first. Fair exchange. You trust me with your memories. I trust you with my existence."Riley stepped forward from the table. "Vivian, you can't be serious. He could kill you with one tap.""Then he'd better not tap." Vivian looked at Kyle with those cold, steady amber eyes. "Accept it. Or admit you don't trust me either."Kyle looked at the notification. His thumb hovered over the accept button. Every survival instinct he had was screaming that this was a trap, a test, a manipulation. But the woman standing in front of him, soaking wet, trembling slightly from cold she would never acknowledge, had just handed him a weapon that could end her life, and done it in front of witnesses.He pressed accept.The terminal confirmed the transfer with a quiet chime. Vivian's shoulders loosened by a fraction that nobody would have noticed
Chapter 36 Part 2
His arms wrapped around Scarlett's waist from behind and locked there, his face pressed into the back of her jacket, his fingers gripping the fabric so hard his knuckles turned white."Don't go." Kyle's voice cracked against her spine, muffled and shaking. "Don't go out there. Please. Scarlett, please don't go out there."Scarlett went still. Her hand stayed on the door handle, the storm roaring through the opening, rain splattering across the hallway floor and soaking both of them from the knees down."If you fight her in the rain, one of you gets hurt." Kyle's voice was raw, stripped of every performance he had ever given, carrying nothing but the honest, ugly fear of a man who could not survive losing either of them. "If she gets hurt, I lose a wife and the burial law says we all die. If you get hurt, I lose the only person in this house who makes me feel like I might actually survive this world. Either way I lose. So please. Please don't walk through that door."Scarlett's fingers
Chapter 36 Part 1
Vivian set the photograph on the table and placed both hands flat beside it. Her amber eyes locked on Kyle with the focus of a surgeon preparing to cut."I need to see your memories." Vivian's voice left no room for negotiation. "Seven days ago. Every minute, every face, every word. If you didn't make that transfer, then someone planted the code using your terminal pattern. Either way, the proof is in your head.""You want to reach into my brain?" Kyle took a step backward. "The same way you reached into a dying man's skull? Absolutely not. I saw what was left of Scarface after you read him, Vivian. A pile of bones and a bad smell.""Memory extraction doesn't kill you." Vivian's lip curled. "It requires physical contact with the temple and a cooperative subject. The target has to stop resisting. I'm asking you to open your mind, not offering you a funeral.""You're asking me to let the woman who scores negative seventy nine on my trust board crawl around inside my head like a tourist.
Chapter 35 Part 3
"Seven days ago, someone walked into Torres's office and handed him one hundred five star crystal cores. Not as payment for a fight. Not as a betting stake. As a bounty. A contract to locate you, track your movements, and deliver your exact position at the city center market today."The room went completely still. Riley stood up from her chair. Bianca's arms uncrossed. Hailey turned from the counter with flour on her fingers."Someone paid him to find me?" Kyle's voice came out steady but thin. "Who?""That's what I'm asking you." Vivian stepped closer, her wet hair dripping onto Kyle's clean shirt. "One hundred five star crystal cores is a fortune. Only someone with access to serious wealth could afford a contract like that. Torres's memory showed the payment arriving through an anonymous terminal transfer, but the transfer code matched a signature pattern used exclusively by registered husbands in the east side settlement.""You think I paid someone to kidnap myself?" Kyle stared at
Chapter 35 Part 2
Riley stared at both of them for three more seconds, then looked at Scarlett. Scarlett sipped her coffee and said nothing, which was her way of saying everything.The front door opened again. Vivian walked in soaking wet, rain dripping from her hair, her clothes dark with water, and her hands completely empty. No saplings. No bags. No shopping cart. She left a trail of wet footprints across the entrance and into the hallway.Riley shot up from her chair. "Vivian! I just mopped that floor!""Then mop it again." Vivian walked past her without slowing, water pooling in her bootprints on the clean tiles."You are going to mop it." Riley grabbed a mop from the corner and shoved it toward Vivian's chest. "You walked in here dripping like a drowned rat across a floor I spent twenty minutes cleaning. You clean it up. Now.""I have better things to do." Vivian pushed the mop aside with one hand."You have nothing to do!" Riley's voice went up an octave. "You came back empty handed! Where are t
Chapter 35 Part 1
Kyle stood in the bathroom with his hand on the lock, hesitating. Two days ago he would have bolted it shut without thinking, barricaded the door, and stuffed cotton in his ears. That man felt like a stranger now.He turned the lock halfway, then stopped. Left it unlocked. If something came for him tonight, a locked door would not save him. His pistol would. His wives would. A bolt on a bathroom door was a comfort for the man he used to be, and that man did not live here anymore.He stepped into the hot water and let it hit his shoulders, watching the day run off his skin in thin rivers of gray and pink. Blood. Dust. Concrete. The smell of Scarface's basement leaving his body one layer at a time.Something had shifted inside him during those twenty seconds holding the trigger. Not courage. Not bravery. Something colder, harder, like a bone that had broken and healed back thicker. The world outside this house ran on violence, and the men who survived it were the ones who pulled the tri
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