2026-07-10 18:22:32
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 21: The Last Time
St. Louie's Hospital was four blocks from the club.Derek knew the route, he'd responded to an incident near here two years ago, a gas leak in a restaurant that had sent six people to emergency. He remembered the street layout, the width of the pavements, the small wooded area that separated the hospital's service road from the main approach. He'd filed it away the way he filed away all environments he moved through automatically, without deciding to.He was filing it away again now, for different reasons.Erin was conscious enough to hold onto him but not enough to walk. He had her against his chest, one arm under her knees, her head against his shoulder. She smelled like the club alcohol and expensive perfume and something underneath both that he recognized as just her, the particular human fact of her that three years of marriage had made familiar."Derek."Her voice was slurred but present."I'm here," he said. Not warmly. Just factually."Do you still—" She stopped. Started again
Chapter 20: Who Hit Her
Derek crouched down beside Erin and looked at her face.The cut at the corner of her mouth was still bleeding, not heavily, but steadily, the kind of bleeding that needed pressure. Her jaw was already swelling along the line where she'd been hit. Her eyes were half-open, tracking him without fully focusing, the delayed recognition of someone operating several layers below full consciousness.He took the folded cloth from his coat pocket, he'd grabbed it from the hospital room on the way out, the same instinct that made him check his gear before every call and pressed it gently against the cut.Erin made a small sound.She blinked. The focus in her eyes sharpened slightly, the way it does when something pulls a person back from the edge of themselves. She looked at Derek's face, close to hers, and something moved through her expression that wasn't quite surprise — more like the confirmation of something she'd been holding onto in the dark.He came.Her hand moved toward his. Slow, unce
Chapter 19: He came
The corridor was narrow and poorly lit, the kind of deliberate design choice that made things easier to deny afterward.Two men had Erin by the arms, moving her with the unhurried efficiency of people who believed they had time. She was barely conscious — her feet dragging, her head dropping forward, the rhythm of her breathing slow and uneven. The music from the main floor was still audible behind them, muffled now, a dull pulse through the walls.Kitty ran after them and was stopped at the entrance to the corridor by a third man who put himself in her path and didn't move. She tried to get around him. He caught her arm and held it, not violently, just immovably, with the casual certainty of someone who didn't expect to be challenged seriously.Kitty stopped fighting him and looked at her phone.Derek had replied.Two words: *On my way.*She looked up at the man blocking her path and then past him at the corridor where Erin had disappeared."Derek is coming," she said. Her voice was
Chapter 18: The Real Danger
The first drink she reached for wasn't hers.Nobody said anything about it. That was the thing about rooms like this, certain behaviors passed without comment because comment itself was a kind of boundary, and boundaries were not what this room was built for.Erin drank. She wasn't counting anymore. The music was loud enough that she could feel it in her sternum, which was useful because it meant she didn't have to feel other things. Derek's message sat in the wreckage of her phone on the table, she couldn't read it anymore but she didn't need to. She had it memorized in the way you memorize things that hit hard enough.*We're signing the divorce papers tomorrow.*She had another drink.The calculation she'd been running all day, the strategic one, the one about resources and leverage and political futures — had gone quiet. What was left underneath it wasn't strategy. It was something older and less dignified. She wanted Derek to hurt. She wanted him to see what he'd pushed her to. If
Chapter 17: The Performance
Erin had never lost a negotiation she'd prepared for properly.The problem with Derek, she decided, was that she had never prepared for him. She'd underestimated him from the beginning, first as a prop, then as an inconvenience, and now, apparently, as someone with the resources and the resolve to actually walk away from her. That had been her mistake. She understood it now.She wouldn't make it again.She knew Derek. Three years of living with someone gave you the architecture of them, the things that moved them, the things they couldn't ignore. Derek was a protector. It was the organizing principle of everything he'd ever done. He'd walked into burning buildings because he couldn't help it. He'd shielded her in a stairwell on instinct, taking a beam across the leg without hesitating. Even when she'd given him every reason to leave her there.He would come for her. She just had to give him a reason.She chose the outfit carefully. A very revealing clothing, her big boobs barely cover
Chapter 16: One Final Chance
Derek was not in the ICU.He was in a private room on the fourth floor with a view of the city and a medical team that checked on him every two hours, which was more attention than he'd received in any hospital he'd ever been brought to as a firefighter. The West family physician had been direct: the wildfire injuries had never been properly treated. Three days of ignoring them while walking through firehouses and committee rooms had pushed his body past what it was willing to tolerate quietly. Severe exhaustion, blood loss that had been slow and persistent rather than dramatic, and the kind of accumulated damage that didn't announce itself until it was done negotiating.He'd need a week. Maybe less, with the resources available to him now.The difference those resources made was almost uncomfortable to think about.By the second day he was reading.Harlan had brought a selection of materials without being asked financial textbooks, current market reports, investment prospectuses, ana
You may also like
Revenge Of The Rejected Heir
Beautypete98.2K viewsAn Understated Dominance
Marina Vittori11.8M viewsThe Trillionaire's Heir
Renglassi340.0K viewsReturn of the son-in-law
Chessman77.9K viewsMy Cheating Wife Shocked: I'm the octomillionaire Heir
AL Farwa147 viewsThe Golden Dragon Emperor
Weaver155 viewsThe Supreme Chairman
Dragon Sly1.1K viewsRise of Mogul Son-in-Law: Ultimate Kevin Carson
Eziaku113 views