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Because this wasn’t just for me.

Down the road, Charlie will remember the break-in. The chaos. The fear. But I want her to remember this too—that we didn’t crumble. That I stood in the fire andfinishedsomething. That dreams aren’t disposable just because things get hard. That she won’t have to sacrifice everything to survive.

And for all the damage our shared mother caused—for all the trauma and mess she left behind—she still gave me Charlie. Dropped her in my arms when I was seventeen and forced me to become something stronger than I ever planned to be.

No matter what else she broke, that was the one thing she got right. For that, I’ll always be grateful. I breathe deep, letting that gratitude settle. Letting it shore up the cracks I’ve been patching all week.

And then?—

Three slow taps at the door.

Not loud. Not impatient. Just... deliberate.

My breath catches.

Because I already know who it is.

ChapterTwenty-One

BLAKE

He’s leaning against the frame like it owes him something. Shadowed on one side, hallway light on the other. Malachi. Immaculate in his suit from the balcony suite. All tailored dominance and dark temptation. One hand tucked in his pocket. The other curled loose at his side, as though even now—especially now—he has to leash the claws itching to sink into something soft. Something waiting. Something like me.

The noise from backstage doesn’t follow him in. It falters against whatever gravity he carries, sucked back into the world below. Because Malachi isn’t a man so much as an event. A phenomenon with a pulse. The air tightens around the low hum of his presence, scent unwinding into the room like silk ribbons dropped in static. Cypress sharpened by frost. Star anise and iron. Lightning char held in leather seams. I taste it on the back of my tongue the moment he crosses the threshold.

I’m already trembling before he closes the door. The latch clicks and it anchors every part of me to the floor—but it also makes me feel like the thing I’ve fought not to be around him: prey.

I told him no. Backstage, just before the show began. He asked me to sit beside him—offered a seat in that private box designed for power players to sip top-shelf liquor and carve out empires with a glance. And I refused. Professional boundaries, I told myself. Control. Decorum. The only power I thought I had left.

I turned him down, unable to look at him without feeling the embarrassment of my unintended confession—like if I kept my distance, I could pretend I hadn’t laid something so personal between us, raw and uninvited.

Now he’s here. And I don’t know if I want to run or beg him to close the distance.

“You were brilliant tonight,” he says, his voice so low I feel it more than I hear it. “Flawless execution. You made tonight the success it was.”

No dark flirtation, no barbed confession pulled into a seduction I can’t refuse. The smoothness is there, velvet-laced iron, but beneath it is something twisted with ache. A fracture, spreading slow. I blink. It would be nothing if someone else said it. A compliment from a boss. But from him?

I feel it like a bruise beneath my ribs.

My office is small, but with him inside, it feels minuscule. He takes up all the oxygen in the room, my head starting to spin. The thoughts I’ve been resisting, ignoring desperately, are sliding forward. I can’t deny it, not when we’re alone like this. I want Malachi. I crave him like a woman crazed. I can’t deny it any longer.

“I came in with six days to go,” I murmur, forcing my voice steady. “The cast, the crew? They were already doing the heavy lifting. I just… tightened things. Got us over the finish line.”

He steps closer. He’s not looking at me like I’m his employee. Not like a colleague whose performance he’s assessing. No. He’s looking at me like I’m already his—like I always have been—and realizing it’s pointless to deny it anymore.

He should terrify me.

But he doesn’t.

He never has.

“I should be elsewhere,” Malachi says, his tone roughening slightly as he starts toward me. “Connecting with potential investors, potential clients to book private events. Sit, drink, nod at senators. Shake hands with men who couldn’t stomach the darkness they pretend to control. I should be out there, smiling for the sake of the future of this place.”

Another step. Then another.

“And I was.”

I don’t move, can’t breathe—not when he keeps coming, slow and deliberate until the space between us is gone. Until the desk presses into the backs of my thighs and he’s close enough to bend the air around me.