Page 138 of Code of Heart

Even if it did border on maddeningly overbearing.

For most of the morning, she savored the peace, the crackle of the fire Levi had lit for her a soothing backdrop to her wandering thoughts.

Autumn had settled over Joia City, the air outside crisp and tinged with the faintest promise of cooler nights ahead. Levi hadleft earlier for an appointment, undoubtedly connected to his mission to take back Neuronix.

To his credit, he had kept himself remarkably busy this week, pouring every ounce of restless energy into two things: his warpath to take Neuronix back, which Owen had dramatically and affectionately dubbedThe Reckoning, and a second, equally unexpected project.

Owen had insisted the plan needed a name and had already decreed,“Tyler will rue the day he took Neuronix from us! There will be a reckoning!”

The name stuck, and so did the fire behind it. But when he wasn’t plotting corporate revenge, Levi had thrown himself into a new distraction.

After barely surviving the dinner he had referred to as “Satan’s Gruel”—and swearing never to cross Aurelia’s culinary justice system again—he had come to her with an unexpected request: he wanted to finish the second-floor renovations.

She hadn’t taken him seriously at first. But when he had mentioned she deserved a proper office, and that maybe they should think about those extra bedrooms…it hadn’t taken long for her to say yes.

What she hadn’t expected was the army of contractors who descended on the house the very next day. Sawdust still clung to the air, mingling with the smoke of the fire, while echoes of hammering and buzzing power tools seemed permanently etched into the walls.

And yet, true to form, Levi had kept it all running like a military operation. He stayed on top of the cleaning, ensuring the chaos never touched her little sanctuary downstairs.

Thanks to her injury and Levi’s outright banishment from the second floor until it was finished, she hadn’t seen any of it. For once, she hadn’t fought him on it, deciding to let herself be genuinely surprised.

Remarkably, all that work had been finished in just over a week, and was completed only the day before. But what really caught her attention were the oddly shaped black cases carried upstairs yesterday. Levi didn’t have to say a word; the steady rhythm echoing from above made it clear he had, in fact, set up his drum set.

Now, as she lounged in the warm glow of the fire, her thoughts inevitably drifted to everything that had led her to this fragile, quiet moment after a storm of violence and betrayal.

It had only been a week since her life had imploded.

Owen, working alongside Charles and the police, kept her informed as the investigation unfolded.

Selene’s injuries—aside from various abrasions, a broken nose, bruises, and a concussion—would heal. But her arrest had been swift. She was being held without bail, facing an extensive list of charges that in Aurelia’s eyes were still not enough.

Kyle had finally woken from his coma. The thought of him made her stomach churn with anger and disgust.

The silver lining was the moment he opened his eyes; he had folded like a deck chair in a hurricane, confessing everything and implicating Selene as the mastermind.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. In his desperation for leniency, Kyle had thrown both Tyler Faulkner and Selene under the bus. He had admitted that Selene had given the compromising photos he had taken of Aurelia to Tyler—linking them both to her attack.

Aurelia’s anger tangled into a bitter knot.

She didn’t know who she hated more—Selene for orchestrating the whole plot and handing over the photos that almost destroyed her reputation, or Tyler for using them as a weapon against Levi and his—their friends. At that moment, Tyler was winning that race, having climbed to the top of her list with every deceitful thing he had done.

Yet…even through her justified anger, she mourned Selene’s betrayal. How could she not?

She relived every memory, every moment of friendship, dissecting it under the harsh light of hindsight. Despite how much it hurt, she knew that wound would take far longer to heal than any of her physical injuries.

These thoughts continued to plague her until Charles had visited, carrying with him the crushing weight of Eleanor’s legacy…which came in the form of an overwhelming stack of paperwork that would officially transfer her assets.

The scale of it all was staggering.

Much of it had already been liquidated. But Starhaven Manor…and several other properties…

The idea of living there was impossible.

It wasn’t home.

But as she stared into the fire, a new vision took hold—one she hadn’t dared think about since she first learned of the inheritance. How Starhaven could become something more.

A sanctuary. A place ofhope.