Page 96 of Forbidden Empire

My head dropped to his chest, heart pounding so hard it felt like a challenge, and his arms caged me in, pressing every inch of me into his bare heat.

He tangled a hand in my hair, his breath ghosting over my scalp. “Good morning, beauty.”

We remained there, suspended, until our breaths synchronized, and the world faded away.

But the questions wouldn’t stop clawing at me, demanding answers. I couldn’t hold them back anymore.

I broke the silence. “What happens now, Aidon?”

He exhaled, the sound ragged and final. I looked up, finding him staring at the ceiling, jaw clenched, eyes dark with something I couldn’t name.

“Now, we end it.”

His words were immovable, a final verdict, and the echoes of yesterday’s arguments still tangled in my mind.

He’d said ‘we,’ and I clung to the hope that meant he wouldn’t fight me anymore, that I was truly going with him to face Rhea.

“Together?” I breathed, needing to be certain, holding his gaze and searching for any flicker of doubt.

He pulled me into him, gentle but sure, guiding my head back to rest against his chest. I could hear the steady beat of his heart when he finally spoke.

“Always, Esme. Always.”

His promise lingered between us, light and soft, curling around me and making me feel weightless, a kind of happiness swirling in my chest because I knew the fight was over. I didn’t have to argue with him again.

Not about this.

I melted into the safety of his arms. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt like I belonged somewhere. Like I was home.

I could get used to this, I realized.

If only it wasn’t so dangerous.

Twenty

AIDON

The overhead lights caught only half their faces, leaving the rest to darkness. The air felt dense enough to choke on. These men, rivals, not friends, sat too close in my private room, the same room where I'd made men beg, where the carpet still held secrets no cleaner could remove.

Rhea's downfall required this unholy alliance, this fragile scaffold of mutual need.

My eyes never stopped moving.

I cataloged every micro-expression, every shift in posture, waiting for the mask to slip. We shared a common enemy in Rhea, each nursing wounds too personal to name aloud, but that didn't make us brothers.

It made us wolves circling the same carcass.

Thalassios Adrias claimed the seat nearest to mine, his gaze slicing through the shadows between us.

The Atlantis Casino stood as his crowning achievement, a temple where the elite came to worship at the altar of chance.

Within those walls of his creation, velvet drapes absorbed whispered confessions while gold fixtures reflected the hollow eyes of those who'd lost everything.

Through perpetual clouds of cigar smoke, the wealthy, the famous, and those with blue blood in their veins all bent to the same primal urges.

Thal hadn't just gambled, he breathed it, inherited it, craved it like a man possessed.

When his father built that first casino in Atlantic City, little Thal had stumbled his first steps across that floor, chips clicking and cards whispering all around him.