She stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of her home with a tumbler of thirty-year-old scotch in her hand, watching the city lights stretch into infinity. Everything didn't make any sense anymore.
The raw vulnerability from the AR Lab, Theo's unexpected shield, The threat to crack the carefully constructed facade she'd built. Memories of Sophia, of Liam, of the impossible choice, pressed in demanding attention she refused to give.
Even when she left the office to feel light, they still followed her home.
She needed to reassert control. To feel dominion over something, anything, after a day that had stripped it away. The ache in her chest wasn't a void to be filled but a challenge to be conquered.
The doorbell chimed, soft and discreet. Her guest had arrived.
Cyrus was perfect for this, a corporate lawyer, handsome in that slick, self-assured way she often found tedious in boardrooms but ideal for nights like this. He knew it already; what they shared was just a transaction of orgasm. No messy emotions, no complicated expectations,
"You look like you've had a long day," he said, his voice a practiced purr as he stepped inside.
"Something like that." She didn't offer details. He didn't ask. The rules were clear.
Her fingers unbuttoned his shirt, slow and deliberate, baring his chest. His breath hitched slightly as her nails raked lightly over his skin. A flicker of raw desire in his eyes, a tangible surrender.
Good.
She led him to the bedroom, not waiting, but commanding. The king-sized bed dominated the space, its black silk sheets stark against the minimalist white walls
Her hands removed the only item left on him; a pair of blue boxers relishing the hard dick now in the open, with her robe discarded, her body all tension and edge. The city's skyline bled blue through the blinds, but she only had eyes for the man beneath her.
Her hips moved with slow deliberation, not inviting pleasure, but dragging it out like dominance written in skin.They were precise, deliberate, drawing out his responses, pushing him to the brink, then holding him there. She reveled in the subtle tremor in his hands, the involuntary gasp he couldn't quite suppress.
This was control. This was power. This was proving she was still unbreakable. She rode the waves of sensation she created, not as release, but as confirmation of her own formidable will.
Cyrus reached for her waist, but she stopped him. "Don't guide. Don't hold."
She wanted friction, not comfort.
He adjusted, letting her dictate pace, pressure and depth. She gasped finally, head tipping back.
It wasn't romance.
It was mastery. Every moan she allowed was curated, a controlled leak in her steel chamber.
When she came again, it was on her terms with her eyes open, lips parted, a study in slow collapse..
When it was over, a sheen of sweat on both their bodies, Cyrus propped himself up on one elbow, his breathing still heavy as he looked at her, a strange glint in his eyes that was more than just post-coital haze.
"You weren't really here, were you?" he murmured, his voice surprisingly quiet.
Juliet pulled the sheet up to cover herself, a sudden chill despite the warmth of the room. "I was here enough."
"Were you?" His finger traced the line of her jaw, a touch that felt unnervingly perceptive.
"Because you felt like you were somewhere else entirely. Or rather, that you were trying to control somewhere else entirely through me."
The observation hit too close to home. She turned away, reaching for her robe. "I should call you a car."
"Juliet." His voice carried an unexpected note of genuine concern, or perhaps, genuine annoyance at being seen through.
"Whatever happened today, whatever's eating at you,this isn't helping. You're just... tighter."
She tied the robe's belt with sharp, decisive movements. "I'm fine."
She looked away, completely unwelcoming the next word Cyrus had to utter, then her phone buzzed against the nightstand. The sound cut through the tension like a blade, sharp and insistent.
She glanced at the screen and felt her blood turn to ice.
It was Theo.
She sighed and answered on the second ring, her voice carefully controlled despite the way her pulse had accelerated. "It's late, Theo."
"I know." His voice was tight with exhaustion and something else—excitement? Fear? "I'm still at the office. I found something. Something that changes everything."
"Can't it wait until morning?"
"No." The single word carried the weight of absolute certainty.
"Juliet, I cracked the encryption on the fragmented files from the lab. The ones the hacker tried to destroy."
She felt Cyrus's eyes on her, watching her reaction with professional interest. She turned away, focusing on Theo's voice.
"What did you find?"
"Birth records. Adoption papers. And a video file dated sixteen years ago." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
"It's surveillance footage from the hospital. The day you gave birth."
The room seemed to tilt around her. The phone felt slippery in her suddenly sweating palm.
"That's impossible. There were no cameras in the maternity ward—" she muttered in a low tone not meaning for him to hear and also wanting an answer from him. From anybody.
"There were. Hidden ones. Security footage from the hallway outside your room." Theo's voice carried a note of something that might have been pity.
"Juliet, someone was watching. Someone recorded everything, including who visited you after the adoption was finalized."
"Who?"
"That's what you need to see." The silence stretched between them, filled with implications that made her stomach churn. Someone who stayed and left with something in their hands."
Juliet's knees nearly buckled. "What kind of something?"
"Medical records. DNA samples. And what looks like..." He paused, and she could hear him breathing heavily. "What looks like photographs of the baby."
The words hit her like a physical blow. Someone had been there, in her most vulnerable moment, stealing pieces of her daughter's identity. But who? And why had they waited sixteen years to act?
"How quickly can you get here?" Theo asked.
Juliet closed her eyes, feeling the weight of sixteen years of carefully constructed lies beginning to crumble. "Twenty minutes."
"I'll be waiting. And Juliet?" His voice was grim. "Bring security. Because whoever took those files sixteen years ago... I think they're our hacker."
She ended the call and turned to find Cyrus watching her with the kind of professional assessment that made her skin crawl.
"Bad news?" he asked, already reaching for his clothes.
"The worst kind." She was already moving toward her closet, her mind racing. "I need you to leave. Now."
As Cyrus dressed in silence, Juliet pulled on a black suit that felt like armor. Whatever Theo had found, whatever truth was waiting for her in those files, she would meet it as she met everything else, with steel in her spine and ice in her veins.
But as she watched Cyrus leave, as she prepared to face whatever revelations awaited her, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been playing a very long game.
Someone who had been watching her for sixteen years, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
And now, with her empire under attack and her past bleeding into her present, that moment had finally come.