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Chapter 8
“Seraphina, you finally agreed to see me.” Hope flickered in Atticus’s eyes.
His voice shook as if he were clutching at his last straw. “Have you forgiven me? I’ll throw Anya out right now. We can start over, just you and me. Please.”
I looked at him, cool and steady, and set a document on the table instead of indulging his fantasy. “Years ago your father and I made a
wager–ten years.
If you never wronged me in that time, I would stay by your side for life and keep you safe. But if you betrayed me…” I paused, tapped the will with a fingertip, and let the steel into my voice. “Nightfall Group is mine.”
I turned to the Elders behind me. “They witnessed it.‘
Color drained from Atticus’s face as if someone had struck him between the eyes.
“No… impossible,” he muttered, panic flooding his gaze. “Seraphina, I know I failed you. But Nightfall Group is the pack’s lifeblood. I’ll give you anything else–anything–but not this.”
In the face of Alpha Dorian’s will, his protest sounded brittle and absurd.
The shareholders moved to stand behind me without a word.
Their silence said more than speeches ever could.
Atticus was stripped of the chairman’s post on the spot.
He collapsed the sofa and chain–smoked, staring at nothing.
A day later, he’d made up his mind and knocked on my office door.
“Seraphina, I know it’s
late to say any of this,” he said, voice low and exhausted.
“But I should at least make amends. The company’s a mess. I can’t dump everything on you.”
He held out a folder. “I’m signing over the old house. Sell it if you need to. It’ll help with cash flow.”
I glanced at the papers and laughed once, without warmth.
“How long has it been since you went home, Atticus? You must not know that Anya already pawned the house to loan sharks.”
His brow knotted. “No. The deed is still in my name-
I clapped my hands.
Liam walked in with Anya in tow and dropped her at his feet.
“Ask her,” he said. “She didn’t just move your assets. She had you sign a property transfer while you were drunk.”
His eyes were flat and cold. “If my people hadn’t stopped her, she’d already be on a flight to Mexico.”
Anya was a wreck–hair wild, bruises mottling her face.
Pressed by Liam’s men, she spilled everything
Atticus’s pupils dilated. He seized her throat, eyes gone blood–red. “I treated you well, and you stabbed me in the back!”
Anya’s mouth split in a laugh edged with madness. “Treated me well? Do you know who I hate most in this world? You and Seraphina.”
Her stare cut to me, sharp as a blade. “Eight years ago, why did you save Atticus and not my parents? Because he was heir to a fortune and worth more than they were?”
Silence stretched.
Chapter 8
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In my mind the old scene unspooled: the crash, Atticus broken and innocent; Anya’s parents–fresh from robbing a bank–driving against traffic into him and turning the road into a slaughter.
I saved Atticus because he was blameless. They weren’t,
Anya had never believed it.
In her story, everything bent to power and money.
Atticus turned his head, a bleak chill rolling off him.
“So you knew all along that Seraphina was saving me,” he said, voice low, the threat barely leashed, “and you still made me think she was poisoning me?”
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