Valentina POV
The moment Nikolai left Belladonna, I locked my office door behind him, sealing myself in with the silence.
Not because I was afraid; fear had never been my instinct. But because I needed to think, undisturbed by anyone or anything.
Outside, the city stretched endlessly beyond the glass walls, alive with traffic, voices, and the pulse of Manhattan. But in my office, there was only stillness, a pocket of quiet where the chaos couldn’t reach me.
The air felt heavy, thick with the weight of the morning’s revelations.
On my desk lay three photographs, each one deliberate, each one an intrusion. Three moments of my life that someone had stolen without permission, each image a violation of boundaries I thought I’d fortified long ago.
I studied them again, tracing the detai
