Aria ran through the hidden emergency exit of the panic room, her heart shattering with every step. Gunfire and shouts echoed behind her as Dante fought the consortium soldiers pouring into the room. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. The evidence, the recordings, her mother’s dying words, and now “Project Pawn” — it was too much. The man she loved, the one who had watched her rise from a weak contract bride to a queen, might have been planning her destruction from the very first night.
Tears blurred her vision as she sprinted down the narrow service corridor, gun heavy in her hand. Her arm still burned from the earlier graze wound, but the pain in her chest was far worse. “How could you?” she whispered to herself, voice breaking. “How could you make me love you if I was always just a pa
