By morning, the estate had returned to its delicate, deceptive quiet.
Guards resumed their rotations. Staff whispered again in corners. The wreckage from the explosion had been cleaned away so thoroughly, it was almost as if it had never happened.
But Tricia knew better.
Some wounds didn’t leave marks. They sat under the skin like rot. Hidden. Growing.
She stood barefoot in the sitting room, coffee untouched, staring at the place where the red rose had once been laid across the stone steps.
It was gone now. Just like the man who’d tried to kill her.
But something inside her had shifted since that night.
She was no longer just afraid of Christopher’s world.
She was in it.
---
Knight Tower – Manhattan
Christopher leaned back in the sleek leather chair of his private office high ab
