Chapter 413
Later, replaying the day’s events in the suffocating silence of the night, I would curse myself for that moment of weakness — for letting the pain blind me to the serpent that had just slithered into my vault. But for now, the darkness swallowed the warning whole.
I closed the laptop and let the storm outside consume the room, completely oblivious to the trap being laid.
Adelia
The penthouse had devolved into a meticulously designed mausoleum of white marble and suffocating silence.
It had been three days since Dallas discharged himself, and in that time he had become the most insufferable patient in existence. He refused my help entirely. Every time I entered the same room, he looked at me as though I were a porcelain doll about to shatter, then turned his gaze away with a clenched jaw.
He had locked himself inside his study behind a fortress of endless video calls. His scent — usually a comforting blend of storm and cedar — bled through the heavy mahogany door sharp, acrid, and soured with pain.
I was drowning in this cold, tense rhythm, forced to watch the man I loved dismantle himself from the inside out while I waited for the annulment papers to arrive.
On the afternoon of the third day, the private intercom chimed. Assuming it was one of Azalea’s tutors, I walked to the foyer and pulled open the heavy door.
A young she-wolf stood in the hallway. A cloying, overly sweet floral perfume immediately assaulted my senses, barely masking a darker, more calculating musk underneath. “Hi,” she smiled, though her eyes remained entirely dead. “I’m Cassia, from Finance. Is Dally around?”
Dally.
The intimate, familiar nickname made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My posture stiffened instantly. I had no wolf to growl for me, but my human instinct for danger was screaming.
“He’s resting,” I said, keeping my voice dangerously even. “I can take whatever you have for him.”
Cassia clutched a manila folder to her chest, her artificial smile tightening. “I’m afraid this is highly sensitive. Marshall family business only.”
I stepped fully into the doorway, refusing to yield an inch of my territory. “I am still his legal wife. Hand it over.”
Her jaw clenched. Reluctantly, she shoved the folder into my hands. “Fine. But tell him his family misses him,” she purred, turning on her heel and strutting toward the elevator.
I closed the door, my skin crawling with unease. As I turned to set the folder on the entryway console table, a sliver of glossy paper caught my eye, peeking out from beneath a carved moonstone bowl.
I pulled it out. It was an old, faded Polaroid. A young Kaelen Marshall — Dallas’s late father — was holding a little girl with striking, hauntingly familiar features. I flipped it over. Scrawled in faded black ink were the words: My little serpent.
“What is that?”
I jumped. Azalea was standing at the edge of the foyer, a half-eaten apple in her hand. She walked over and peered over my shoulder. The moment her eyes landed on the photograph, all the color drained from her face. The apple slipped from her fingers and hit the marble floor with a dull thud.