The words hit, soft and unguarded.
It wasn’t about surviving anymore, but being seen and surviving anyway.
Her throat closed around the lump forming there, and she didn’t speak.
She could’ve pulled away. Could’ve made a joke, shifted the moment.
But she didn’t.
She stayed still.
Let him learn her.
Let him trace the map of her past inked into skin.
When his lips slowly brushed over the tattoo, it didn’t feel like possession.
It was recognition.
Arden didn’t brace herself to be claimed.
She let herself be seen.
And God help her, she wanted to be.
?
Across the city, Evelyn Blackwell sat alone in the hush of her private study, the skyline gleaming through tall windows behind her, casting fractured shadows across the polished wood of her desk.
One perfectly manicured finger tapped the screen. No surprise. No outrage. Just quiet calculation.
Her eyes moved over the photos Colton had sent the night before.
They’re getting close. She spent the night.
She exhaled once through her nose, the sound barely audible.
At the corners of her lips: the hint of a smile that never quite formed.
Foolish girl.
Setting the phone down with precision, she rose and crossed to the window, the hem of her silk robe whispering over the floor.
Below, her gardens unfolded in orderly lines—every flowerbed symmetrical, every path exact.
Designed. Controlled.
As she preferred.
Beyond them, the city stretched wide and glittering—an empire she hadn’t just inherited, but shaped.
The Blackwell legacy wasn’t earned. It was enforced.
And Arden Rivers?
She was a weed. Tenacious, perhaps.
But weeds had a way of forgetting their place.
