Chapter 12
It was past midnight when Linsey stirred awake.
She wasn’t sure what pulled her from sleep—maybe it was the strange hush in the room or the chill crawling along her spine. She turned slowly, expecting to find Collin beside her.
But his side of the bed was empty.
She sat up, the sheets tangled around her legs. Soft light spilled under the door from the hallway. She got up and padded quietly through the penthouse, past the living room, following the faint sound of voices.
Collin stood in his office, half in the dark, on the phone.
“No. I don’t care what it costs,” he said, voice sharp and low. “I want everything Joanna’s touched traced and exposed. If she thinks she can blackmail my wife and walk away clean, she’s wrong.”
Linsey stopped at the doorway.
He didn’t see her at first. He was pacing slowly, his other hand clenched into a fist.
“She went after Linsey’s past, now I want hers dragged into the light. Every skeleton, every lie. No restraint.”
Linsey stepped forward. “You don’t have to do that.”
He turned, startled.
She crossed her arms gently. “I don’t want this to become a war.”
Collin ended the call without another word and slipped the phone into his pocket. “She made it one.”
“But if we go down this road,” Linsey said quietly, “what do we become?”
Collin looked at her for a long moment, and for the first time in a while, she saw a flicker of something behind his guarded expression—exhaustion. Not physical, but emotional. The kind that only builds when someone’s been fighting too long.
“You don’t have to protect me like this,” she added.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “Because the world keeps trying to paint you as weak, and I won’t stand for it.”
She stepped forward and rested her hand on his chest. “I don’t need revenge. I need peace.”
Collin wrapped his arms around her, his forehead pressing against hers. “Then that’s what we’ll find.”
But as he held her close, another secret burned at the back of his mind—something he hadn’t told her yet. Something that had been hidden for five long years.
He had known more about her back then than he ever admitted.
He didn’t just stumble upon her in the bookstore.
He’d gone there… looking for her.
Back when she was just a name on a document. Back when he had been asked to destroy her.
But instead, he had walked away from the deal—and from her. And he had kept that secret buried ever since.
Now it threatened to rise again.
Meanwhile, across town, Joanna smirked from her high-rise apartment as her private investigator handed her a flash drive.
“This is everything?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “His first investors. His first failed startup. And the contract that tied him to the cartel that funded it.”
Joanna’s smile widened. “Perfect.”
She glanced over at Felix, who sat on the couch, shoulders hunched.
“Still think they’re untouchable?” she asked him.
Felix didn’t reply. He looked tired—tired of fighting, tired of losing.
But Joanna? She was just getting started.
“Let’s see how Linsey handles the truth about the man she married,” Joanna whispered.
Back at the penthouse, Linsey fell asleep beside Collin again, unaware that the next hit wouldn’t come for her past—but his.
And this time, it would cut deeper than either of them expected.