Chapter 35
Bonus PoV - Grace
Outside Evelyn's Office
Grace wasn’t supposed to be here. She knew that. She knew she should have been powdering her lipstick, perfecting her next performance, planning her next move. But the universe had a habit of rewarding the beautifully vicious.
She was halfway to Evelyn Hart’s office, one more cutting remark ready to decorate the girl’s morning—when she halted.
Voices. Male. Confident. Familiar. She tilted her head.
Aiden. She slinked closer, her heels silent on the plush carpet.
The door was cracked—just barely—an invitation the world would call accidental.
She called it destiny. Grace leaned in, breath sharp, eyes glittering. “He never gave up on you. Not for a second.”
Aiden’s voice. Clear. Certain. Close. Her pulse stopped. Then raced. Oh? She pressed a manicured hand to the wall, listening harder, leaning so closely her perfume kissed the air that wasn’t hers.
Never gave up? On her? A slow, sin-sweet smile curved across her lips. Alexander Hunt—her Alexander—who once bled for her, who once worshipped her shadow, who once believed she was the sun that rose and set for him…He had found someone else to orbit. And it wasn’t her.
It wasn’t the blonde goddess in designer heels. It was the quiet girl with trembling hands and secondhand shoes. The girl with no pedigree. No armor. No idea the world would eat her alive if someone didn’t teach her how to bite first.
Grace’s smile turned razor thin. “Well, well,” she whispered, a wicked hum curling through her throat. “Isn’t this… interesting.”
They thought they won. They thought deleting a video erased her power.
They thought cutting her digital strings left her useless, declawed, defanged.
But they forgot something fundamental: Blackmail was a tool.
Manipulation was an art. And love—love was the weapon that killed without leaving fingerprints.
She stepped back from the door, her heels clicking again slow, deliberate, triumphant. “He loves her…” she murmured to herself, tasting the words like wine. “Perfect.”
Love made fools. Made martyrs. Made men like Alexander reckless. And women like Evelyn? Breakable. So wonderfully, tragically breakable. So beautifully and deliciously fragile.
Grace walked away with a predator’s confidence, her silhouette slicing through the hallway lights like a blade.
Let them think the storm had passed. Let them breathe.
Let them hope. Because now she had what she truly wanted: A reason to burn their world from the inside out.
And she was going to enjoy every second.