POV: Isolde Sterling

My apartment in Kensington was usually my sanctuary. Tonight, it felt like a cage.

I paced the living room, still in my engagement dress, clutching a glass of cold water. My mind was a chaotic storm.

Julian.

He was alive. And god, he was different. The Julian of five years ago was a scholar, a gentle man who quoted poetry and played the cello. This man? This man was war personified.

The way he moved-fluid, lethal. The way he looked at me-like he wanted to devour me whole. I should be terrified. I should be calling the police or Harrison.

Instead, I was... wet.

The realization made me flush with shame. I was engaged to his brother. But the memory of Julian's rough lips on my knuckles, the sheer power radiating off him, woke something primal in me. My body ached with a sudden, sharp longing.

I needed to get out of this dress.

I walked into my bedroom and reached back to undo the clasp. It was jammed. My hands were shaking too much.

"Damn it," I hissed, struggling with the zipper.

"Allow me."

I spun around, a scream dying in my throat.

Julian was sitting in my velvet armchair, in the dark corner of my bedroom. He had bypassed my security system-state-of-the-art biometrics-as if it were a child's toy.

He had ditched the tie. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, exposing the hollow of his throat and a hint of a dark tattoo peeking out from his collarbone. He held a cigarette, unlit, rolling it between his long fingers.

"How did you get in?" I demanded, trying to sound imperious, though my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"I have my ways," he said smoothly. He stood up. The room suddenly felt very small.

He walked toward me, slow and deliberate. He stopped inches away, his heat enveloping me. He smelled of rain, whiskey, and danger.

"Turn around, Isolde," he commanded. It wasn't a request.

My body obeyed before my mind could protest. I turned my back to him, exposing my vulnerable spine to the man who had just risen from the dead.

I felt his fingers brush against my bare skin. They were calloused, rough. The contrast against the smooth silk and my soft skin was maddening. I gasped, my head falling forward.

"You're tense," he murmured, his breath hot against the nape of my neck.

"You broke into my house, Julian."

"I came to collect what's mine."

He found the jammed zipper. But he didn't pull it down immediately. He traced the line of my spine with his thumb, applying just enough pressure to make my knees weak.

"Harrison doesn't know how to touch you," Julian whispered, his voice dark and velvety. "He touches you like you're porcelain. Breakable."

He gripped my hips with both hands, pulling me back against his hard chest. I could feel the wall of muscle behind me, solid and unyielding.

"I know you're not glass, Isolde," he growled against my ear, sending shivers down my legs. "You're steel wrapped in silk. And I'm the only one strong enough to bend you."

Zip.

The sound was loud in the quiet room. The dress loosened, sliding off my shoulders, pooling at my waist, held up only by the friction of my hips.

I was exposed. Vulnerable. And I had never felt more alive.

"Why are you here, Julian?" I whispered, trembling.

He spun me around, his eyes locking onto mine. The blue fire in them was roaring now.

"To start a war," he said. "And to ask you a question."

"What question?"

"When I burn Harrison's world to ash..." his hand slid up my bare arm to cup my neck, his thumb grazing my pulse. "Will you be standing by him? Or will you be ruling beside me?"

)

Julian left Isolde's apartment building by the side exit, stepping out into the London drizzle. The city smelled of wet pavement and exhaust fumes-a sharp contrast to the jasmine and fear he had left behind in the penthouse.

He didn't call a car. He walked. He needed the cold air to cool the heat in his blood. Touching Isolde, smelling her, seeing the way her pupils dilated when he exerted dominance... it was a dangerous drug. He wanted to go back up there and finish what he started, to tear that dress the rest of the way down.

But he had work to do. And he had a tail.

He had sensed them three blocks back. Four men. Heavy footsteps. Poor discipline.

Julian turned into a narrow alleyway behind a row of high-end boutiques in Knightsbridge. It was a dead end. A trap. Or rather, a slaughterhouse of his own making.

He stopped near a dumpster, lit a cigarette, and waited.

The four men rounded the corner. They weren't security guards like the ones at the gala. These were street muscle-East End thugs paid to break legs and ask questions later. They wore leather jackets and held varied lengths of pipe and knives.

"Lost, mate?" the leader sneered, tapping a lead pipe against his palm. He had a gold tooth and eyes that were too close together.

Julian took a long drag of the cigarette, the ember glowing orange in the gloom. "Harrison really has lost his touch. Sending amateurs? It's insulting."

"Harrison paid us five grand to put you in a wheelchair," Gold Tooth grinned. "Easy money."

"Five grand?" Julian sighed, flicking the cigarette butt into a puddle. "I'm worth at least fifty."

The leader lunged.

Julian didn't step back. He stepped in.

The lead pipe swung down, aiming for Julian's skull. Julian caught the man's wrist mid-swing with his left hand, his grip crushing the radius bone. With a sickening snap, the pipe clattered to the floor.

Before the scream could leave the man's throat, Julian drove his right elbow into the man's nose. Cartilage shattered. The leader dropped like a sack of cement.

"One," Julian counted calmly.

The other three rushed him.

It was a dance of violence. Julian moved with the efficiency of a machine. He ducked under a knife slash, grabbed the attacker by the back of the neck, and rammed his face into the brick wall. Thud.

The third man tried to tackle him. Julian sidestepped, tripped him, and stomped on his knee. The joint bent the wrong way. The scream echoed off the wet walls.

The fourth man-the youngest, barely twenty-froze. He held a knife, his hand shaking.

Julian straightened his cuffs. He wasn't even out of breath. He walked toward the boy, who dropped the knife and backed away until he hit the dumpster.

"P-please," the boy stammered.

Julian stopped inches from him. "Go back to my brother. Tell him the price has gone up."

"W-what price?"

"The price of his life," Julian whispered. "Now run."

The boy scrambled away, slipping on the wet cobblestones in his haste to escape.

Julian checked his knuckles. A little bruised, but functional. He pulled out his phone.

"Kai," he said into the receiver. "Trash has been taken out. I'm coming to the safehouse. Make sure Jax is awake. We have a company to dismantle."

POV: Third Person Limited (Julian)

The safehouse wasn't a penthouse. It was a converted bomb shelter beneath a defunct textile factory in East London. It smelled of ozone, old coffee, and stale pizza.

"You look like you've been on a date with a brick wall," a voice chirped from behind a wall of monitors.

Jax spun around in his ergonomic chair. He was the antithesis of the Thorne family. Messy red hair, a T-shirt that read I Paused My Game to Be Here, and grease stains on his jeans. He was twenty-three, a genius, and arguably the most annoying person Julian knew.

"Harrison sent a greeting party," Julian said, walking over to the holographic map table in the center of the room. "Is the intel ready?"

"Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear sh-yes, it's ready," Jax grinned, taking a bite of a cold slice of pepperoni pizza. "Also, you're trending on Twitter. #TheReturnOf ThePrince. People are going wild. Half of them think you're a clone, the other half want to have your babies. It's hilarious."

Kai was in the corner, cleaning a combat knife. He didn't look up. "Focus, Jax."

"Right, right. Focus." Jax tapped his keyboard. The main screen lit up with a complex web of bank accounts.

"Okay, Boss. I dug into the Thorne Corp offshore accounts like you asked. It's messy. Harrison has been siphoning money to a shell company in the Caymans called 'Obsidian Lotus.' But here's the kicker-he's not the only signatory."

Julian leaned in, his eyes narrowing. "Who else?"

"Lord Alistair, obviously. But there's a third signature. It's encrypted, but I traced the IP routing." Jax's playful demeanor vanished. "It routes back to the Sterling Estate."

Julian froze. "Isolde's father?"

"Maybe," Jax shrugged. "Or Isolde herself."

Silence descended on the room. The air grew heavy.

"She's not involved," Julian said, his voice low and dangerous.

"Boss," Kai warned from the corner, finally looking up. "Don't let your dick do the thinking. She's a Sterling. They've been bedfellows with the Thornes for decades."

"She was sold to Harrison," Julian argued, though a seed of doubt planted itself in his gut. "She hates him."

"Hate and money are good neighbors," Jax quipped. "Look, all I'm saying is, be careful. This 'Obsidian Lotus' account is funding some dark stuff. Private militias, weapons shipments, and... something called Project Aether."

"Project Aether?"

"No idea. But it's eating up millions."

Julian straightened up. The complexity of the game had just increased. If Isolde was involved in the corruption, he would have to destroy her too. The thought made his chest tighten painfully.

"Print the ledger," Julian commanded. "I have a board meeting to crash tomorrow morning. If they want to play dirty, let's show them what filth really looks like."

Jax saluted with a pizza crust. "Aye aye, Captain Chaos."