Jane's POV My body was racking with extreme nervousness; five bottles of water later and the tightness in my chest had only learned new tricks. I stared at the phone like it had betrayed me personally, every notification a small pinprick. Then my father's name glared on the screen. "You'd better not let me get wherever you are Jane, or else I promise it'll be the last breath you take, you bastard daughter of a whore!" he barked. The message vibrated my bones. I swallowed hard, the words crawling under my skin like cold ants. He always used the same language when he wanted to make me small and quiet. This time he wanted me gone. My fingers hovered over the call button, but I didn't call back. Talking to him would only give him more spoils to gloat with. Instead I thumbed Celine's number, because crying into a cable felt less ridiculous coming from someone who knew how to make it stop being about me for a minute. "Hello?" Celine answered, loud and bright, like she kept sunrays in her pocket. "Celine... he-" I couldn't finish. The breath stuck in my throat. "Where are you? Jane, you sound broken." She waited like there was space for me to be honest, so I took it. I told her everything, waking up in that room, the blood, the way Alaric had thrown me away, Dad's message. There was no dressing it up. There was only bare, hot hurt. "Come over. Now," she said. Her voice was business-sharp. "We'll go to the hotel together. Don't go alone." I told her about the CCTV plan, the only thing I had that felt like a fact instead of rumor. Celine was all in. "I'll bring coffee and tenacity," she promised. "You get dressed. Don't think. Move." It felt like moving through syrup, but I did. I crammed my trembling hands into a faded sweater, shoved my hair into a messy bun, and forced myself into the doorway. The lift to the lobby seemed to take forever. My reflection in the mirrored walls looked like an invasion victim in one of those dramatic shows-pale, hair wild, eyes ringed and big. I wanted to disappear. At the hotel desk, I could already feel the eyes. People loved a scene; they just didn't want to be in it. The clerk looked at my face with that thin pity people offered women who'd been seen at their worst. I kept my voice low. "Hello, I need access to CCTV footage for last night. Room twelve-oh... I was a guest there. I-I there was an incident." He blinked, fingers hovering over the keyboard as if he needed permission to be honest. "I'm sorry, ma'am. Those requests have to go through our security department. Do you have an authorization?" "No." My throat closed. "I'm trying to find out what happened to me. I woke up and - I don't remember, there are gaps. Please. The footage could tell me." He tapped the screen, eyes avoiding mine. "There was a privacy request returned for that footage." He said it like he was giving me the weather. "Returned? By who?" I felt the tiny anger flare, the one that wouldn't let me be small any longer. "We don't have the right to disclose who requested it," he said. Corporate shields. I could taste the false smile like metal. Celine stepped up, stern as an anchor. "Is there a manager? Now." Minutes later a man in a dark suit appeared-too calm, too practiced. He asked a thin list of questions, then said something about protocol. He smelled like expensive soap and excuses. Before I could squeeze another word through my jaw, two men in the hallway moved like shadows and blocked the entrance. One had the kind of posture that made you measure your steps twice. My stomach dropped. "Ma'am, you can't be in the CCTV area," the manager said. "We have to-" "No," Celine snapped. "You will give us the footage. Now." The manager's eyes flickered toward the two men and something tightened behind them, a look I've seen before on Alaric's face when he was about to crush something. I felt a prickle at the base of my neck. This was not going well. "Look," the manager said quietly, "a request was filed and returned. There's nothing we can do without legal orders." He sounded like he had practiced saying it in the mirror. My breath got small and thin. "I paid for a room. I was robbed. I was assaulted. You expect me to walk away because someone filed paperwork?" My voice cracked. The lobby stopped, suddenly everyone was paying attention in a way that made me feel naked. The tall man by the door moved. He stepped into the light, and whatever soft cloak of protection the hotel offered slid away. He looked like someone carved out of the night: broad shoulders, short-cropped hair, and a face that refused to be casual. I recognized the shape of his jaw even though my head was foggy, even if it might have been the same kind of jaw as a dozen polite men, but there was a lean certainty about him. "Miss Jane Williams?" The man's voice was controlled, almost neutral. My name on his tongue was not the gentle one my grandfather used; it had an authority that left no room for argument. "Yes," I said, so small I could barely hear myself. He introduced himself-William, and said something about being the manager for a Mr. George. He said it like it was the part of him that did the talking for his employer. My heart folded. Mr. George. The one I had been trying to find in my head, the shadow in my memory. The man from the hotel. The man from the blood-stained sheets, was this the same room in a different lifetime? Adrenaline punched the air out of me.

Jane's POV  "Mr. George requested that Miss Williams be relocated to a different suite for her safety," William said. "He has also asked that security escort her to a more comfortable room while we process the request." "Why would he do that?" I choked. "Who is this-" My voice was drowning in a tidal wave of confusion. "We can discuss details privately," William said. "It is for your protection." Celine's hand tightened around my arm. "Are you okay with this?" she asked bluntly. I opened my mouth, then closed it. There was something in William's calm that said saying no would be harder than letting a stranger dictate the terms. I had no power left, not in this lobby with the whole world watching. "Fine," I whispered. "For now." They led me past the concierge and the lobby bar, through a quieter stretch of carpeted corridor, each step echoing. My legs felt like jelly. William's presence was all business, all watchful. I wanted to hate him on principle, he was a man-shaped interruption in my life but my fear was thicker and more immediate than fury. They opened the door to the presidential suite. It was quieter than the rest of the hotel, like it swallowed noise to keep up appearances. As they ushered me inside, my stomach turned. The room was too large, too pale, every corner dressed to be admired by people who never slept in it. And then I saw him. He stood by the window as if he'd been carved there from the light itself. Tall. Impossibly composed. The air around him seemed to expect obedience. For a moment I couldn't name the sound in my head was it shock, hunger, fear? I only knew my pulse had decided to take a sprint. He looked at me and like someone finally turned on a light in a dark room everything snapped into a cruel focus. Recognition flashed between us, a small, dreadful accord: we had been in the same place when things went wrong. "Miss Jane," he said, and his voice was quiet, but it reached every corner of me. "I'm Allen George." His name landed like a stone. I wanted to step back and hide, and instead my feet nailed me to the floor. The stranger's jaw in my memory had been the same. The man who took from me without asking was the man who had now offered me a suite. My throat filled up with stories I couldn't tell. I should have been angry. I should have screamed. Instead I just shook my head, foolish and raw. "H-how did you find me?" I managed. He folded his hands like a man putting order into a chaotic room. "You stayed at one of my hotels," he said. "When William found your check-in, he notified me. I asked my team to prepare this suite." He didn't sound like an apology. He sounded like someone stating a problem and its solution. "Why?" I whispered. "Why would a man I don't know-why are you involved?" His eyes softened in a way that made my chest loosen and tighten at once. "Because someone set us up that night, and I want to know why. Because you were hurt. Because you're pregnant." He didn't fumble for words. He said it like he had known a long time. Pregnant. The word was a fist. I pressed both hands to my stomach the way mothers do when they first feel a flinch. The hotel hummed around us. Outside, life went on. Inside, a stranger had entered my ruined moment and made it more complicated. "You can help me," he said, "or you can refuse. But I can't let what happened go unchecked." My body wanted to refuse. My mind wanted to run. But there was a voice in me that had learned to keep fighting-quietly, however it could. "I want the footage," I said. It came out like a small verdict. "I want to know who did this." He didn't flinch. "No, Jane. I know who did it." The air thinned. "You... know?" Celine stepped in, her voice sharp. "Then say it. Stop speaking in riddles." "You won't want to hear this," he said quietly. "It's worse than you think." "I don't care how bad it is," I shot back. "You tell me who destroyed my life." "Jane-" "I don't want your sympathy, I want a name!" He looked at me for a long moment, like he was measuring how much truth I could take before I shattered. Finally, he exhaled. "Your husband planned it." The world tilted. My breath caught in my throat. Every muscle in me tensed like I'd been hit. "No," I said. It was automatic, childish. "He-he couldn't." Allen's tone softened, but it didn't waver. "He did. He arranged the setup, the drugs, the cameras. Everything. You were the collateral." I stumbled back a step. Celine grabbed my arm, but the noise in my head drowned her out. The room was too big and too bright, and all I could see was my ex-husband's face twisting into a smirk I'd missed for years. Allen didn't move toward me. He just watched. "You deserved to know," he said. I laughed, broken, humorless. "Deserved? That's a strange word for someone whose life just ended twice in the same year." He didn't argue. For a moment, no one spoke, then, as if the silence had teeth, I whispered, "What do you want from me, Allen?" "Your help," he said. "I'm going after whoever's still covering for him. But I can't do it without you." The irony stung. The man who'd unknowingly been part of my ruin was now offering me a hand to rebuild. "I don't trust you," I said flatly. He nodded once. "You don't have to. Just don't run this time." Something in his voice-steady, almost kind-made my chest ache. I hated that it did. I turned away from him, staring out the glass at the city that had already eaten me alive once. "You want revenge," I said. "I just want peace." "Then help me finish this," he replied