Victoria sat at the long glass dining table. She looked around slowly, taking inventoryâ cataloguing every detail like a detective whoâd already solved the crime but still needed to see the body.
Pheiâs chair was
empty.
Again.
No surprise.
Whenever the family gathered like this â plates steaming, sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, everyone pretending the past week hadnât torn their entire world apart and fucked it sideways â
Phei
was never there
.
He always had somewhere to be. A
"missed routine"
in the gym. A sudden call. A meeting that couldnât wait.
Even a fool could see he was avoiding these moments.
Deliberately.
Right now, he was in the gym â as if that body, sculpted, lethal, godly, radiating power that made the air feel colder, needed daily maintenance or it would somehow decline into mediocrity like the rest of them.
Victoriaâs lips pressed into a thin line.
Across from her,
Sienna
ate in perfect silence, phone balanced on one palm, thumb scrolling with mechanical precision.
She hadnât looked up once since she sat down. The rest of the world might as well not exist.
Sienna had always been good at being absent while physically present â a talent that wouldâve been
impressive if it wasnât so fucking annoying.
Melissa sat at the head of the table, posture straight, hands folded around a coffee mug she hadnât sipped from in ten minutes. Delilah sat beside her, picking at the edge of her toast, eyes down, wearing one of Pheiâs shirts that hung off her shoulder like a flag of surrender.
The tension between mother and daughters was no longer explosive â it had settled into something quieter, heavier, the hush after a detonation when the dust is still settling and nobody knows which walls are load-bearing and which ones are about to come down.
No one had spoken about the last few days.
Not really.
Theyâd danced around it for days â but Melissa had decided today was different.
Today the girls would hear the full truth about their birth, about the murdered twin, about the boy they had grown up calling brother.
Victoria felt it coming like a storm on radar â the specific quality of her motherâs silence that meant the next words were going to cost something.
She set her fork down.
"Mom," she started quietly.
Melissa looked up, eyes soft but resolute. The eyes of a woman whoâd spent the last few days building the courage to burn down the last wall between her and her children and had woken up this morning with the match already lit.
"I know," she said before Victoria could finish. "Weâre talking today. All of it. No more pretending."
Delilah exhaled sharply through her nose. Siennaâs thumb paused on the screen for the first time â the only tell sheâd give, but for Sienna it was the equivalent of someone else slamming their fist on the table.
Victoria opened her mouth again â then closed it.
She didnât know what to ask first.
She didnât know if she wanted the answers.
She only knew the silence was about to break, and when it did, nothing in this family would ever fit the same way again.
****
Below the in the gym, Phei racked the bar with a muted clang that still echoed through the vaulted gym ceiling like distant thunder fucking off for the day.
75 kilos per side
.
Again.
He sat up on the bench, forearms resting on his thighs, black tank clinging to sweat-slicked skin like it was personally offended at being separated from him. His breathing was even â too even for a human lifting that weight at his age and build.
Around him the 95th-floor gym had gone unnaturally quiet.
Every machine, every treadmill, every squat rack was occupied.
The
Sovereign Tower
âs private gym had once been a sanctuary for maybe five residents at any given time â a place where
billionaires
worked out in
cathedral silence,
pretending they didnât notice each other while
secretly comparing net worths
and calf definition.
Now every dedicated member from the upper residential floors was here. Ninety-five to one hundred, 100 percent capacity. They werenât even pretending to work out anymore.
Half of them were staring openly.
His residence in the Sovereign Tower was no longer a secret.
The internet had done its work. Clips of him walking through the lobby, stepping into the private elevator, disappearing behind frosted glass doors had spread like wildfire.
The world now knew exactly where the godly beautiful boy who air-walked on basketball courts lived.
Thankfully the residents of the Sovereign Tower were people who were accustomed to wealth and power and celebrity and usually couldnât be bothered to look up from their portfolios.
But women were behaving like teenagers at a concert.
Phei sighed, dragging the small black towel across his face. When he lowered it, his amethyst eyes scanned the room once â calm, unreadable.
Another phone flashed from the far corner.
He didnât react.
Valentina
appeared at his side like sheâd been waiting for the exact moment he finished the set.
She wore matching black leggings and a cropped compression top that showed every carved line of her abdomen â a body built by fifteen years of professional training and the specific vanity of a woman who knew she was being watched and enjoyed the attention.
Her dark hair was pulled into a high ponytail, swaying as she sauntered over with his larger towel draped over one arm.
She chuckled low, pressing the fresh towel to his shoulder.
"Theyâre eating you alive today," she murmured, amusement curling her lips.
Phei tilted his head toward her, letting her dab the sweat from his neck.
"As long as they stay over there,"
he said quietly,
"I donât care."
The coldness heâd had had vanished and Phei was back to his old self â just so much more
self-aware
of himself and what he represented.
Heâd gotten even more dangerous at
flirting.
Yesterday a man had nearly fought him for flirting with his woman.
Phei had shrugged and given a speech about how the man
shouldnât be so controlling
, that a
woman had the right to admire things
.
The gym had laughed while the cool aura did its thing â turning the guyâs rage into a public embarrassment so complete heâd left without his dignity while making Phei even cooler and hotter to others.
Valentinaâs eyes flicked toward the treadmills. The amusement shifted into something sharper. More deliberate.
"Sheâs still running."
Phei followed her gaze.
There â on the far end of the long row of treadmills â she ran.
Long black compression leggings hugged every
curve
and hollow of her legs, the material so thin it looked painted on. No visible lines beneath. Nothing.
Just
smooth,
powerful muscle
flexing with each stride â quads firing, hamstrings lengthening, calves contracting, glutes clenching in a rhythm that belonged on a track or a stage, not a residential gym.
Every step sent a
subtle ripple
through her
ass
as she had no pants inside â
proud, unapologetic, hypnotic
â the kind of movement that made men forget their own names and women question their sexuality.
A black sports bra left her toned midriff bare â
abs
carved like theyâd been sculpted from warm marble, a faint sheen of sweat catching the overhead lights and turning her skin into something that belonged in a gallery or a bedroom.
Her long dark hair was pulled into a high, swinging ponytail that bounced with metronomic rhythm.
She hadnât once looked his way.
Not when heâd walked in. Not when the entire gym had gone quiet. Not when phones started flashing and whispers had spread like brushfire through the machines.
She ran like the rest of the room didnât exist. Like he didnât exist.
And in a building where every woman with a pulse had started finding excuses to be in whatever room Phei was in, her
disinterest
was so thorough it bordered on performance art.
Except it wasnât performance.
That was the thing.
She genuinely did not care.
Phei watched her for a long moment, eyes narrowing slightly.
Heâd got to meet one of the people he shared his floor with (yes, this very woman) â the floor had three units:
his A
,
the occupied B
, and the
last C
. So, heâd met the new resident of C and had been mesmerized by her aura, her presence alone.
Phei had been surprised how unfazed sheâd been by his presence.
Yesterday she had trained beside him â thanks to Valentina playing her cards like the masterful operator she was, orchestrating a
"coincidental"
rack share with the subtlety of a chess grandmaster moving a pawn.
Theyâd shared a squat rack for twenty minutes. She had matched his weight. Matched his reps. Matched his rest periods.
Never spoke. Never smiled.
Never acknowledged the auras rolling off him or the way every other woman in the gym had started breathing harder the moment he entered.
Sheâd existed next to him like he was furniture.
Expensive furniture, sure. But furniture.
Only once â
when heâd brushed past her to rerack a plate
â had his hand grazed her lower back.
Just the lightest contact.
The Goddess Fall Touch.
Her stride had faltered for half a second.
A single,
involuntary moan
had slipped from her throat â
soft, shocked, raw
â the sound of a body betraying its owner in the middle of a public gym.
Sheâd immediately clenched her jaw, straightened, and kept moving. Hadnât looked at him. Hadnât acknowledged it.
Had simply folded the moment away into whatever compartment she kept the things that werenât supposed to happen and continued her set as if the last three seconds had been deleted from the timeline.
But Phei had heard it.
And
felt
it.
That sound had lodged somewhere deep in his chest and refused to leave. It played on loop when he closed his eyes.
A soft, shocked, raw exhalation from a woman who didnât make sounds like that for anyone.
Heâd already decided she would be his.