The drive to the Heavens' manor was silent and suffocating. When Ashley walked through the heavy oak doors, the house didn't greet her with warmth; it greeted her with the scent of expensive cigars and the heavy, oppressive silence of a tomb.
She tried to slip toward the stairs, but a voice cut through the dark like a blade.
"You're home early. And alone."
Stephen Heavens sat in a high-backed wing chair in the library, a single lamp illuminating the harsh lines of his face. He was a man who viewed the world as a series of hostile takeovers. To him, even his daughter was an asset to be leveraged.
"Amir wasn't feeling well," Ashley said, her voice tight. "The club was loud. We decided to call it a night."
Stephen stood up, his movements slow and predatory. He walked toward her, his shadow stretching across the floor.
"Don't lie to me, Ashley. I've already seen the social media feeds. Amir walked out of L'Élysée ten minutes before you did. He looked like a man escaping a fire. What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" Ashley shouted, her composure finally snapping. "He saw a name. Tiana Longman. He reacted to it. Maybe if you and Ahmed hadn't built this entire empire on a foundation of secrets and ruined lives, he wouldn't be so 'twitchy'!"
The slap was sudden and precise.
Ashley's head snapped to the side, her cheek blooming with a stinging heat. She gasped, clutching the back of a chair for support.
"Don't you ever use that tone with me," Stephen whispered, leaning into her space.
"The Longman-Lahman business is handled. It is buried. Your job is to ensure that Amir stays in the present. Do you understand? Your lifestyle, this house, the very clothes on your back depend on this union. The Heavens name needs the Lahman liquidity. Without him, you are nothing but a girl with a defunct pedigree."
Ashley looked at her father, her eyes brimming with a mixture of hatred and terror. "He doesn't love me, Dad. He looks through me."
"Then make him look at you," Stephen grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. His eyes were cold, devoid of any paternal softness. "I don't care about love. I care about legacy. Go upstairs. Wash your face. Ice that cheek. Tomorrow, you will go to him. You will be sweet, you will be supportive, and you will be indispensable."
He leaned closer, his voice a low, guttural command.
"Stop playing the victim and start playing the wife. Get pregnant, Ashley. Tie him to you in a way that even his fractured little mind can't undo. Give the Lahmans an heir, and you'll never have to worry about a ghost again. If you fail... well,
I've never had much use for assets that don't yield a return."
He let go of her chin with a dismissive shove. Ashley stumbled back, the silence of the room ringing in her ears.
She turned and fled up the stairs, her breath coming in ragged sobs. When she reached her bathroom, she stared at herself in the ornate gold-rimmed mirror. The red mark on her face was darkening.
She was a queen in a palace of glass, and she could hear the cracking. But as she splashed cold water on her face, her expression hardened. She couldn't fight her father, and she couldn't fight the Lahman empire.
That left only one target for her rage.
"Tiana Longman," she whispered to her reflection, her voice trembling with a newfound, lethal focus. "You have no idea what you've started."
Across the city, in his minimalist penthouse, Amir Lahman sat in the dark. He wasn't looking at the skyline. He was looking at a small, weathered wooden box he had found hidden at the bottom of an old trunk in his father's attic months ago—an item that shouldn't exist, an item he had been told was "trash from a previous tenant."
But as the wind howled against the glass of his skyscraper, Amir felt the stirrings of a man who was tired of being a masterpiece painted by someone else's hand. He didn't know who Tiana Longman was to him, but he knew one thing:
The truth wasn't in the light of the "Sweet Life." It was in the shadows she carried.
The stillness of the Lahman estate was a different kind of silence than the one Amir found in the city. Here, the air was heavy with the scent of jasmine and the weight of tradition. Amir stood in the center of the attic, the dust motes dancing in the dim light of a single, flickering bulb.
He wasn't sure why he was up here. There was no wooden horse, no hidden trunk—just the hollow ache of a mind trying to find a grip on a cliffside made of glass.
He ran a hand over a stack of old, moth-eaten rugs. There was nothing. No relics, no clues, just the quiet hum of a house that kept its secrets better than he kept his own thoughts, and it had hidden it so well because right there, there was no shadow, nothing.
"Amir? Are you trying to hide from the world again, or just the interior decorator?"
The voice was light, punctuating the gloom like a bell. Amir turned to see his sister, Alisha, leaning against the doorframe. At twenty-two, she was the family's heartbeat—vibrant, sharp-tongued, and entirely unimpressed by the corporate titan persona Amir wore like armor.
"Just looking for... I don't know. Something old," Amir said, his voice regaining its usual steady baritone.
"Well, you've found it. This place is ancient," she laughed, stepping inside and pulling him toward the stairs.
"Come down. Mama made the lemon cake you like, and the boys are already downstairs being insufferable."
"Which boys? Your suitors?" Amir teased, a genuine smile tugging at his lips. He let her lead him away from the shadows of the attic.
"Ugh, don't call them that," she groaned, playfully hitting his shoulder. "They're just... prospects. Though one of them, Omar, keeps sending me poetry. It's terrible, Amir. Truly. Rhyming 'heart' with 'part' should be a criminal offense."
They laughed together, the sound echoing through the grand hallway. For a moment, the strange, visceral reaction he'd had to Tiana's name earlier that evening felt like a fever dream.