POV: Jasmine
The villa felt like a war room.
I stood by the windows while the brothers occupied various positions around the living room—Liam solid and supportive on the couch closest to me, Asher stone-faced and calculating in the armchair by the fireplace, Finn unusually quiet near the bar, whiskey untouched in his hand.
They'd been discussing Jackson. The trial. My mother dying in that hospital bed.
Strategies. Contingencies. Damage control.
Like my life was a crisis to be managed instead of a person falling apart in front of them.
"The Virtue Exchange threat changes our legal strategy," Asher was saying, his voice clinical. "If Adelyn's team has proof of Jasmine's participation, we need to get ahead of it. Control the narrative before—"
"Where were you?"
The question exploded out of me before I could stop it. Three words that cracked the air like gunfire, silencing Asher mid-sentence.
They all turned. Three sets of eyes, three different expressions of concern and confusion.
"Where were any of you when I needed protection?"
Liam rose from the couch, reaching for me. "Jasmine—"
"No." I stepped back, putting distance between us. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking. "Don't touch me. Don't comfort me. Just answer the question."
"What question?" Finn asked quietly.
"I warned you about Adelyn." The words tore out of me like shrapnel, fifteen years of swallowed pain finally finding exit. "Months ago. I told you she was dangerous, that she was watching me, that she would come for me the moment she had ammunition. And you did nothing. You sent her on a business trip and called it handled. You let her destroy my reputation while you sat in conference rooms calculating public relations strategies."
"We tried—" Asher started.
"You tried?" I laughed, and the sound was broken glass. "You tried? You sat in those fucking conference rooms while she leaked my photos to every tabloid in the city. You hired lawyers and PR consultants while she painted me as a whore who fucked her way to the top. And when your father showed up—"
My voice cracked. I forced it steady.
"When Jackson showed up and started touching me, you watched through glass walls. I saw you watching. Calculating whether intervening would hurt the stock price. Whether defending me was worth the board meeting it might cause."
The accusations landed like physical blows. Liam flinched. Asher's jaw tightened until I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. Finn set down his whiskey with careful precision, as if he didn't trust himself to hold it anymore.
Because they were true. Every word was true, and they knew it.
"I did everything alone." Tears streamed down my face now, hot and unstoppable. "I survived your father alone—his hands on me, his mouth on me, his threats about what he'd take next. I handled the Virtue Exchange blackmail alone, sitting with those texts at three in the morning wondering how many people would watch my life burn if I didn't surrender."
I was sobbing now, ugly heaving sounds I couldn't control.
"And now my mother is dying in a hospital bed, and Leo barely speaks to me, and I'm still—I'm still expected to hold everyone together while I'm falling apart. While I carry secrets that could destroy everything. While I pretend I'm strong enough to survive one more day of this endless fucking war."
Silence.
The kind that follows explosions, when the air itself is still recovering from the violence.
Finn moved first. He set his glass on the bar with a soft click, his face unreadable in a way I'd never seen before. Then he walked past me toward the door, pausing only long enough to say, "She's right."
The door closed behind him.
Asher stood slowly, his movements careful, controlled. He looked at me for a long moment—really looked, like he was seeing me clearly for the first time.
"I'm sorry," he said. Two words. Flat and inadequate and somehow still costing him something. Then he followed Finn out, leaving me alone with Liam.
I expected him to leave too. Expected him to make excuses, to defend himself, to explain all the reasons their failures weren't really failures.
He didn't.
He just stood there, solid and present, absorbing my rage without deflecting it. Without defending himself. Without trying to fix what couldn't be fixed with words.
"You're right," Liam said quietly. "About all of it."
"I know I'm right."
"We failed you. I failed you." His voice cracked on the admission. "You trusted us to protect you, and we didn't. We got comfortable. Complacent. Told ourselves we had it handled when we'd barely scratched the surface."
I sank onto the couch, suddenly exhausted. The anger had drained out of me, leaving nothing but hollow devastation in its wake.
Liam sat beside me. Close enough to touch, but not touching. Giving me space I hadn't asked for but desperately needed.
"There's something else," I said after a long moment. "Something I haven't told you."
"Okay."
"I met with Adelyn." The confession felt like releasing poison from a wound. "Secretly. Without telling anyone. I offered her a deal."
Liam didn't flinch. Didn't react with the shock or betrayal I'd expected. Just waited, his green eyes steady on mine.
"She wants a million dollars. Public acknowledgment that the relationships were inappropriate. Your admission that you showed her favoritism before discarding her." I laughed bitterly. "She wants to be the hero of the story. The wronged woman who exposed corruption."
"And if you refused?"
"She'll leak the Virtue Exchange evidence. Tell the world I sold my virginity to save my brother." I met his gaze. "She knows everything, Liam. And she's not going to stop until she gets what she wants or destroys me trying."
The silence stretched between us. I waited for anger. Disappointment. The inevitable calculation about how my secret meeting had complicated their legal strategy.
Instead, Liam reached for my hand. Slowly, giving me time to pull away. When I didn't, his fingers intertwined with mine.
"Tell me everything," he said. "Every detail of that meeting. Every demand she made. Every threat." His voice was quiet but certain. "And then we're going to figure out how to finally end this—together."