---- Chapter 14 Carter Wolfe POV: The crowd turned on her. Someone threw a rotten egg that splattered across Francine' s expensive silk blouse. She shrieked, trying to scramble away, but | held her fast, forcing her to endure the public' s wrath. | felt a stone strike my own cheek, cutting the skin, but | barely registered the pain. This was my penance. This was our shared hell. The next few weeks were a relentless cycle of torment. Francine became a prisoner in her own mansion, hounded by paparazzi and protestors | had secretly funded. | made it my life' s mission to destroy her as thoroughly as she had helped me destroy myself. She tried to flee, to disappear. But | always found her. | would plaster her new address all over the internet, and the circus would begin anew. Once, a mob of angry strangers nearly doused her with acid as she tried to get into her car. Finally, she broke. She came to me, a shadow of her former self, and knelt at my feet, her head bowed in submission. "Please, Carter," she begged, her voice hoarse from crying. "I 'Il do anything. Just make it stop." | looked down at her, my own reflection in the mirror just as gaunt and haunted. | was a ghost, fueled only by regret and a ---- singular, all-consuming obsession: finding Amira. "Find her," | said, my voice a dry rasp. "Find Amira. Bring her back to me. And |' Il let you go." A flicker of her old cunning returned to her eyes. "And what if | do? What do | get out of it?" "You get to live," | said simply. She must have used every dirty trick, every black-market connection she had. It took her months, but one day, she came to me with a piece of paper. On it was the name of a secure research facility in a remote, undisclosed location. An address. As she handed it to me, | looked at her, at this woman whose power and sophistication | had once found so intoxicating. Now, her presence filled me with nothing but disgust. How could | have ever chosen this hollow, vicious creature over Amira' s warmth, her loyalty, her brilliant mind? A smile, the first genuine smile in months, stretched across my face. It felt alien, like a muscle | hadn' t used in years. | had a destination. | had a purpose. | was coming for you, Amira.