She had spent the night in the penthouse that had once belonged to Livia in another life, had slept in a bed that had been meant for her sister, had wrapped herself in sheets that carried the faint scent of the woman who had betrayed her. It was a violation of everything she had promised herself, and yet she had slept better than she had in years.
She didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t want to know.
Maeve personally drove her back to the Worthington mansion. The drive was silent, the city passed by in a blur of gray streets and gray skies. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing left to say that hadn’t already been said the night before, no words that could bridge the chasm that years of pain and betrayal had carved between them.
The only sound was the soft hum of the engine and the occasional swish of the windshield wipers as they cleared away the lingering drizzle. The rain had stopped, but the world outside was still wet and gray, the kind of morning that made everything feel heavy and hopeless.
Kamilah watched the city pass by through the tinted window, her reflection a ghost superimposed over the buildings and streets. She looked tired, she realized. She looked like someone who had been fighting a war for so long that she had forgotten what peace felt like.
The dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the tight set of her jaw—all of it spoke of a woman who was barely holding on. She had spent the night in Maeve’s home, had allowed herself to be vulnerable in a way she had sworn she never would again, and now she was paying the price. The walls she had built around her heart were crumbling, and she didn’t know how to rebuild them.
"You should go," Kamilah said as she took off her seatbelt, her voice was flat and tired. She didn’t look at Maeve, her gaze was fixed on the imposing facade of the mansion that loomed before them. "Thank you for driving me back here."
The words were polite, formal, the kind of thing you said to a chauffeur or a stranger who had done you a small favor. There was no warmth in them, no acknowledgment of the night they had shared, of the vulnerability she had shown, of the tears that had fallen in the rain. She was retreating behind her walls again, building them up brick by brick, and Maeve could feel the distance growing between them with every passing second.
Maeve didn’t immediately unlock the doors. She kept her hands gripped on the steering wheel, her knuckles are white, and staring straight ahead through the windshield at the Worthington estate. The mansion looked imposing and cold, a place that Kamilah had once viewed as a prison and a place where her family had once failed her.
The thought of leaving her there, even for a few hours, made Maeve’s chest tighten with an irrational sense of anxiety. She had seen the scars on Kamilah’s arms. She had heard the thoughts that painted a picture of years of silent suffering. She knew what waited for Kamilah inside those walls, and every instinct screamed at her to drive away, to take Kamilah back to the penthouse, to never let her set foot in that house again.
But she forced herself to remember the boundary. She couldn’t push too hard. She couldn’t make the same mistakes she had made before. The old Maeve would have demanded, would have commanded, would have used her power and influence to get what she wanted.
But that Maeve had destroyed whatever chance she might have had in another life. This Maeve had to be different. This Maeve had to learn patience, had to learn restraint, had to learn how to care for someone without trying to own them.
She turned her head slowly, her gaze scanning Kamilah’s face. She was searching for something—a hint of hesitation, a flicker of the warmth she had shown the maid, or even a trace of the resentment from the night before.
Anything that would tell her what Kamilah was feeling, what she was thinking. But Kamilah’s face was a mask, smooth and unreadable, her eyes fixed on the mansion with a detachment that was almost eerie.
The morning light caught the edge of Kamilah’s profile, illuminating the curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the softness of her lips. She was beautiful, Maeve thought. She had always been beautiful, but there was something different about her now, something harder and sharper, like a diamond that had been formed under immense pressure. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The girl who had died alone in her bedroom had been soft and fragile, easily broken. The woman who sat beside her now was forged from steel, and Maeve couldn’t decide if she wanted to protect her or worship her.
"I’ll be in touch," Maeve said, her voice was low and unusually raspy. She cleared her throat, trying to steady herself. "If any of them... If anything happens that you don’t like, you call me. Immediately. I don’t care what time it is or who is in the room."
It wasn’t a request; it was a command wrapped in a plea. The words came out more desperate than she intended, more vulnerable. She was laying herself bare, admitting that she cared, that she was worried, that the thought of Kamilah alone in that house with those people made her feel something she hadn’t felt in years. She was offering Kamilah a lifeline, a way out, a promise that she would be there no matter what.
Maeve finally reached over and clicked the lock, the sound was echoing in the quiet interior of the car. She watched Kamilah, her expression guarded but intense, waiting to see if this small gesture of protection would be welcomed or dismissed as another attempt at control. The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken words and unresolved tension.
Kamilah paused with her hand on the door handle, her body was half-turned away from Maeve. She let out a long, heavy sigh, the kind of sigh that seemed to carry the weight of two lifetimes. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and for a moment, she looked impossibly tired. The mask slipped, just a fraction, revealing the exhaustion beneath.
"You know," Kamilah said, her voice was soft and almost wistful, "there’s a word that I’ve been trying to think of. A word that describes you perfectly. It’s been on the tip of my tongue all morning."
Maeve felt a jolt of anticipation at those words. She leaned in slightly, her focus narrowing entirely onto Kamilah. The sarcasm was familiar, but that sigh—that small, exhausted surrender—was what drew her in.
She was desperate to know which word was currently occupying that deepest part of Kamilah’s mind, though she knew the danger of probing too deep, and too fast. The wrong word could shatter the fragile truce they had formed. The right word could open a door that had been locked for years.
The tension in the car was thick, a heavy current of unspoken history and current friction. Maeve’s gaze dropped to Kamilah’s lips for a fleeting second before returning to her eyes, her expression hovering between a smirk and something far more vulnerable. She was trying to read Kamilah, trying to predict what was coming, but Kamilah had always been a mystery she couldn’t solve.
"And what word would that be?" Maeve asked, her voice dropping to a velvety, intimate murmur. She didn’t push, but her presence filled the small space of the car, an invisible pressure that demanded an answer. "Am I a nuisance? A tyrant? Or perhaps... Something you can’t quite bring yourself to hate as much as you want to?"
The question hung in the air between them, loaded with implication. Maeve was offering herself up for judgment, laying her flaws and failures at Kamilah’s feet. It was a vulnerability she had never shown anyone, a willingness to be hurt that was entirely foreign to her nature. She was giving Kamilah the power to wound her, and she was doing it willingly, desperately, because she needed to know where she stood.
"No." Kamilah answered, "I remember the word now." She said, and she kept her smile.
The smile was a warning, Maeve realized. It was the kind of smile that came before a blade, the kind of smile that promised pain wrapped in silk. Kamilah was enjoying this, savoring the moment, drawing out the tension until it was almost unbearable.
Maeve’s eyes narrowed, her breath was hitching as she waited. The air in the car felt electrified, the silence stretching between them like a taut wire.
She was completely captivated, her heart hammering against her ribs in a way that was entirely unfamiliar. She wanted that word; she needed to know exactly how she was categorized in the intricate, wounded map of Kamilah’s mind.
She didn’t move, didn’t even blink, her gaze was locked onto Kamilah’s smile. It was a smile that felt like a riddle, one that Maeve was dying to solve. The power dynamic had shifted; for once, Maeve wasn’t the one holding the cards. She was the one waiting for a verdict. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
"Then tell me," Maeve whispered, her voice thick with a mix of curiosity and a desperate, hidden longing. "Don’t leave me wondering. What is the word?"
Kamilah leaned back against the car seat and let out another long, heavy sigh, drawing out the moment with theatrical deliberation. She was enjoying this, Maeve realized.
She was enjoying the power she held, the way she could make Maeve squirm with nothing more than a few carefully chosen words. It was a small revenge, perhaps, but it was revenge nonetheless, and Kamilah was savoring every second of it.
"What I was trying to say," Kamilah said slowly, savoring every syllable, "is that you’re a manchild."
The word hung in the air between them, sharp and deliberate. Kamilah’s smirk widened, her eyes were glittering with a contempt she made no effort to hide. "So why would I call you to handle problems for me?"
Maeve froze, the word ’manchild’ echoing in the quiet cabin of the car like a slap across the face. For a moment, she was genuinely stunned. She was one of the most feared figures in her corporate circle, a woman of iron will and calculated precision, and yet Kamilah had just reduced her to a petulant child with a single, smiling sentence.
The sheer audacity of it—the way Kamilah could weaponize a smile while dripping with genuine contempt—sent a strange, electric thrill through Maeve. It was a level of psychological warfare she had never experienced, and it was intoxicating.
The fact that Kamilah viewed her as incapable of actually helping, as someone too emotionally immature to be reliable, stung more than any insult about her character.
"Have a nice day," Kamilah uttered, her voice light and dismissive. Then she opened the car door and stepped out, rolling her eyes in contempt as she walked toward the mansion without looking back.
The door slammed shut, the sound echoed in the quiet morning air.
Maeve didn’t drive off immediately. She sat there, gripping the steering wheel, staring at the retreating figure of her wife. Kamilah walked with her head held high, her shoulders are squared, her stride was confident and unyielding. She looked like a queen returning to her castle, not a prisoner returning to her cell.
A slow, dangerous smile began to spread across Maeve’s lips, mirroring the one Kamilah had just worn.
"A manchild, hm?" Maeve whispered to the empty car, her voice humming with a new, focused intensity. The challenge had been issued. She wouldn’t just prove her maturity; she would make Kamilah rely on her so completely that the word would become a distant, ironic memory.
She shifted the car into gear and drove away, but the image of Kamilah’s contemptuous roll of the eyes remained burned into her mind. It was a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down, and Maeve had never been one to back down from a fight.