Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 12 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 12

Chapter 12 

Chapter 12 

+45 Coins 

The shareholder meeting smelled like money and ambition, two hundred of New York’s sharpest people arranged in a glass atrium with the full moon rising over the skyline like a stage light somebody had cued on purpose. 

Marcus Blackwood worked the room in a steel-gray suit, silver tie pin, smile wide as a bear trap. When he reached us, he kissed my hand. 

“Sienna. Radiant as ever.” His eyes flicked to Damian. “Cousin. Big night. Feeling well? You look… warm.” 

“He’s checking for symptoms,” Damian’s mind noted, even as he smiled blandly. “He thinks the dose is in me. Lacey swapped it ninety minutes ago. Steady.” 

“Never better,” Damian said. 

“Wonderful.” Marcus checked his watch-not for the time, I realized. For the moon. “Then I’ll see you on stage. I’ve prepared a little surprise for the shareholders. A presentation about… transparency in leadership.” 

He glided away. Across the room, Lacey, in catering black, gave me a thumbs-up with a tray of canapés. Somewhere above us, one of Kane’s croissants was filming everything. 

At eight-thirty, Damian took the stage. At eight-thirty-eight, Marcus made his move. 

“Before the vote,” Marcus said smoothly, stepping to the second microphone, “I believe the shareholders deserve 

the whole truth about this company’s leadership.” He clicked a remote. The screen behind them bloomed with grainy 

security footage-a destroyed office, a blurred dark shape, a shattered desk. “Three nights ago, in the CEO’s office. I have enhanced footage. I have testimony. The man asking for your votes tonight has been hiding something from every person in this room. And I suspect”-he glanced at his watch again, at the moon swelling over the skyline, 

waiting for a transformation that wasn’t coming-“the truth is about to make itself very visible.” 

Murmurs. Cameras rising. Two hundred faces turning to my husband, waiting for him to deny it. 

Damian looked out at them. Then he found me in the front row. 

“Last chance to run,” he thought at me, soft, with a smile in it. 

They always run, I mouthed back, and shook my head, and sat down deliberately in my chair like a woman settling in for her favorite show. 

“Marcus is right,” Damian said. 

The room went dead silent. 

“I have been hiding something. From my shareholders. From my city. From my own wife, for two years-because I 

Chapter 12 

+45 Coins 

was taught that what I am is a thing to be ashamed of. My cousin is counting on that shame tonight.” He unbuttoned his cuffs, calm as a man at his own kitchen table. “He drugged my coffee three days ago to force this truth out of me on his schedule. We have the footage, the chemist’s report, and a recording of him arranging a second, lethal dose for tonight-my attorneys are handing copies to the SEC and the board as I speak. You’ll find it riveting.” 

Marcus’s smile died. At the back of the room, two security officers quietly repositioned themselves by the exits. Lacey 

waggled her phone at him cheerfully. 

“But he’s right about one thing,” Damian continued. “You deserve transparency in leadership. So here it is. Freely given. 

On my terms.” 

He looked up at the full moon through the glass. 

“My family has guarded this city’s harbors since before it had streetlights. We’ve signed its charters, funded its hospitals, kept certain things out of its nights that you’ve never had to learn the names of. We are wolves,” said Damian Blackwood, alpha of Manhattan, to two hundred shareholders and every camera in New York. “We always have been.” 

And then my husband, in a bespoke suit on a Bloomberg-televised stage, let his eyes turn gold. 

The atrium detonated-gasps, flashes, a champagne glass shattering, one elderly board member saying “I knew 

it loudly to no one. Marcus stood frozen at his microphone, watching a century of leverage evaporate, his weapon 

detonated by its own target. 

Damian raised one hand, and the room, impossibly, hushed. 

“The vote is still on the agenda,” he said pleasantly. “But first-my cousin appears to need an escort out. Gentlemen?” 

As security closed in, Marcus wrenched free, and his composure finally cracked into something ugly. He spun toward 

the front row-toward me. 

“You think this saves you?” he snarled. “The old families will never accept a human Luna- 

A bolt of lightning hit him through the open skylight. 

The entire room turned to stare at Lacey, who lowered her canapé tray and shrugged. “That one wasn’t me. 

Sometimes the universe just gets it.”