Chapter 123

Elias’s POV

I felt utterly lost inside, each morning arriving like a fresh layer of torture. It had been a month since Maya was taken from me, and a week since I last saw her—seven long days since she’d whispered her farewell. How was I supposed to carry on without her? Everything else—my ambitions, my achievements, my unrelenting drive to rule my company—had faded into insignificance. That fierce ambition had died a quiet death, but my rage refused to dissipate. The only difference now was that I no longer cared who I destroyed along the way. Losing Maya had eclipsed every other concern; she was all I thought about.

Richard Brooks had manipulated us from the start. Every sensational report we’d watched on the news was a fabrication, an elaborate lie. Nothing had happened the way we’d been led to believe—it was a plan designed to make us feel like fugitives. When I finally cont