Chapter 101: Like Freedom

Astrid’s POV

Thalia wasn’t even scared of me.

She pulled up to the spot I’d named, stepped out of her car without so much as a flinch, and looked at me like I was mildly inconvenient at best. I’d arrived ten minutes early. I’d prepared myself. And still, she walked in like she owned the night.

"You’ve got guts showing up here at this hour," I said. "You’re not scared at all, are you?"

She smiled. Then she chuckled ... slow and unbothered.

"I don’t see you as a threat." She tilted her head. "And I hope your husband is asleep right now. If he’s not, it means he didn’t spend the last hour buried in your chest like a newborn. My boobs almost sagged completely from how obsessed that man was with them." She laughed again. "His appetite was something else."

"That’s none of your business, Thalia. He’s my husband now."

She gave a slow, deliberate nod. Like she was filing that away somewhere.

"Besides," I said, straightening, "I called you here for a reason. So I’ll be the one doing the talking."

She looked me over. "It couldn’t wait until morning? What if I’d been in bed? You just interrupted my..." She stopped. Waved it off. "Never mind."

Good. Because I wasn’t minding either.

"It’s urgent. The matter you created ... that tape you’re sitting on, the one you’re planning to use to blow up my marriage." I kept my voice flat. "That’s why we’re here."

Something shifted in her eyes. Not fear ... interest.

"Oh, that." She drew the words out like she was savoring them. "Alright, now I’ll agree it’s urgent. So what do you want from me?"

"You won’t gain anything by posting that video. Not from Ethan. Not from the world. So let’s cut a deal right now."

Thalia threw her head back and laughed ... loud and free, like I’d just told the funniest joke she’d heard all year. She was always laughing. Because in that moment, she was the one in the driver’s seat and she knew it.

She thought that was going to last.

"Look at life," she said, shaking her head. "You probably thought I was stalking you. Were about to run to the authorities for a restraining order. Now you’re the one who called me out here to cut a deal." She let that sit for a second. "Listen ... I count my costs. What I gain from any deal we make has to be bigger and worth more than what I’d get from simply posting that video. So make it good."

"One million," I said. Sharp. Direct. No hesitation.

She didn’t react.

"Two million." Nothing. "Five million."

She kept chuckling.

"What’s funny? Haven’t you done business before?"

"I’m laughing because you think you can buy me with money." Her smile faded just slightly. "It was never about the money, Astrid."

"Then what is it about?"

I was starting to lose my cool and I knew it.

"There’s a thrill in it," she said simply. "There’s excitement in watching you both suffer. In watching the whole world find out exactly what kind of person you really are."

"And that can’t be bought?"

"Exactly. It can’t."

I looked at her for a moment. Then I took a breath.

"But was it a crime that your ex-husband divorced you? Divorces happen every single day. Yours wasn’t the first and it definitely won’t be the last."

Something cracked behind her eyes. Just barely.

"You don’t know what it means," she said quietly, the amusement draining from her voice, "to give everything to someone. To build something with them from nothing. To sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice ... and then have them discard you like trash the moment they’ve gotten everything they wanted."

"So this is about him," I said. "Not me."

"It’s about both of you. And you’ll both suffer for it."

"Thalia." I kept my voice even. "I’ve had my own heartbreaks. Maybe you just weren’t the wolf he was meant to end up with. Sometimes time is the only thing that can reveal that."

"And you think you are?" she fired back immediately. No hesitation. No pause.

I let it roll off me.

"Ten million. You hand over the video."

"When did you even get money?" She tilted her head, studying me with something sharp in her eyes. "Wasn’t it after you married Ethan? You were a broke little wolf who slept with her sister’s mate." A slow smile. "I guess that’s just what you do ... hijack what doesn’t belong to you."

"Enough." My voice came out harder than I intended. "Twenty-five million. I’ve had it."

"Calm down, Astrid." She almost looked amused again. "You called this meeting. You’re supposed to be the negotiator. You can’t be out here raising your voice at me."

I pulled myself back. Breathed.

"Thirty million," I said. "And you delete everything."

She didn’t laugh this time.

"Done," she said. "Wire it in the morning."

The word landed like a gavel.

"Do you even realize how much you value that relationship?" she asked. "Or is it more about what you’re getting out of it?"

"I love him," I said. "And there’s nothing I won’t do to keep us together."

She hummed softly, like she was turning that over in her mind. "Love has a way of biting back, you know. And when it does, it always hurts worse than anything physical." She turned and walked to her car, reached inside, and came back with a card. "This is my account. Wire it there."

I took it from her.

"One more thing," I said before she could move.

"The person inside the company ... the one you paid to get you that footage. Was it the media manager?"

She looked at me. Something behind her expression shifted, but her voice stayed smooth.

"You’ll never pin that down, Astrid. He’s untouchable. And if anything happens to him, our deal is off. Every copy goes live."

She didn’t confirm it. But she didn’t have to.

I knew right then that it was him. That was why he’d refused to let me access the system myself the day before ... he would’ve buried that footage before I ever laid eyes on it. Made it disappear like it never existed.

I’d always had a complicated relationship with cameras. They had a way of finding me at the worst possible moments.

"What’s my guarantee he keeps his mouth shut?" I asked.

She pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket, scribbled something on it, and held it out to me.

I unfolded it. It read: Cancel! Cancel now. Solved. Cancel.

Just words, strung together like a code. But it would carry her message and he would know exactly what it meant.

I thought about extending my hand for a shake. Then I remembered she’d just walked away with thirty million of my money and decided against it.

She got into her car and drove off without looking back.

I stood there alone in the dark for a moment, the night air cool against my face.

I was going to sleep late.

At least when I got home, Ethan was already out cold.

I slipped into bed and closed my eyes.

My mind was still turning, still processing everything. Thalia had someone on the inside. A whole alliance built quietly within the same walls I worked in every day, and I hadn’t seen any of it coming. The head of Media, of all people ... sitting in that room, playing dumb, sending me away with a polite smile while he fed her everything she needed.

But I had the paper now. And she’d taken the thirty million.

My life was worth more than money. It always would be.

I felt sleep pulling me under, and for the first time in days, I let it.

I woke up feeling like a different person entirely.

Like someone who’d been underwater for a week and finally broke the surface. I rolled over, looked at Ethan’s face ... still peaceful, still oblivious ... and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.

He stirred.

I smiled and kissed him again, just because I could. Because he was mine and I’d just paid thirty million to make sure it stayed that way.

"Come on," I said when he blinked awake. "We’re going to work together this morning. In your car."

He groaned ... the deep, reluctant groan of a man who did not normally wake up at this hour. Being the boss had its privileges, and sleeping in was apparently one of them.

"Astrid..."

"Get up, Ethan."

He got up.

We both got ready, got in his car, and pulled into the company lot together. I made sure of that. I made sure we walked through the entrance side by side, made sure the right people could see us, made sure the image I wanted burned into this building’s memory was exactly that ... us, together, solid and unbothered.

I kissed him on the cheek before he headed upstairs to his floor.

Let them see it. Let them remember it.

Then I went straight to the media room.

I knocked, opened the door, and stepped inside. The manager was at his desk, eyes on his screen like it was any ordinary morning. The rest of his team was scattered around the room, heads down, going about their work.

I walked up to his desk and slid the paper across to him.

He took it smoothly ... no eye contact, no reaction, no words. The kind of practiced calm that only came from doing shady things long enough to get comfortable with them.

He glanced at the paper.

Then gave one slow nod.

I turned and walked out.

Neither of us said a word to each other. Neither of us needed to. The rest of the team didn’t understand what had just happened and they weren’t supposed to.

I stepped back into the corridor and inhaled.

The air tasted clean. Genuinely, deeply clean ... like I’d been breathing through a filter for days and someone had finally yanked it off.

Oxygen tasted like freedom.

Thalia was such a bitch.

But she was a bitch I’d handled, and that was all that mattered.