NATE COLE'S POV
The door to my office clicked shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the sterile silence of the lab. Thomas was gone, but the ghost of his presence and the scent he carried lingered in the air like a poisonous fog.
I sat back down, my legs feeling like they were made of lead. My hands were shaking so violently that I had to grip the edge of the desk just to keep from sweeping the monitors onto the floor.
"My God, Thomas. You too?"
The words I'd hurled at him were still vibrating in my throat, tasting like copper and bile. I had spent weeks drowning in my own shame, convinced that I was the anomaly, the weak link in the Cole bloodline. I had looked at Thomas as my moral compass, the man who would eventually have to arrest me or kill me to restore the family name.
And now? Now the compass was spinning wildly. Thomas hadn't just been compromised; he had been seduced by the very shadow he was supposed to illuminate.
