Christopher's POV
Power was never taken in noise.
It was reclaimed in silence.
By noon the next day, the Ministry had transformed from chaos into choreography. Messengers moved like clockwork, documents were destroyed or replaced, and Christopher Cross sat once again behind his desk — immaculate, cold, unreadable.
He had not slept.
He had not needed to.
The machine of control had long been built for moments like this.
The scandal had teeth, yes, but he still owned the hand that fed the press. The Cross family had bled through worse crises; they had funded monarchs and buried them in the same century. The stain of history was familiar.
Yet beneath the calm, something restless stirred — something that had nothing to do with politics.
Her.
He had meant to teach her a lesson the night before — to remind her that whatever power she imagined herself to have came from his hand.
But the taste of her still lingered, bitter and intoxicating in equal measure.
She haunted him.
