Chapter 98 HER NAME IN BLISS.

Chapter 98 HER NAME IN BLISS.
DANTE.
Five months.
That’s how long it had been since the messages stopped. The encrypted calls ceased. The single sentence that had come like clockwork every few days simply vanished, mid-cycle, without a goodbye, escalation, or follow-through.
The mercenary I had employed to neutralize this headache had hit a wall. No identity, origin, or face to connect to any of it. But he suspected that the digging itself had frightened whoever was on the other end. That sometimes happened. People who operated in shadows didn’t always remain brave when they realized those shadows could turn against them.
I chose to believe that.
Not because it was definitely true. It was simply a reassurance I needed to function.
I forgot everything, going back to living, working, loving my wife, raising my son, and gradually letting the threat fade into the background noise of a life filled with other demands for my attention.
Dove, for instance.
Whatever expensive hobby she had taken up — which I still didn’t know specifically what it was because she skillfully deflected whenever I asked — had developed an impressive appetite for funding. The transfers became monthly and consistent by her standards, never outrageous but regular enough to sit at the back of my mind like an elusive sound. She was fine though. She claimed she was fine. She looked fine. She was Dove — always allergic to vulnerability — so “fine” from her could mean anything.
I chose not to pressure her on it.
Mom, on the other hand, was thriving. She had discovered retreats somewhere in the last five months and had committed to them with the enthusiasm. She came back from each one glowing, lighter. My father would have teased her mercilessly about the green juice. He also would have driven her there himself and waited in the car reading, because that was who he was.
"Your father is celebrating in the land beyond," Mom had said, when DreamHaven took the award for best real estate company and I stood at a podium in a suit he would have approved of with a Forbes cover already confirmed for next month.
I had not cried.
I had gripped the edge of that podium and breathed for three seconds and then said thank you, and nobody in that room knew what those three seconds cost me.
Cinnamon knew.
She had been sitting in the front row that night and when I looked out at the audience, she was already looking back at me with an expression that said "I see you. You're okay. Keep going." No performance in it. No fanfare. Just her presence steady and reassuring.
The best strategic developer in the country. The Forbes list. The DreamHaven award.
My father's son, carrying on what he built so that someone could succeed.

Khole had taken my mind the later months.
I had made calls to editors, platform executives, literary agents who owed me favors and were fine with being reminded of them. I hadn't asked anyone to fabricate anything; I wasn't interested in creating something superficial. I simply ensured that the right people read the right pages. That was all Khole required. The work took care of everything else.
When she called last month, I was in a meeting.
I let it go to voicemail.
Shortly after Cinnamon called.
Then Risa called, which meant whatever was happening had officially exceeded individual capacity to contain it. I stepped out of the meeting — mid-sentence, not sorry about it — and called Cinnamon back.
I heard Khole screaming in the background before Cinnamon even spoke.
"Bestseller nomination," Cinnamon managed, laughing too hard to be fully intelligible. "Number one. United States. Atlanta. She's been nominated, Dante."
I had stood in the corridor outside the boardroom with my hand over my mouth.
Then I had gone back into the meeting and ended it seventeen minutes early and nobody questioned me because apparently my expression communicated that this was not a negotiable situation.

Atlanta was warm for the season.
The venue was grand without being graceless, filled with prominent figures from all works of life.
We had a table near the front.
I was in a suit that Cinnamon had selected, which meant it was perfect. She was in something the color of deep emerald that I had been privately struggling with all evening because she was genuinely too beautiful to be sitting next to me in public and I didn't know how anyone at the surrounding tables was paying attention to anything else.
She had her hand in mine under the table.
Oliver was — against every reasonable expectation — still awake, sitting in my lap in his small suit, currently using my arm as a pillow while he fought sleep with the determination of not wanting to miss out.
Tate was at the table too, jacket off by the second hour, tie loosened, genuinely invested. He had read the books. I had made sure of that.
And Khole sat between Cinnamon and me, in a gown that her sister had helped her choose, with her shoulders back and her hands folded in her lap.
She kept looking at the stage and then looking away.
"Stop," I said quietly.
She looked at me.
"Whatever happens with that award, and I want you to hear this before they call it, you are already the story. Six hundred million reads in two months. Khole, most authors spend careers trying to reach what you've done in eight weeks." I leaned forward slightly. "The nomination is the world catching up to what the readers already knew. The award is a formality."
She exhaled through her nose. Her eyes were bright and hopeful. "You sound very certain for someone who doesn't know the outcome."
"I'm always certain about things I've read the data on."
Cinnamon reached past me and squeezed Khole's hand. "Whether you go home with it or not—"
"She's going home with it," I said.
Cinnamon gave me a 'stop' look.
"She is though."
"Dante."
"Statistically—"
"Dante," she growled.
Khole laughed, the tension in her shoulders breaking for just a moment. Oliver stirred in my lap at the sound of it and then resettled, determined.
The MC returned to the stage.
Khole's hands found each other in her lap again.
I leaned toward her one more time. "Whatever he says in the next thirty seconds, I need you to know that your mother was a reader. She would have bought a hardback and kept it on her nightstand and told everyone she knew." I paused. "She would have been insufferable about it."
Khole's jaw wobbled.
"And—" The MC's voice lifted into the particular register that meant this was the one. The room went quiet as if the five hundred people present had stopped breathing at the same time.
"—for the number one top Bestseller of 2026 in the United States—"
Khole's hand found my arm.