Chapter 4

“Get out!”

Merrick’s voice carried a cold, razor-sharp edge.

Elise opened her eyes and saw the fury burning in his gaze, and the struggle that had never left him these past days.

“Merrick, don’t listen.”

She gently covered his ears.

Her lips followed a moment later.

Their breaths tangled.

She crashed into the cool, shadow-deep darkness of his eyes.

For Merrick, the fire blazing through him climbed in spirals, scattering the storm in his chest piece by piece.

Again and again, he felt the dizzying warmth of being wrapped in a hot spring.

By five in the morning, Elise’s unfocused eyes finally cleared.

Dragging her weak, trembling legs into the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror and let out a soft laugh.

They really had arrived quickly just as she expected.

After all, she’d walked two kilometers just to make that call.

In the mirror, Elise looked young, beautiful, and faintly alluring.

Soon, she stepped out in a robe.

The man stood on the balcony wearing only his pants, cigarette in hand, irritation clinging to him like smoke.

“I’ll stay with you,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, soothing the darkness dragging him down.

She admired and idolized this striking man.

Merrick was tall and handsome, carrying a steadiness she longed for, a calculating sharpness, a calm confidence toward everything in his path.

Through him, Elise saw a far more brilliant world.

But there was one truth she reminded herself of with unwavering clarity.

She must never fall in love with him, or she would end up like her mother—spirit broken, trapped forever in this barren place, never again finding the courage to leave.

The moment Merrick felt Elise step closer, he crushed out his cigarette and turned, pulling her firmly into his arms.

“Elise, will you come with me?”

His low, magnetic voice made her eyes widen, a sudden burst of wild joy flooding her chest.

She had planned to ask Merrick to take her away from here, but she hadn’t expected him to bring it up first.

Too many women were trapped in Fourteenth District.

Many were just like Elise—unyielding, resilient, waiting year after year for a promise a man once made, just as her father had done to her mother.

Elise refused to be one of them.

She would carve a way out for herself if she had to.

The man before her—striking beyond reason—still carried a fair, untouched complexion even after living so long in Borderfall, as if he had never belonged to this land at all.

“Yes.” She gave him the sincerest smile she’d ever shown.

Merrick pressed a kiss to her forehead.

As he remembered the helplessness and confusion in her eyes just moments ago, a faint sigh flickered through his dark gaze before disappearing beneath the urgency of heading home.

Dawn had yet to break.

A long convoy of off-road vehicles slipped quietly out of the unnoticed little county town, heading toward the nearest airport.

Elise sat silently beside Merrick.

She turned to the window.

The rising red glow on the horizon washed the sky in color, like the new life waiting for her ahead—bright, dazzling, and full of hope.

She lowered her head slightly, the corner of her lips lifting into a soft smile.

…

By the time they landed in Crown City, it was already late at night.

A black Rolls-Royce wound its way up the mountain road.

Only when the Grant estate—an entire mountain claimed by Merrick’s family—came into view did Elise realize his background was far more powerful than she ever imagined.

“Welcome home, sir.”

The staff, all dressed in uniform black, bowed respectfully to him.

Wearing new clothes, Elise followed Merrick inside.

She felt like a child drowning in an adult’s wardrobe, her whole body tense with discomfort.

That feeling exploded the moment she saw Merrick’s mother.

Margaret Holt had been born into one of the country’s top families and later entered a political marriage with the Grant patriarch.

She had three sons; the second died young, and her husband passed five years later, leaving her to shoulder the vast Grant empire alone.

Sitting there, she was the perfect portrait of old-money elegance.

Elise instantly understood where Merrick’s striking looks came from.

The light sweep of Margaret’s gaze carried open disdain, her entire presence steeped in the hauteur of someone who’d lived at the top all her life.

A tall figure suddenly stepped in front of Elise.

It was Merrick.

“Mom.” His tone was cool, as if speaking to a stranger.

Margaret’s teacup flew straight at him, scalding tea splashing across his chest and throat.

“You dare call me ‘Mom’!”

“You disappeared without a word for this long, and now you show up tangled with some nobody…”

At that, Margaret paused deliberately, her gaze slicing briefly toward Elise.

Her cold reprimand followed. “You clearly don’t see me as your mother anymore! If I hadn’t sent people to drag you back, were you planning to never return to this family at all?”

The spilled tea was still steaming.

Elise shot a worried look at Merrick, who remained silent.

She tried to speak, but his hand slipped behind him and closed around hers, stopping her.

She swallowed her words.

Merrick’s indifferent gaze made something in Margaret’s chest jolt.

Casting a cool glance at her youngest son standing protectively in front of the woman, she rose with a frozen expression, her tone sharp with command.

“You. Come with me to the tea room.”

“Charles, have the staff take this young woman to a guest room. Prepare clean clothes for her. Don’t let her disgrace the family.”

It was a roundabout way of calling Elise dirty.

Charles Fenton bowed respectfully. “Yes, Madam.”

“Merrick…” Elise tightened her grip on his hand, nerves knotting in her chest.

Merrick looked back at her. “Charles has been with the Grants for years. He knows what’s appropriate. Go with him and rest.”

Hearing that, Charles paused for a moment, then understood exactly what Merrick meant.

“This way, miss.”

Charles knew his place, but the rest of the staff didn’t.

In the bathroom, Elise lay in a bathtub filled with floating petals.

Two maids worked over her skin, casually slipping into talk of Merrick’s past and of his first love, a woman named Selena Shaw.

Elise closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

She woke again feeling noticeably cleaner, her hair washed and brushed out.

The clothes they sent her were styles she had never seen—light, thin, almost identical in texture to the ones Merrick had tossed her before.

Elise reached for the doorknob, only to find it locked.

She had barely stepped onto the balcony when she heard Margaret’s voice scolding in the room next door.

“I don’t care how far things have gone between you two. Give her a place, car, money—whatever. But within three days, get rid of that woman.”

“Merrick Grant!”

When he didn’t respond, Margaret’s voice rose sharply.

“Do you have any idea who you are? If your brother hadn’t had that accident, do you think I’d ever bother sending people to fetch you?

“You choose—either you deal with her, or I will.”

Elise’s heart tightened at the words.

After a long moment, she finally heard Merrick’s quiet laugh.

His tone was calm. “Don’t worry. I don’t love her, and I won’t marry her.

“She saved me, and I promised to look after her. That’s my responsibility. What you fear won’t happen.”

Elise let out a small, bitter smile, no longer interested in the rest of the conversation.

She turned and went back into the guest room.