Chapter 54

Drew’s POV

Kimberley’s perfume still lingered in the air long after she’d left; expensive, suffocating and fake.

I stood there, staring at the door, feeling the last traces of her voice crawl under my skin. She’d come in here expecting to own the room. She’d expected me to fold, to scramble for whatever she dangled in front of me. But what rattled me wasn’t Kimberley.

It was Lila.

She hadn’t flinched. Not once. Kimberley had tried to use her as a pressure point, leaning into her smug little performance, and Lila just… sat there. Calm. Composed. Watching. That composure wasn’t accidental, it was strategy. And that meant there was something she hadn’t told me yet.

I turned my head just enough to catch her in my peripheral vision. She was staring at her book, probably thinking about how to answer the inevitable question. There was no way I was letting her leave without answers.

I could hear the subtle shuffle of Lila’s pen against her notebook. My own breathing was shallow, too measured. I realised I’d been gripping my pen so tightly that my knuckles had gone pale.

I felt her stillness, the way she was waiting and I just had to call her name again to bring her back to reality.

“Lila.”

Her head snapped up at the sound of her name.

I kept my tone low and deliberate, the kind that wasn’t asking for a casual clarification. She hesitated, her eyes flicking to my face, then away again.

“I…” she started, and then stopped. Like she didn’t know how to start without it sounding bad. Which told me one thing: whatever she was about to tell me, she’d been keeping it to herself for a while.

When she finally spoke, the first thing she did was set a condition that I keep this between us. That was interesting. She’d been carrying this alone long enough to have rules about how it came out.

I gave her a short nod. “Alright. Go on.”

And she did.

At first, it was simple: Max. His questions. His so-called concern about her workload. But then she shifted, her voice dropping slightly, and I could tell we were getting to the real reason she’d kept quiet. The questions had gotten specific. Too specific. He wanted details and information about launch reveals.

I felt something tighten in my chest, but I kept my expression neutral. My focus stayed on her face, watching every flicker of hesitation, every glance down at her notebook.

She told me about the lunch they had, the text she saw when he left his phone unattended. “Has she told you anything interesting about the launch?”

That was the first time my jaw actually moved. I clenched my teeth so hard I could feel it in my temples. I didn’t interrupt her. If I spoke now, I would risk derailing her.

She explained why she hadn’t confronted him. That part, I understood. People like Max, the moment you accuse them without evidence, they turn it back on you. Twist the conversation until you’re the one apologising.

Then she told me she decided to test him.

My brow lowered slightly. “Test him how?”

Her answer came without hesitation. “I gave him something to see if he’d run with it.”

And that was when I realised exactly what she’d done.

She then talked about how she used the Visage & Void collection as bait, but the kind of bait that looked harmless if you didn’t know the whole picture. She’d staged a phone call, made it sound urgent, like I was expecting to inspect the pieces myself. The part she didn’t tell him was that the collection had been scrapped months ago.

It was clean and clever. And she’d done it entirely on her own.

I didn’t smile, not on the outside. But inside?

Inside, there was a quiet satisfaction building. She wasn’t naive or letting herself be led around by him. She was thinking ahead, anticipating his move before he made it and wasn’t running to him with what she knew or what he told her. She was using him to get what she wanted.

And more than that, if she was testing him, it meant she didn’t trust him. Which meant they weren’t together and that meant I’d been wrong about that.

That… mattered more than it should have.

She connected the last dots herself, Kimberley walking in today, smug and ready to leverage something she thought I couldn’t resist.

When she said Kimberley couldn’t have known unless Max told her, I didn’t doubt her for a second. I’d seen Kimberley try to overplay her hand just now. The way she almost said his name outright. The only thing that stopped her was Lila sitting there in the room.

“You could have told me sooner,” I said finally.

It wasn’t anger. Just the truth. If she’d come to me earlier, I could’ve shut this down before Kimberley even set foot in here.

“I know,” she said, looking down. “I just… I didn’t want to come to you with nothing but a gut feeling. I wanted something solid.”

I studied her.

More than anything, her actions told me what kind of player she was. She wasn’t impulsive or reckless. She knew the value of timing.

That was another point in her favour. She would rather work in the shadows and bring a sure thing than risk wasting anyone’s time.

Still, I could tell there was something she wasn’t telling me. A hesitation in her voice that didn’t match the rest of her conviction. She wasn’t lying, but she was editing.

When I asked what she planned to do next, I expected something reckless. Instead, she shook her head and said she wasn’t going to confront him yet. She wanted to know why Max and Kimberley were doing this and what their actual goal was.

“Help me,” she said then.

That was the part that caught me off guard.

Not because she was asking, but because of how she was asking. There was no ego in it. No challenge. Just a quiet certainty that I was the one who could help her pull this apart.

She was right. I had resources she didn’t. But I also had the one thing she probably hadn’t considered yet, the willingness to play dirtier than either of them would expect.

I didn’t say yes right away. I let the moment stretch, partly to test her resolve, partly because I wanted to watch the way she looked at me when she thought I might say no.

When I finally nodded, I kept my tone even. “Fine, I will help you but we will do it my way.”

She agreed without asking what that meant. That told me she trusted me more than she realised or maybe she was just desperate enough to take the risk.

Either way, she’d just put this problem in my hands.

And Max?

Max had no idea what kind of mistake he’d made.

Because this wasn’t just about protecting the launch anymore. This was about making sure nobody, not even Max or Kimberley would ever think of playing Lila again.