Chapter Sixty Four

I stood frozen for a second, hand still resting on the doorknob, heart thudding harder than I wanted to admit. I should’ve just walked away. I should’ve let him sit there in his pool of regrets and self-pity and whiskey. But something about the way he looked so… hollow— like a man sitting in the wreckage of a world he couldn’t fix… made something shift inside me.

Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was just weakness. Or maybe it was the remnants of a past I swore I’d buried deep.

Either way, I turned around.

The bottle was already halfway to his lips again when I stepped forward.

“No,” I said firmly, grabbing it before he could drink.

He looked at me, blinking slowly as if trying to process what I’d just done.

“Camilla—”

“Enough, Richard,” I cut in, my voice more tired than angry.

He didn’t argue. That was the part that surprised me the most. No witty remark. No sharp retort. Just silence, and the kind of resignation you only see in someone who’s been holding up too many cru