Chapter 22

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Chapter 22: Echoes in the Marble

The morning after was a fragile thing.

Sunlight poured into the room like golden guilt, washing over Isla’s bare skin as she lay in the tangle of sheets that still smelled like him. The heat from their night together lingered, but it had thinned—becoming something else. Something hollow and echoing.

Christopher was gone.

She sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around herself, as if modesty still mattered. The clock on the wall ticked like a metronome counting down to something she couldn’t name. And for the first time in weeks, she didn’t want to run—but she didn’t want to stay either.

The ache between her legs was nothing compared to the ache in her chest.

A knock rattled her door. Not tentative, not polite—urgent.

Her heart skipped.

She wrapped herself in a robe and stepped out. Her fingers paused just above the handle. One second. Two. Then she opened it.

Standing on the other side was the last person she wanted to see.

Victor.

Her stepfather-in-law. Her husband’s father. The man whose absence haunted their estate and whose silence had been more dangerous than threats. He looked immaculate as always—black coat, polished shoes, silver rings that glinted even in the morning light. But his eyes were colder than she'd ever seen them.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

Isla blinked, pulse thundering in her throat.

“How did you find me?”

Victor smiled, and it made her skin crawl.

“You forget who I am.”

His voice held no anger. Just observation. Like a surgeon commenting on the depth of an incision.

She tried to close the door, but he was faster—his hand pressed flat against it, preventing the motion.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Isla,” he said, stepping inside without waiting for permission. “But I will ask you to listen.”

Her hands clenched. “I don’t want to hear anything from you.”

Victor moved to the center of the apartment, casting a slow glance at the unmade bed. The room still reeked of what had happened last night.

He smirked. “So. It’s begun.”

She froze.

He turned back to her. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? That I wouldn’t feel it when the one thing I warned him not to touch finally gave in?”

Isla felt her knees weaken.

“What do you want, Victor?”

He walked toward her, slow and deliberate, until they were nearly chest to chest. “To remind you of who he is. Of what I made him into. And what it will cost you if you keep chasing something that cannot exist.”

“He’s not like you,” she whispered.

Victor’s expression didn’t change. But his next words were a razor blade.

“No, Isla. He’s worse.”

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Later, when Victor was gone, Isla stood in the shower, letting the water burn her skin red. She pressed her forehead against the tile and let the silence scream.

She remembered Christopher’s hands on her.

His mouth.

His words.

You’re not a sin.

Then why did she feel like one?

---

Christopher didn’t come home that night.

He didn’t text.

Didn’t call.

Isla waited. At first with anxious pacing, then with hollow stillness. The silence grew heavy again, pressing down on her shoulders, settling in the pit of her stomach.

By the second day, she snapped.

She took the car keys and drove out of the city. The skyline shrank behind her like a closing memory. She followed instinct, not logic—winding roads, wooded shadows, the forgotten trail leading to the edge of the lake where she knew he sometimes went when the darkness inside him grew too loud.

She found his motorcycle parked beneath the twisted pine trees.

And then she saw him—sitting at the water’s edge, cigarette in one hand, gun resting beside him like a loyal dog.

He didn’t look surprised to see her.

“I thought you were smarter than this,” he muttered, not turning around.

She sat beside him, knees pulled to her chest. “And I thought you cared more.”

His jaw tightened.

“I do care.”

“Then why did you run?”

He exhaled smoke into the air. “Because I wanted more.”

That startled her. “More?”

Christopher nodded slowly. “More than this. More than hiding in shadows. I wanted a life with you that didn’t start with blood and betrayal. And I realized… I can’t give that to you.”

Isla stared at the water. “You think I don’t already know that?”

He turned then—finally—and what she saw in his eyes made her chest ache.

He was unraveling.

Not from guilt.

But from love.

“I’m not afraid of who you are, Christopher.”

“You should be.”

She reached for his hand, took the cigarette from his fingers, and flicked it away.

“I’m not. I’m only afraid of losing you.”

He looked at her, searching her face as if he’d never seen it before. Then he leaned forward and kissed her—not with fire this time, but with something softer, more dangerous.

Hope.

---

They made love again that night, under the trees, on a blanket that smelled of pine and danger. Slower this time. Wordless. A kind of apology between bodies that had nothing left to prove.

After, they lay beneath the stars, her head on his chest.

“You know this can’t last,” he murmured.

“Then let’s make it count,” she whispered.

---

Back in the city, trouble brewed.

Victor was making moves. Quietly. Strategically. He was cutting off their accounts, freezing assets, stirring rumors about Isla’s “instability.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst came in the form of a file delivered anonymously to Isla’s email—untraceable, unassuming. She opened it expecting another thread of manipulation.

Instead, she found the truth.

Christopher had lied.

Not about loving her.

But about how he knew her before they ever met.

And it broke something open in her that would never close again.

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