CHAPTER TEN.

Third person POV.

The morning after Audrey's nightmare was oddly quiet. The sunlight filtered through the curtains, but it felt colder than usual. 

Audrey stared at the text on her phone over and over again: “I warned him.” 

She wondered in gut-wrenching fear who exactly had sent her the message, and who was the “he” the message talked about. Did this have to do with her father? Has one of his shady business partners come hunting her down? 

She stared at the message until her vision blurred, trying to convince herself it was a mistake, a coincidence, heck–even a prank. But the trembling in her fingers and the invisible weight in her chest told her it wasn’t. Someone was watching. 

And maybe that someone knew. Knew everything about her, maybe even about the baby. Maybe the contract. Maybe everything.

She deleted the message quickly, shoved the phone under her pillow, and curled up again, arms wrapped around herself as if they could keep her safe. Her heart pounded for hours until she heard Asher moving around in the kitchen. She let the subtle movements in her stomach bring her temporary peace for now.

She was quiet all morning, dragging her feet to the kitchen, offering Asher a stiff nod instead of a smile. He raised an eyebrow at her change in behavior but didn’t press her.

She couldn’t tell him. She wouldn’t tell him.

Her silence wrapped around her like armor. She had to act normal. She had to protect the baby.

Asher noticed. She wasn’t humming to herself like she used to. She didn’t make sarcastic remarks over his coffee choice or tease him about how serious he looked when reading. 

Her jokes and random observations were gone, and even her laugh—which he’d recently begun to realize he liked far more than he admitted—was absent. 

Instead, she became withdrawn, too polite. Her eyes darted to windows and her hands twitched whenever her phone buzzed. Something was wrong.

She had become silent, cautious. She barely spoke through breakfast. She sat tensely on the couch, her eyes darting toward every sound. Even the rustle of the wind outside made her flinch. 

And she knew that Asher was pressing to ask her what the problem was. 

So when Asher passed by her in the hallway, paused, watched her with furrowed brows, and asked “You okay?”, she wasn't surprised. 

“I’m fine,” she said too quickly, too tightly.

He nodded, but she knew he didn’t believe her.

Over the next few hours, she avoided him. She remained mostly in her room, and when he came near, she would mask her fear with practiced ease. 

Still, Asher wasn’t a fool. He sensed her walls going back up. It reminded him too much of the beginning—of when she was only his wife on paper.

He was going to ask her what was wrong because he’d made up his mind. But just as he was in his study, preparing to walk up to her door, his phone rang with an unknown number. 

He answered. “Asher Lennox.”

The voice on the other end was from the police department. “Mr. Lennox, I thought you’d want to know. The arson and homicide case involving your parents… it’s been reopened.”

His breath caught in his throat and he managed to bellow, “What?!”

“We recovered an old CCTV footage. You might want to see this.”

Asher didn't even know how he made it into his luxury SUV and sped down to the police station. He was sure he ran through some red lights, but he was too stunned to care. 

Finally, Asher sat in a cold room across from a detective. The detective, a Mr. White, tried to make light conversation but Asher immediately shut it down. 

“Detective, with all due respect, stop trying to beat around the bush and just show me what you recovered.”

His nerves were building into a tense anger, and he needed to calm down. Memories from years ago tried to surface, but he immediately suppressed them. Not now, he thought. 

A laptop was turned towards him and his breath stopped. On the screen, grainy footage flickered. A figure—cloaked in darkness—was seen creeping around the perimeter of his parents’ estate. Gasoline splashed from a red container. A lighter flicked. Flames burst to life. It all happened in what seemed like split-seconds. 

The footage was unclear. The face was shadowed. But something about the way the figure moved, the posture… it clawed at something deep within Asher’s memory.

He leaned back in the chair, heart pounding, jaw clenched.

“Do you happen to know who this person is?” the detective asked.

His mind reeled. He desperately searched his memory on where he had seen that gait before, and he came up blank. It felt like the memory was within his reach, but he just couldn't take a hold of it. 

“No,” Asher said. But his mind screamed yes. Not in certainty—but in familiarity.

He looked at the detective's face and saw pity and immediately hated himself. He quickly requested that the video be sent to his email.

When he left the station, the past swelled in his chest like a tsunami, and he finally let them surface. 

He remembered everything.

He always wondered from a tender age why his parents never took him to the various conferences and dinners they were invited to. He was always home with the butler, Gerald. 

Even at school, his father never allowed his identity to be revealed. He changed Asher's surname to his father's, and never let anyone know that he was his son. 

He was always curious and wanted to ask questions, until he was nineteen and was shipped abroad. No warning. Just a suitcase containing his entire life, and a boarding ticket in his right hand.

His father didn’t even say goodbye.

“Why are you doing this?” he had desperately asked before he left. 

His father’s expression had been somber. “Because there are people who would do anything to bring me down. If they come to know I have a son... a true heir... you will become a target. This is for your safety, Asher. One day, you'll understand me.”

The confusion and desperation in his chest had swelled and he struggled to lay hold on what his father was saying to him. 

“But what are you mixed up in?” he finally managed to ask.

His father never answered him and they never finished that conversation.

He had boarded that flight with confusion and bitterness pressing against his ribs. He had begged his father to let him stay, to live normally, but his father’s voice had been sharp.

Months passed. He lived in a dorm room thousands of miles away from home. Alone, isolated, friendless. He didn’t trust easily. He didn’t talk to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.

Until that fateful night the call came.  

That night, Asher had just returned to his college dorm after a long day of exams. He was halfway through microwaving some TV dinner when his phone rang. The number was unfamiliar. The voice on the other end was strained and uncertain.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blake. There was a fire… your parents—”

He didn’t remember the rest. Just the ringing in his ears.

The airport was a blur. The cab ride was even worse. But nothing could prepare him for the smell when he arrived at what was left of his childhood home: burnt flesh, scorched metal, wet ash.

Blackened beams jutted from the ground like broken bones. Smoke still clung to the ruins. Firefighters and officers had already cordoned off the place. They wouldn’t let him inside.

They didn’t need to.

There was nothing left and his parents were gone.

The only family he ever had. No siblings. No cousins that he knew of. No grandparents alive. His entire world had been reduced to rubble and soot.

He’d stared for hours. Until rain fell and turned the ashes to mud. And he cried until he could barely feel his face.

He had no one.

They told him it was a mysterious electrical fault. Something unexplained. No one dug deeper. And him? He was too broken to ask questions.

So he buried them. Both his parents. In silence and alone.

He didn’t cry at the funeral. There was no one to hold him. No one to stand beside him. So he hardened. Turned his grief into resolve.

He discovered a trust fund his father had secretly opened in his name. And with that, he managed to train himself through college. 

And he graduated college with a purpose–to rebuild his father's company from the ground up. And he was successful, he’s now a billionaire after all. 

As he walked away from the precinct, the memory of the cloaked figure lit his thoughts with a terrifying possibility: It wasn’t an accident, it was murder.

His father was right–there had been a conspiracy all along.

And someone out there might still be watching his every move. Which will explain why his skin prickled when he was out at night, and why he felt like a pair of eyes were always on him when he was in public places. 

But he was determined to find out. For the sake of Audrey, for his unborn child. This time, he wasn't going to lose his family. 

~~~

Back at the house, Audrey sat in her room staring at her phone. Her pulse hadn’t stopped racing.

She thought of telling Asher. Thought of running into his arms and asking for help. But something—some ancient instinct—kept her quiet.

She couldn’t trust anyone. Not even the man she was beginning to fall for.

So she curled into herself. Her laughter fading, her voice dimming, her walls rising higher.

~~~

In the kitchen, Asher stood still, a mug of untouched coffee in his hand. His thoughts spiraled with the weight of memories and suspicion.

The coldness he’d fought so hard to unlearn was returning. The memories he had tried to bury under extended office hours, toxic relationships, and increasing net worths, were now spreading their tentacles and slowly taking over his mind. 

And this time, they didn't just bring grief, they brought a heart-stopping fear along.

And as night fell again over the mansion, silence stretched between two people who had just begun to find each other. They were now drifting apart again, their connection now being swallowed up by a black hole. 

But they were somehow still connected, by their hostage in the secrets they didn’t yet know they shared.