Chapter 13

LIAM:

Beatrice's father was still fuming, spitting threats, when my father moved.

The crack of his hand across my face came so fast, so sharp, my head snapped sideways. My cheek burned, the metallic tang of blood rising in my mouth.

For a heartbeat, everything stilled. Even Beatrice gasped.

I turned back slowly, meeting my father's eyes. Fury churned in my chest, but he wasn't raging like me. No—his fury was ice. Controlled. Deadly.

His voice was low, but it carried like a blade through the air. "You will not humiliate this family again, Liam."

I clenched my fists, breathing hard, but he stepped closer, towering over me, his presence heavy and suffocating.

"You think your anger makes you righteous?" he hissed, his words meant for me alone. "It makes you weak. Pathetic. A liability. If you cannot bury the past and do your duty, then you will be nothing. Nothing but a disgrace to me, to this house, to the name you carry."

His hand gripped my jaw, forcing me to look at him. "You want to defy me? Then understand this,defiance has consequences. And you're not strong enough to survive them."

His cold smile made my stomach knot. "So get yourself under control. Or I will break you myself."

He released me with a shove, turning sharply to Beatrice's father as if nothing had happened, smoothing the mask of power back into place.

But I stood there, cheek burning, heart pounding. Every word, every threat seared into me.

And for the first time, I wondered,was I more furious at Beatrice… or at the man who called himself my father?

~~~~~~~~~~~

I left before anyone could argue.

I didn't pack. I didn't text. I didn't tell Julian, didn't tell my father, didn't call Lauren ,or anyone. I pulled the keys from the hook and walked out without looking back. The house sat behind me, lights like a jury staring through windows. I kept my head down.

My car ate the road until the city thinned and the neon gave way to the flat, indifferent black of the outskirts. I drove on instinct, past places that used to mean something — the hospital that had stitched me back together, the dock where deals were made, the strip of highway that led nowhere important. I kept going until the GPS lost the last of its confidence and the map on my phone shrank into a spinning nothing.

There's a place I went to when I needed to vanish. No one knew about it now except me. It wasn't a refuge for the rich — it was a lean, wooden cabin shoved back into the trees by a narrow river, a relic of my father's long-ago investments. He'd used it for weekend fishing once; I'd used it as a place to get away from him. No cell reception. No cameras. No expectations.

I pulled off a gravel path that looked like it hadn't been used in years and killed the engine. The silence when the car died was sudden, thick. I sat for a long beat with my head in my hands, feeling the aftershocks of the night—the slap, the shouting, the smell of Beatrice's perfume clinging in my nose. The sting on my cheek from my father's hand had faded to a dull ache. The rest of it felt like a weight in my ribs.

The cabin was exactly what I remembered: paint peeled, a sagging porch, a single lamp that hummed weakly if anyone bothered to make it work. I locked the car, tucked my phone in a drawer in the glove box, and left it there like I was burying a confession. No one could reach me here. No one would think to look.

Inside, dust sat on everything like a film. I kicked off my shoes, stepped to the small window that looked out over the river and watched the current swallowing moonlight. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do something so loud that it would tear me out of the slow-motion hell I'd been trapped in all night.

Instead I found a bottle in the cupboard,cheap whiskey,and a rusted tin cup. I didn't want to drink to forget; I wanted the burn, the thin, clear pain that let me feel something besides the hot, hollow grief in my chest. The first swallow was fire and then something colder: clarity.

I sat on the floor with my back to the wall, knees up, the cup clutched between both hands. The house was a place to think, and the thinking wasn't pretty. My father's words …I will break you myself …rotated through my skull like a vow. Beatrice's smug face. My palm traced the scar on my cheek where his slap had landed as if I could find the thread that would unravel everything.

If I stayed under their roof, I'd be softened, shaped into whatever they needed me to become: an asset disguised as a son. If I left, I'd risk everything they'd built for me. But staying felt like agreeing to forget someone's death. That, I couldn't do.

I didn't know what I would do next. I only knew I couldn't go back yet,not with the way it had just been carved into me. For now: no calls, no orders, no forced smiles. Just the river's slow voice and the dark. Just me and a cup and the small steady thought that I needed to breathe without their rules for a minute longer.

Outside, the world continued on without permission. Inside the ruined cabin, I let myself be angry and raw and unreadable, in no particular order. The night stretched, and I stayed awake until dawn bled into the trees,because for the first time since everything began to rot, I was the one choosing where I was going to stand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

LAUREN/ZARA

It has been a week.

Seven days since Liam walked out of the estate without a word, without his phone, without security. Seven days since the cameras had caught him driving off into the night and then… nothing.

A week shouldn't feel like forever, but it did.

Every morning, the estate hummed with restless energy. Guards combed the city. Julian barked orders into comms, his voice fraying at the edges. His father remained a storm wrapped in silence, furious that his heir had slipped away like a ghost under his nose. And Beatrice—God, Beatrice still came, her perfume clinging to the air, acting as though Liam had only gone on some business trip and would return ready to play fiancé.

But me?

I was using any available resources and techniques I have in order to find him. Ate when I remembered. Slept when exhaustion forced me to. And every time the gates opened, my chest tightened like maybe,just maybe,t would be him.

It never was.

The strangest part wasn't the silence he'd left behind. It was how the world felt different without him here. His presence had always unsettled me,too close to a past I'd buried, too dangerous to my heart,but now his absence was worse. The house echoed with it. My thoughts spun with it.

I told myself I shouldn't care. That after everything he'd done, after what he and Beatrice had stolen from me, his disappearance shouldn't matter. But it did. It mattered in ways I hated admitting.

Every night when I lay down, I remembered that kiss—the one he shouldn't have given and the one I shouldn't have let myself feel. The kiss that made the photo on his wall feel like a wound ripped open.

I clenched my fists and forced my breathing steady.

He was gone. Maybe for good. Maybe that was for the best.

But in the quiet between footsteps and orders, I felt the truth press against my ribs like a secret I couldn't swallow:

I missed him.

And I hated myself for it.