Chapter 6

LIAM:

Sleep was out of the question.

The estate was quiet, too quiet. Security doubled, guards patrolled the grounds like shadows, but none of it mattered. The threat wasn't the bikes or the bullets anymore. It was her. The ghost sitting on my mind, her face hidden, her voice a blade I thought I'd forgotten.

I poured a drink I didn't touch, just let the glass sweat against my palm as I stared at the silver chain on my desk.

Julian had sent a preliminary report: chain belonged to a man identified as Rafael Ortega, mid-level hitter for a biker syndicate working the southern docks. Dead now, because that was the pattern. Either my bodyguard dies or his hitman does. 

Rafael had a record of smuggling, extortion, and three prior murder charges. Dangerous, yes. Disposable, also yes. It was part of my daily now since Zara died and Nick swore vengeance. My life has been in danger ever since and my father wasn't having it. 

He even hired a hitman to take Nick down but I paid the hitman double of what my father gave him and dad was livid. 

I still haven't gotten over the fact that my actions killed Zara, even though I knew I was going to live with the guilt forever, I can't let anything happen to Nick. She would never forgive me. 

But that wasn't what made my blood run cold.

It was the way she'd looked when she dropped the chain into my hand—like it meant nothing. Like running after a man who wouldn't miss the chance to end her was just another line in her ledger.

And still, beneath all that steel, I'd heard something when she said, Stay down.

Not just command. Not just duty.

Recognition.

I knew that voice.

I opened the desk drawer and pulled the chain out again, holding it to the light. Up close, I caught something I'd missed before: faint scratches on the back of the pendant. Not initials. Numbers. Six digits.

A date.

My throat tightened. It was the exact date of the incident.The one that took everything.

My chair scraped back hard enough to leave marks on the floor. I didn't even notice. All I saw was the memory unspooling in my mind—the bet,the heartbreak, the disappearance, the news of her death .

Nick never failed to remind me of it. As if living with constant threat over my life wasn't enough torture 

The silver chain burned against my palm like a brand.

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

The city lights faded behind me as the road narrowed into a ribbon of asphalt clinging to the edge of the cliffs. The night air was sharp, salted by the sea below. Headlights cut across the jagged rocks, and for a moment I wondered if this was madness,chasing ghosts when I should've been chasing answers.

But I knew why I was here.

The chain was heavy in my pocket, the numbers etched into its back burning in my thoughts. A date that tied me to loss, to her. And yet, my mind didn't go to the ashes. It came here.

To this cliff.

I parked, killed the engine, and stepped out. Wind whipped hard enough to bite, pulling at my suit jacket, carrying the sound of waves crashing against stone far below. The cliff hadn't changed. Not the crooked railing at the edge. Not the weather-worn bench half hidden in weeds.

And not the memory.

Zara.

Her laugh still echoed here if I let myself hear it. That night we'd stolen away from everything—expectations, names, obligations—and found a piece of sky big enough for us to breathe under. I kissed her right here, I still feel her hand at the back of my neck, fierce and trembling all at once.

I pressed my palms against the cold railing, breathing in the ghosts.

That was the night I realized I could love someone. The night I ruined by trying to prove that I am king. Trying to prove I was the golden boy who could have any girl he wanted. 

Now I stood in the same spot, years later, and wondered if the woman behind the mask was the same girl who'd once kissed me beneath this broken sky.

I closed my eyes, and for a second it was almost unbearable,the overlap of memory and present, the thought that she'd come back not as Zara, but as something harder, colder, forged in the spaces I wasn't there to fill.

The chain pressed into my palm as I pulled it from my pocket.

"Is it you?" I whispered to the night. "God help me, is it really you?"

The sea didn't answer. Neither did the wind.

But in the hollow between waves, I thought I heard it—faint, fragile, like a voice I'd once known better than my own.

Stay down.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm the storm inside me when the low growl of an engine broke the silence.

A motorbike.

The sound climbed the cliff road, closer, louder, until headlights cut through the dark behind me. My chest tightened. I turned slowly, the chain still clenched in my fist.

Then she appeared. 

Lauren. 

The woman who reminded of the only person I've ever loved. 

The person whose blood I had on my hands. 

Watching her ride reminded me so much of my Zara. 

She killed the engine twenty feet away, swung her leg over the bike, and stood. The mask gleamed under the moonlight, a pale ghost in leather and shadow. Her braid was loose now, strands whipping in the wind, but her stance,solid, unshaken,never wavered.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Just the crash of the sea and the wind threading between us.

Then her voice came, low and steady, the same voice that had ripped me out of gunfire earlier that night.

"Your father is looking for you."

The words cut sharper than the cold.

"You know it's irresponsible to come out here alone."

I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because the cliff, this night, her mask—it all felt like some cruel trick the universe was playing.

I stepped toward her, my hand tightening on the chain in my pocket. "Irresponsible?" My voice cracked more than I meant it to. "You think that's what this is about?"

The mask tilted slightly, unreadable. Watching. Measuring.

"You know it's not safe for you to be out here alone," it sounded like she was scolding me. 

It sounded like she actually cared. 

'Of course she does, she being paid to protect you,' a voice inside me yelled.

I wanted to demand answers. To rip the mask off and see if the girl who once kissed me under these stars was the same woman now keeping me alive but staying out of reach. But the words caught in my throat, tangled with the salt wind and the weight of the past.

If she was the one, I wasn't going to be irrational and lose her again. 

Instead, I forced out, quieter this time: "Why here? Why follow me here?"

Her shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly. For a second, I swore she faltered. Then her voice returned, clipped and cool.

"Because you don't get to disappear. Not tonight. Not ever."

The cliff held its silence. The waves roared beneath us. And I realized the worst part wasn't that she was standing there, masked and unreadable.

It was that even now, even like this, I wanted her to stay.

The mask caught the moonlight, a pale oval that refused to give me anything. No expression. No mercy. Just the barrier she'd chosen.

And I couldn't take it anymore.

I took a step closer. Then another. She didn't move, but her hand twitched near her side, as if she was ready for me to do something reckless.

"Take it off," I said, my voice low, rougher than I intended.

Nothing. Just the sound of the sea and the bike cooling behind her.

"I'm not asking," I pushed, my chest tight. "I need to see you."

Her head tilted slightly, but she stayed silent.

God, that silence burned.

I closed the space until I was only a breath away, close enough to see the smudges of blood on the edge of her mask, the rise and fall of her chest beneath the jacket. Close enough that if she lifted her chin an inch, I'd swear it would be Zara standing in front of me again, fierce and breakable all at once.

"Lauren," I whispered, the name breaking like glass in my mouth. "If it's you… if it's really you… let me see."

Her shoulders stiffened. A crack in the armor, barely there but real.

Her gloved hand came up, not to the mask, but to my chest. A flat, firm push,nothing violent, just enough to remind me she could put distance between us any time she wanted.

"You don't want this," she said, voice strained now, not as steady as before. "You think you do, but you don't."

"Don't tell me what I want." My hand shot up, not grabbing, just hovering near the mask, my fingers trembling. "You've been haunting me since the moment you walked back into my life. And if you think I'm going to stand here and let you keep hiding…."

She caught my wrist midair. Her grip was iron.

For a heartbeat, we froze like that,the sea raging below, the night pressing in, the ghost of everything we'd been caught between us.

Her eyes, the only thing visible through the mask, locked on mine. And for that fraction of a second, the cold unreadability cracked. I saw it—pain. Recognition. The echo of the girl I once knew.

Then, softer, almost breaking: "Don't make me take it off, Liam."

The way she said my name,it hollowed me out.

I swallowed hard, the chain biting into my palm inside my pocket, and for the first time tonight, I didn't know if unmasking her would save me… or destroy me.

"Once this mask comes off, I'm gone." 

Her voice was back to being professional. 

"Get in your car, let's go home."