Chapter Four

Kirrily Archer’s POV:

Love isn’t gentle when you’ve learned to survive without it. Sometimes it hardens into something sharp something you hide beneath your clothes and carry close to your skin because pain is infinitely easier to understand than hope.

I sat at the kitchen counter with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. It had gone stone-cold hours ago, but I hadn’t even noticed. My entire focus was glued to the tablet screen resting in front of me.

A secure medical portal glowed in the dim light.

PATIENT: ARCHER, TAHLIA WARD: 4B STATUS: UNCHANGED My chest tightened until it ached. Tahlia. My little sister. Four years ago, she had been vibrant, adventurous, and impossible to keep indoors. Now she spent her days trapped in a sterile hospital bed in Sydney.

The doctors called her condition progressive. Rare. Unpredictable. I had believed them at first, weeping in waiting rooms and praying for miracles. But then I started looking at her medical charts myself.

The medications didn’t make sense. The dosages didn’t line up. And the longer I investigated, the more a sickening conviction took root in my mind: someone was deliberately keeping my sister sick.

A new report popped up. I zoomed in with trembling fingers. The chemical readings in her latest blood work were deeply abnormal.

For four years, they had told me the same rehearsed lie that Tahlia wasn’t waking because her brain was permanently damaged. But I had uncovered something much darker. Someone was keeping her under.

“Mummy!”

I startled, quickly locking the screen. Toby came running into the kitchen wearing his blue dinosaur pajamas, holding something tightly in his fist.

“Look what I found!” he beamed.

I forced a smile, pushing the panic down. “What did you find, sweetheart?”

He opened his little hand to reveal a smooth, white seashell. “It’s pretty.”

“It really is.” He scrambled up onto my lap, warm and heavy.

“Is the storm gone?” he asked, looking toward the window.

I brushed a stray curl of hair from his forehead. “For now.”

His silver-grey eyes stared up into mine. Those eyes still caught me off guard sometimes. They hurt to look at, carrying the sharp ache of everything I’d lost. But when I looked at Toby, I didn’t see Lachlan Vance. I saw my son. My absolute reason for drawing breath.

“Are you hungry?” I asked softly.

He nodded vigorously. “Can we have pancakes?”

“Banana pancakes.”

“With honey?”

“Only if you finish your milk.”

He groaned in theatrical despair. I couldn't help but laugh. “Deal.”

He hopped down and raced back toward the living room.

My smile faded the second he was out of reach. I turned back to the tablet. A notification blinked on the screen not from the hospital’s public portal, but from a deep, encrypted channel I had buried inside their network months ago.

My heart skipped a beat. I opened it.

DO NOT REPLY. THIS TERMINAL WILL WIPE IN THIRTY SECONDS.

I read on, my breath catching in my throat. The attending physician had received a massive wire transfer from an anonymous shell company. Minutes later, Tahlia’s sedative dosage had been dangerously increased.

My stomach twisted violently. I read the final sentence twice to make sure I wasn't hallucinating: She isn’t deteriorating from a disease. They’re keeping her under. Get her out of St. Jude’s.

The tablet nearly slipped from my numb fingers.

No. I gripped the edge of the counter, my knuckles turning white. Four years. Four years of believing I was protecting her by staying away. Four years of obeying their brutal rules. Four years of hiding in Byron Bay because I had been given a strict promise that Tahlia would remain safe.

Then one name surfaced in my mind, burning bright and clear.

Callan.

He had been there the night Lachlan threw me out. He had been the one to promise that Tahlia would receive the best medical care available. He had arranged the transfer. He had set up the medical trust.

My blood ran ice cold.

What if he had never been helping me at all? What if he’d been controlling everything from the very beginning?

“Mummy?”

Toby’s small voice pierced through my racing thoughts. I turned sharply. He was watching me from the doorway, head tilted. “Why are your hands shaking?”

I looked down. They were trembling uncontrollably. “I’m fine, baby.” My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears.

I grabbed the tablet. I didn't care about hiding anymore. The illusion of safety was shattered. I needed money massive amounts of it, fast. Enough to buy St. Jude’s brick by brick. Enough to pull Tahlia out of the hands of the monsters who had held her hostage.

Archangel came alive. I started executing the transfers, moving capital across global accounts with ruthless speed.

Then I heard it.

The crunch of tyres on gravel. Slow, deliberate, approaching down the long driveway.

My entire body went completely rigid. Nobody came down this dead-end road by accident.

I shoved the tablet beneath a stack of papers and crept toward the front window. Outside, a black SUV had stopped right at the front gate. The engine cut out with a low shudder.

The driver’s door opened. A man stepped out into the grey light, wearing a dark coat and holding a black umbrella.

I knew that exact walk.

My lungs completely stopped working.

It wasn’t Lachlan.

The man paused, looking up toward the cottage. Then, slowly, he smiled. A calm, terrifyingly familiar smile. One I had once trusted with my life.

Callan Sterling.

And as he stepped onto the path, I realised the man who had orchestrated my destruction was standing right on my door step completely unaware that the ghost he thought he buried was about to burn his world to the ground.