Chapter 6

PEYTON

“Elena?” I muttered in confusion.

“Zayn, what is this slut doing here?”

For a moment, I thought the elderly woman had mistaken me for someone else. Her eyes widened with such genuine shock that she took a step backward, clutching the handle of her handbag as though she had just seen a ghost.

I glanced behind me, wondering if another woman had entered the room without my noticing, but the hallway was empty.

“Grandma,” Zayn said, his voice suddenly sharp.

She barely seemed to hear him. Her gaze remained fixed on me, and the longer she stared, the more unsettled I became. Something was frightening about the way she looked at me, as though she recognized my face but despised everything it represented.

“Why are you standing there pretending you don’t know me?” she demanded, her voice trembling with anger. “Have you come back to finish what you started?”

My stomach tightened.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said carefully, rising from the sofa. “My name is Peyton, not Elena.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me!”

She lunged forward, but Zayn immediately stepped between us.

“Grandma, that’s enough.”

“Move out of my way, Zayn!” she snapped, attempting to push past him. “You cannot possibly be allowing this woman into your home after everything she did to you,”

Zayn caught her hands before she could shove him aside, holding them firmly but gently.

“Look at me,” he instructed, his voice lowering. “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. This is Peyton Carter. You’ve never met her before.”

“Never met her?” Her voice rose into an incredulous laugh. “Are you calling me a fool? I know exactly who she is!”

My fingers curled against my palms.

I had barely been in this house for a day, and already I was being accused of something I didn’t understand. I glanced at Zayn, hoping he would explain what was happening, but his attention remained fixed on his grandmother.

“Please, calm down,” he said, rubbing her hands reassuringly. “You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not mistaken!” she shouted, trying to pull away from him. “She has returned to destroy you again, and you are standing here defending her!”

I searched Zayn’s face for an answer, but his expression had become difficult to read. The relaxed man who had spoken to me earlier was gone, replaced by someone whose carefully controlled composure seemed to be holding something much darker at bay.

“Grandmother, listen to me,” he said, tightening his hold when she tried to pull away again. “You’re confused. Let’s go somewhere quiet, and we can talk.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you until you send her away!”

Still, He guided her toward the doorway, keeping one hand around her shoulders as she continued protesting. Before they disappeared into the hallway, she twisted around to look at me one last time.

The hatred in her eyes sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

I stood perfectly still until their footsteps faded outside.

Only then did I realize I had been holding my breath.

“What on earth was that?” The question escaped me in a whisper, but nobody was there to answer it.

I lowered myself onto the sofa, trying to make sense of what had just happened. 

I wanted to dismiss the entire encounter as an unfortunate misunderstanding, but the fear in her eyes had been too convincing.

Several minutes passed before I heard footsteps approaching.

Zayn returned alone, adjusting the cuff of his shirt as he entered the sitting room. His expression had settled into its usual composed mask, but a faint crease remained between his eyebrows.

“Is she all right?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine.”

He walked toward the drinks cabinet, poured himself a glass of water, and took a long sip before turning to face me.

I studied him for a moment.

“Why did she call me Elena?”

His hand paused around the glass.

It was a small movement, lasting barely a second, but I noticed it.

“She has a condition that affects her memory,” he explained, placing the glass on the cabinet. “Sometimes she confuses people with others from her past, and she can become agitated when she believes something unpleasant is happening again.”

“ So Dementia ?”

“Something along those lines.”

His answer came too quickly, and I found myself wondering whether he had prepared it before returning downstairs.

“But she seemed so certain she knew me.”

“That’s part of the problem. When she gets confused, she can be extremely convincing.”

I pressed my lips together, remembering the way his grandmother had struggled against him and insisted she wasn’t mistaken.

“She said I had returned to destroy you,” I reminded him. “What did she mean by that?”

For the first time since he had entered the room, Zayn looked directly into my eyes.

“Peyton, my grandmother has a complicated medical history, and there are things she remembers differently from how they happened. You shouldn’t take everything she says personally.”

“I’m not taking it personally. I’m trying to understand why a woman who has never met me seems to hate me.”

“I understand that the situation was uncomfortable, but I would appreciate it if you could brush it off. She’ll probably have forgotten the entire incident by tomorrow.”

I wanted to believe him, especially because the last thing I needed was another complication in a life that had already become impossibly difficult.

Still, something about his explanation bothered me.

I looked away, unwilling to turn our first real disagreement into an argument. Whatever existed between Zayn and his grandmother was clearly painful, and I had no desire to force him to discuss something he wasn’t ready to share.

Besides, our relationship was built on a contract, not trust.

I reminded myself of that whenever curiosity threatened to make me forget my place in this arrangement.

“Fine,” I murmured. “I’ll try not to think about it.”

“Good.”

He reached for his phone, apparently considering the conversation finished, but before he could say anything else, the device vibrated in his hand.

He glanced at the screen.

Something changed in his expression.

It was subtle, but I noticed the way his shoulders stiffened and his fingers tightened around the phone.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“It’s nothing I need to discuss right now.”

He turned away and began typing a response.

I looked down at my hands, deciding not to press him. If he wanted to keep his secrets, I had no intention of begging him to reveal them.

A few seconds later, his phone rang.

He answered immediately, his voice low enough that I couldn’t make out the words coming from the other end.

“Is everything okay?”

There was a pause.

Then his expression hardened.

“She’s saying what?”

My head lifted before I could stop myself.

Zayn turned toward the window, lowering his voice further, but I caught the next sentence.

“No, that isn’t possible.”

Silence followed as he listened.

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Zayn?”

He looked up sharply, almost as if he had forgotten I was in the room.

“Is everything okay ?”

“Yes. I’ll be right back,”

“But—“

Before I could respond, he headed toward the staircase.

I watched him disappear upstairs, a growing sense of unease settling in my chest.

I didn’t understand what had happened but as I sat alone in that enormous mansion, I began to wonder whether the man I had agreed to marry was hiding something far more dangerous than a broken heart.