Chapter 6

I slowly opened my eyes, but the first thing I saw was a sky I didn't recognize.

For a few seconds, I remained still, staring at the pale clouds drifting above me while I tried to understand where I was. My head throbbed, my mouth felt dry, and my entire body ached as though I had been lying on the hard ground for hours. I blinked several times, hoping the strange scenery would become familiar, but nothing changed.

I wasn't in the Knox estate.

I wasn't in my bedroom at the Whitmore mansion, either.

I was lying on the ground in what looked like an open field, surrounded by patches of dry grass and a few scattered trees. Farther away, I could see buildings I had never seen before, and beyond them was a road filled with people moving in different directions.

Confusion settled over me as I slowly lifted my head.

How long had I been sleeping?

I tried to remember what had happened after I drank the water Leander gave me, but my memories were scattered. I could still picture his face across the study, the glass in my hands, and the strange heaviness that had spread through my body. After that, everything had gone dark.

I remembered trying to call his name, but I couldn't remember anything else.

My heart began to pound as I pushed myself up onto my elbows. The movement made my head spin, forcing me to pause until the dizziness passed. When I finally managed to sit up, I looked around again, hoping to find someone who could tell me where I was.

My suitcase lay a short distance away.

I crawled toward it, grabbed the handle, and pulled it closer before struggling to stand. My legs felt weak, and I had to steady myself with one hand against a nearby tree.

"Leander?" I called.

My voice sounded small in the open space.

I waited, looking toward the road, but nobody answered.

"Leander!" I called again, louder this time.

A few people glanced in my direction as they walked past, but none of them stopped. I turned in a slow circle, searching the area for a familiar face, a car, or anything that might explain why I had been left in a place I didn't recognize.

Nothing.

"Leander, where are you?" I whispered, my voice beginning to shake.

I tried to pull out my phone from my pocket, but I didn't have anything me. No phone, no smart watch, nothing but emptiness.

I had no idea where I was.

I didn't know how I got here.

And the person I trusted most had disappeared.

A terrible thought entered my mind, but I pushed it away almost immediately.

No. Leander wouldn't do this to me.

He had been the one who comforted me when I thought my family was going to abandon me. He had carried me to my bedroom when I could barely stand, brought me food when I refused to eat, and hugged me before leaving the Whitmore estate. Even after everything that had happened, he was the only person I had believed would never turn his back on me.

He couldn't have left me here.

There had to be an explanation.

I took a few unsteady steps toward the road, hoping someone might recognize the name of the place or tell me how to get back to the city. Several people were passing by, speaking to one another in a language I couldn't understand. Their voices blended into a confusing stream of unfamiliar sounds, and the more I listened, the more frightened I became.

I approached a middle-aged man carrying a bag and gently touched his arm.

"Excuse me," I said, forcing myself to smile despite the fear rising in my chest. "Please, can you tell me where I am?"

The man stared at me with a puzzled expression before answering in a language I had never heard before.

I shook my head.

"Sorry, I don't understand. Do you speak English?"

He repeated something, gesturing toward the road, but his words meant nothing to me. When I tried to explain that I was lost, he frowned, shook his head, and continued walking.

I stood there watching him disappear into the crowd.

My lips parted, but no words came out.

I tried approaching another person, then another, but the result was the same. Some looked at me with confusion, others waved me away, and a few simply ignored me as though I weren't there. Nobody understood what I was saying, and I couldn't understand them either.

Panic began to creep into my chest.

Where had Leander taken me?

Why would he bring me somewhere I couldn't even ask for help?

I looked down at my suitcase, suddenly remembering that I had seen it beside me when I woke up. I had been so confused by my surroundings that I hadn't even checked whether everything inside was still there.

Perhaps there was an explanation hidden among my belongings.

Perhaps Leander had left me something that would tell me where to go.

I hurried back toward the field, dragging my suitcase behind me. My hands trembled as I opened it and began searching through my clothes, moving everything aside in the hope of finding my phone charger, some money, or even a piece of paper with an address written on it.

That was when I noticed a folded piece of paper tucked beside the suitcase.

I was certain it hadn't been there when I packed my belongings at the Whitmore estate.

With my heart beating faster, I picked it up and unfolded it.

There were only a few lines written on the paper, but the moment I read them, I felt the world tilt beneath my feet.

~Don't ever come back.

The Whitmore family rejected you because you stole from them. I'm not risking it.~

I stared at the words, reading them once, twice, and then a third time, as though I could force them to change if I looked at them long enough.

They didn't.

My fingers began to tremble.

I knew that handwriting.

I had seen it on birthday cards, in notes slipped into my schoolbooks, and on the little messages Leander used to leave for me whenever he knew I was having a difficult day. I could recognize the way he formed certain letters, the way his words leaned slightly to the right, and the way he pressed his pen harder whenever he was annoyed.

The note was in Leander's handwriting.

"No," I whispered.

I shook my head and brought the paper closer to my face, searching for something that would prove I was mistaken.

"No, this can't be right."

But I knew it was his.

I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.

Leander had written those words.

The same Leander who had told me I was all he had. The same Leander who had hugged me before leaving the Whitmore mansion, asking me not to destroy myself over what had happened. The same Leander who had watched me arrive at his house with nowhere else to go and offered me a glass of water.

The same Leander who had drugged me.

My knees weakened, and I dropped onto the grass, clutching the note so tightly that it began to wrinkle between my fingers.

He had drugged me, taken me away from his estate, and abandoned me in a place where I couldn't even understand the people around me.

And he had left me a note explaining why.

He believed I had stolen from the Whitmore family.

Or perhaps he had never believed me at all.

I pressed a hand against my mouth, trying to hold back the sob that rose from my chest, but it escaped before I could stop it.

"Why?" I whispered.

The question hung in the air, unanswered.

Why would he do this to me?

I had known him since we were children. He had been there when I fell from a tree and scraped my knees, when I cried after losing a school competition, and when I was afraid of sleeping alone during thunderstorms. He knew the things that made me happy and the things that frightened me. He knew how much I loved my family and how terrified I was of losing the people I cared about.

He knew everything about me.

And somehow, that same person had decided I was no longer worth protecting.

I tried to remember whether I had done something to anger him, whether I had said anything that might have made him question my character, but I couldn't find a single reason. Even when everyone at the Whitmore estate accused me of stealing their secrets, I had believed that Leander would stand beside me because he knew the kind of person I was.

Instead, he had been the one to send me away.

My family had rejected me because they believed I was a thief.

Now Leander had done the same thing.

The two places I had always considered home had closed their doors to me, and the two people I had trusted to protect me had left me with nothing.

I looked at the note again, hoping that perhaps I had misunderstood something, but the words remained cruelly clear.

Don't ever come back.

A fresh wave of tears blurred my vision.

"Leander," I whispered, shaking my head. "Why would you do this to me?"

There was nobody to answer.

I folded the note with unsteady hands and pushed it into my pocket, not because I wanted to keep it, but because I couldn't bring myself to throw away the last piece of evidence that the person I loved had chosen to betray me. Then I pulled my suitcase upright and began walking toward the road.

I didn't know where I was going.

I didn't know what country I was in, how far I was from the city, or whether anyone would be willing to help me. I didn't know how I would find food, where I would sleep, or how I would survive another night without money or a working phone.

All I knew was that I couldn't remain in that field forever.

So I walked.

The road stretched ahead of me, crowded with strangers who passed without sparing me more than a glance. I tried to ask for directions whenever I saw someone who looked approachable, but my words only earned confused expressions. Eventually, I stopped trying. My throat hurt from speaking, my head still throbbed, and my legs felt as though they could no longer carry my weight.

By the time I reached a busy street, the sky had grown darker, and the wind had become cold enough to make me shiver.

I stopped beside a building and looked at the people passing by.

Everyone seemed to know where they were going.

Everyone had somewhere to return to.

Everyone except me.

I thought about Mom's face when she slapped me, Dad's hateful expression after receiving that phone call, and Grandpa's cold voice when he ordered the guards to throw me out. Then I remembered Leander watching me drink the water he had given me, knowing exactly what he had put inside it.

One by one, the memories came back, and each one hurt more than the last.

I had done nothing to deserve this.

I had never stolen from the Whitmore family. I had never wanted to destroy their business. I had never wished harm upon any of them, even after they told me I wasn't their daughter.

All I had wanted was for them to believe me.

All I had wanted was for someone to look at me and remember the girl they had raised.

Instead, they had thrown me away as if eighteen years of love and memories meant nothing.

And Leander, the person I had thought would never abandon me, had made certain I had nowhere else to turn.

My legs finally gave out.

I stumbled onto the pavement, dropping my suitcase beside me, and sank to the ground in the middle of the street. People moved around me, their unfamiliar voices rising and falling as they continued with their lives, but I barely noticed them anymore.

I was too tired to stand.

Too frightened to keep walking.

Too broken to understand how I had gone from being a girl who had everything to someone who didn't even know where she would sleep that night.

I wrapped my arms around myself and began to cry.

I cried for the family that had stopped loving me overnight. I cried for the home I had lost, for the future that had disappeared before I could even begin to understand it, and for the boy who had promised to stay beside me but had left me alone in a strange place.

Most of all, I cried because I couldn't understand why any of it was happening to me.

I lifted my tear-stained face toward the darkening sky, my chest shaking as another sob escaped my lips.

"What did I do wrong?" I whispered.

The sky offered no answer.

I pressed my palms against the cold pavement, unable to stop the tears running down my cheeks.

"Why me?" I cried, my voice breaking beneath the weight of everything I had lost. "Why are you doing this to me? I didn't steal anything. I didn't hurt anyone. I tried to be good. I tried to love them. I did everything I could to be the daughter they wanted me to be, so why wasn't that enough?"

My voice grew louder as the pain inside me became too much to contain.

"Why would my own family throw me away? Why would the person I trusted most drug me and leave me here? What did I do to deserve this? What am I supposed to do now?"

People continued walking around me.

Nobody stopped.

Nobody understood my words, and nobody seemed to care that a girl was lying broken in the middle of the street, crying as if her entire world had ended.

Perhaps it had.

I lowered my head to my knees and sobbed until my throat hurt, until my eyes burned, and until I had nothing left to say.

For the first time in my life, I had nowhere to go and nobody to call.

I was eighteen years old, alone in a strange place, and I had no idea how I was going to survive.

All I could do was lie there on the cold pavement, crying and asking the universe the same question over and over again.

Why had everyone I loved decided I was no longer worth loving?