Chapter Eight

The tires screeched against the cold, unyielding concrete of the underground parking garage, the sound echoing like a jagged gunshot through the suffocating, windowless space.

Liam killed the engine, but the silence that rushed in to fill the void was far more deafening. It pressed against his eardrums, a heavy, suffocating weight that made it hard to draw a full breath.

The air inside the car was thick, cloying, and heavy with the lingering, cloying scent of expensive champagne—a smell that had turned sour and sickly in his stomach.

He felt a phantom wave of nausea rise in his throat, a physical manifestation of the terror that had been clawing at his insides since the gala.

Chloe didn’t wait for him to find a scrap of an excuse. She turned, her shoulders rigid, her designer gown slightly rumpled as if the very fabric were rejecting the night’s disaster. Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated fury—a sharp, cutting expression that sliced through the dim light of the garage.

"Are you happy now, Liam?" she spat, the words dripping with a venom that made him flinch. "Are you satisfied? You didn't just embarrass yourself; you humiliated us in front of the entire city.

My phone hasn't stopped buzzing since we left that terrace. My mother—my own mother—is asking if we’ve lost our minds. You ruined everything. Every connection, every bridge, every scrap of social capital I’ve spent years building—you burned it down in five minutes of sheer, unmitigated arrogance."

Liam gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white, the tendons in his wrists bulging with the strain. He was breathing in ragged, shallow gasps, his chest heaving with a suffocating mixture of leftover adrenaline and a cold, rising panic that pooled in his gut like ice water.

"Don't start with me, Chloe," he growled, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to keep it steady. "I didn't know the Vance brothers would be there. I thought she’d be alone. I thought it was just a simple trap."

"You thought?" Chloe let out a laugh—a harsh, jagged, broken sound that hurt to hear. It was the sound of a woman watching her life collapse.

"You spent three years with her! You told me she was weak, a delicate little thing, a paper doll you could fold at will. You swore she was just a pretty accessory to keep in the corner of your parlor. You promised me she didn't have the spine to stand up for herself, let alone call in the entire Vance security team to box us in like common criminals in front of everyone who matters!"

Liam felt the walls of the garage closing in, the shadows stretching to swallow him whole. He slammed his hand against the dashboard, the impact jarring his arm, but the physical pain did nothing to dull the mental anguish.

"I had no idea how she came in contact with those people! I’ve been trying to get a meeting with them for years. I’ve leveraged my firm, my assets, my reputation—everything—just to get one invitation to a Vance gala. And she was just sitting there, drinking with them like they were childhood friends? How? How does someone like her, someone who barely spoke a word in my house for three years, get involved with the most influential people in this city?"

Chloe stared at him, her eyes narrowing into cold, calculating slits. She looked at him not with the love or complicity of a partner, but with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing a failed experiment. "We should be asking you how she got to know them, Liam. Or perhaps, what you were actually doing while you thought you were 'controlling' her."

Liam blinked, his confusion momentarily overriding his fear. "What does that mean, Chloe? Stop speaking in riddles."

"It means exactly what I asked," she replied, her voice steady, icy, and devoid of the warmth he had grown accustomed to. It was a voice that stripped away his defenses.

Liam frowned, his brow furrowing as he tried to force his racing mind to process her accusation. The logic felt like a puzzle with missing pieces.

"I don't follow. I just told you, I didn't even know she knew them. If I had known she had those kinds of connections, I would have used them years ago! I’ve been trying to break into those circles for a lifetime, and she was already there—and not just there, she was commanding them. It makes no sense. It’s impossible."

Chloe let out a sharp, incredulous laugh, shaking her head as if in pity. "I mean you married her, didn't you? You sat across the breakfast table from her every morning for a thousand days."

The question hung in the air, heavy, sharp, and suffocating.

"What is that supposed to imply?" Liam snapped, though his voice cracked at the end, exposing the fragile, weeping wound of his wounded pride. "That I had some secret plan to keep her hidden? That I knew all along? Do you think I’m an idiot?"

"It implies that you are a complete and total fool," Chloe said, her voice dripping with venom. "You lived with her for three years, you shared a bed with her, you thought you owned her—and yet, you didn't have a clue who she actually was. You didn't even know who you were sleeping next to.

You were so blinded by your own narcissism, so obsessed with playing the 'master' of the house, that you never once bothered to see the person who was actually living in it."

Liam felt his chest tighten, a sensation of cold, paralyzing dread washing over him. It wasn't just fear anymore; it was the dawning realization of his own profound ignorance. "I knew her! I knew every part of her! She was mine. She was just... Elena. My Elena."

"Clearly, you didn't," Chloe countered, reaching for her things. Her movements were sharp, efficient, and final. "

She opened the car door, the harsh, fluorescent light of the garage hitting her face, making her look like a ghost of the woman she had been an hour ago. She didn't look back at him. She couldn't bear to.

"Chloe, wait!" Liam shouted, his voice echoing in the hollow, empty space, a desperate, pathetic plea in the dark.

She stopped, looking back over her shoulder with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust—a look that hurt more than any blow. "Don't 'wait' me. I’m a survivor, Liam. And you are a sinking ship. I’m not going down with you."

Liam scrambled out of his car, his legs feeling like lead, his suit jacket disheveled. "Come back here!" he roared, his voice cracking, fracturing in the silence of the garage. "Elena, wait!"