Chapter 4

The Girl Who Refused To Disappear 

IRIS:

I had imagined a hundred ways I’d see Callum again.

But none of them included screaming through bloodied lips as I watched him fall.

The gunshot echoed like thunder down the corridor.

His body hit the ground with a sickening finality. For a second, I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

Callum.

I crawled to him, my hands slippery with blood. He was alive—but barely. The bullet had torn through his shoulder, dangerously close to his chest.

Ezra pulled him back, one hand pressing down on the wound. “Keep pressure here. Don’t let go.”

I nodded, dazed, shaking.

Seraphine stood at the end of the corridor, gun still raised. Her eyes weren’t just wild. They were certain. Like she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life.

“I warned you,” she said calmly. “He’s not yours.”

“You shot him!” I screamed.

She didn’t flinch. “He’ll live. Long enough to remember what you did to him.”

I froze.

“What are you talking about?”

She stepped closer, slow and deliberate. “You don’t remember, do you? How convenient.”

“Remember what?”

Her smile sent ice down my spine.

“That you helped me erase him.”

Everything stopped.

“What?”

“You thought it would save him. After he nearly died trying to protect you the first time. After my father cursed him. You begged for help—and they offered a trade.”

She tilted her head.

“You said yes, Iris. You gave permission to wipe him clean.”

“No. No, I didn’t—”

But the moment she said it, something cracked inside me. A memory, long-buried and slick with panic.

A candlelit chamber. An oath in blood. A hand on mine as I whispered, “Erase everything but his soul. Let him forget the pain.”

My heart stopped.

“I didn’t mean—” My knees buckled.

Seraphine raised the gun again. “You’re not just a victim, Iris. You’re part of the crime.”

Ezra stepped between us. “Enough.”

Seraphine’s eyes shifted to him. Her mouth opened—but a voice interrupted from behind her.

“Put the gun down, Seraphine.”

It was a woman’s voice. Calm, icy, and completely unfamiliar.

Lysandra Vale.

She stepped out of the shadows wearing black leather gloves and a smirk that promised secrets.

“You pull that trigger, and the truth dies with him. And I won’t let that happen. Not when I’ve waited this long to collect my debt.”

Seraphine froze.

“Who the hell are you?”

Lysandra walked forward, unbothered. “Your brother hired me to pull your lies apart, thread by thread.”

Ezra stared. “I didn’t call you.”

She winked. “No. But I knew you’d need me.”

She looked at me. “And you, Iris... you’ve been hiding a memory that doesn’t belong to you.”

I staggered up, bloody and wide-eyed. “What are you saying?”

Lysandra reached into her pocket and pulled out a silver key.

“This opens the second vault beneath the Thorne chapel. The one that holds your sealed contract. The vow you made... and the price you haven’t paid yet.”

I turned to Seraphine—but she was already gone.

Slipped away in the chaos.

Ezra cursed. “She’s going to finish what she started.”

I looked down at Callum.

Still breathing.

Still bleeding.

And I knew—if I wanted to save him, I’d have to face the one thing I never wanted to remember.

What I did to him.

As Lysandra leads us to the hidden vault, she turns to me with a look that chills me to my bones.

“Tell me, Iris… do you want the truth? Or do you want him to keep loving the lie?”

Three days.

That’s how long Callum had been unconscious.

Three days since Seraphine pulled the trigger. Since Ezra yanked me from the floor, hands bloodied, screaming for someone—anyone—to call a doctor. Since the look in Callum’s eyes, right before he fell, seared itself into me.

He remembered me.

And I remembered what I did.

I hadn’t slept. The nurses watched me carefully. One of them had whispered that it wasn’t good for a “wife” to linger too close to someone with a head injury—especially not when there was another woman with legal claims walking around the estate.

I didn’t care.

Let them whisper. Let them talk. I had bigger ghosts to face.

Callum’s room was always quiet.

Too quiet.

He hadn’t stirred since the operation. The doctor said he’d lost a lot of blood but would recover. Still, the longer he stayed silent, the more it felt like I’d lost him all over again.

I sat by his bed, clutching the corners of the journal Ezra and I found in the estate vault.

My handwriting was on the final page.

Not a note. Not a letter.

A signed consent form.

Patient: Callum Thorne

Authorized by: Iris Thorne

Procedure: Memory regression protocol—Class B trauma block

Purpose: To eliminate emotionally compromising memories

My signature stared back at me like a confession.

I signed it. I chose it.

I’d begged Dr. Halden Vex to erase Callum’s memories.

But I didn’t remember doing it.

Not until Seraphine told me.

And now it wouldn’t stop replaying in my mind—the way I’d been cornered after the accident. How Lenora and Seraphine had twisted everything. How they told me he would kill himself if he remembered what I’d done.

What we had done.

“Still playing the grieving wife?”

The voice behind me made me freeze.

Seraphine.

I turned slowly. She stood in the doorway like a storm waiting to crash through. Not smug, not screaming—just dangerous.

“Get out,” I said.

“I told you he wouldn’t forgive you.”

“I don’t need forgiveness. I need the truth.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You’re ready for that now? Because I don’t think you’ve figured it all out, Iris.”

“I remember signing the form.”

Seraphine’s smile twisted. “You think that’s the worst thing you did?”

Her eyes glittered with quiet triumph. “You haven’t remembered the video yet, have you?”

I blinked. “What video?”

She stepped closer, lowering her voice like a lullaby. “The one where you and Ezra are naked in his office two weeks before the crash.”

I froze.

She leaned in. “You weren’t just running away. You were cheating. Callum found out. That’s why he went to the cliffs.”

“No,” I whispered. “You’re lying.”

Seraphine smiled. “Am I? Maybe. But wouldn’t you like to know?”

She dropped a small black flash drive onto the table and walked out.

My hands shook as I picked it up.

My legs carried me down the hall without thought.

I didn’t go to Ezra. I went to the only person who might know how deep this mess went.

Dr. Halden Vex looked like a ghost wearing a suit. Graying hair, sunken cheeks, and eyes that looked like they hadn’t rested in a decade.

He still had an office in the Thorne estate’s west wing. Of course he did. Once you served the family, you never left. Not really.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said the moment he saw me.

“Then why haven’t you locked your door?” I snapped, shoving the flash drive into his palm. “I need to know if it’s real.”

He stared at it for a long time. Then sighed.

“I warned you both,” he said. “Back then. Memory tampering comes at a cost.”

“I don’t care. I want it back.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you ready to remember everything?”

Before I could answer, another voice cut in.

“Let her.”

Lysandra Vale stood behind me. All sharp cheekbones and expensive cynicism.

“She deserves the truth. Even if it breaks her.”

Dr. Vex stared at us both. Then he finally nodded.

“There’s a way,” he said. “But once it’s done, there’s no more pretending. No rewriting. You’ll know what you did. What he saw. What broke him.”

I swallowed.

“I’m ready.”

Thirty minutes later, I sat across from Callum’s hospital bed, the flash drive in the laptop beside me, my fingers trembling over the trackpad.

I clicked play.

At first, the screen was black.

Then blurry.

Then—

A hotel room.

My voice. Laughter.

Another voice.

Ezra.

And then—

The video glitched.

And cut.

To me.

Alone. In a dark room. Crying.

Wearing the same dress from the day of the crash.

A voice behind the camera spoke.

Not Ezra.

Callum.

“Why did you do it, Iris?” he asked.

I stared at the screen

in shock.

I wasn’t cheating.

I was begging.

“Because I couldn’t protect you,” I whispered onscreen. “Because they said they’d kill you if I told the truth.”

“What truth?” Callum asked.

I looked up at the camera, eyes wild.

“They killed your mother, Callum. And you were next.”