Semua Bab Love in the Line of Fire: Bab 101 - Bab 110

Calix stopped talking and the room became deathly quiet all of a sudden.The music from the gala reached him - a violin crescendoing, a stray note of music. A different world. A different time.The party kept going outside, as if the world hadn’t just tilted on its axis for them. He glanced at Ilana, at her hands tied behind her back, at the dress she’d shopped for so enthusiastically. He could almost taste the moment back at the boutique, the way her eyes had lit up, how alive she’d looked.She hadn’t even danced in it. And already it reeked of shame. Of grief. Of everything that should’ve never touched her but had already been a part of bones for far too long.Desperation settled in Calix’s chest like a living, breathing thing, clenching his heart until he found himself gasping. His words weren’t reaching her. There was nothing else he could do.Nathan was enjoying seeing him break like this. Everytime Calix got even a little close to freedom, the brute would come back and snatch

Ilana stood slowly. The knife hung heavy in her hand, slick with blood. Her dress—torn to ribbons—clung in damp strips to her thighs. The slit had ripped wider during the fight, and her legs were streaked with dirt and something darker. Her arms, her chest, even her jaw—coated in red. Some of it hers. Most of it not.It was over. Nathan was dead. But the violence hadn’t left her. It lingered in her throat like a scream she couldn’t swallow, burning hot and wild. She didn’t know how to silence it.Nathan had been the target—the right kill. But now, with him gone, she wanted more. More blood. More violence. The electric hum of power only a blade gave her.It terrified her. But she clung to it. Let it feed her. She couldn’t afford to fall apart—not now. Not with everyone still trapped in this place. Not with Calix looking at her like that.If she let herself feel anything else, she’d collapse under the weight of Nathan’s words. Under Calix’s gaze. Under how naked, how exposed she felt no

Calix’s heart hadn’t stopped racing. How could he have been so blind? So sheltered in his own world that he missed the quiet misery living right beside him?“Mom,” he began cautiously. She was sitting cross legged on the floor near the door, where Ilana was a second ago.She turned to him, a smile lighting up her features. A smile that looked real and warm and so genuine. Calix felt his heart break at the sight. How could she still look at him with so much tenderness after all the ways he’d failed her.“Mom, I’m so…God, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his voice stuck somewhere in his throat.“Hey, baby,” she murmured, scooting closer, a frown appearing between her brows. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Cal. None of this was ever your fault.He shook his head, guilt pressing down hard enough to swallow him.“I didn’t see it. See anything. I was so fucking blind, Ma.”She took his face in her hands, tracing a thumb along the side of his cheek. “You never saw anything because I didn’t

The cold hit him first—the slap of night air after the smoke and heat and blood of the mansion. Then the silence.No alarms. No shouting.Just moonlight over the gardens, and the sound of his mother’s breaths beside him.Ilana moved ahead of them, blade still drawn, posture coiled and alert. Calix wanted to reach forward and hold her hand in his but he held himself back. They weren’t completely free yet.“Let’s go,” Ilana whispered. The shadows on the wall moved and Ilana paused mid step.A figure stepped out from the hedges.Adam.Calix immediately stepped in front of Josephine, as if he could protect her from his gaze, from the misery he carried with him.The man wasn’t even pretending anymore. No smile, no mask. Just his usual immaculate suit and a stillness that made a chill run down Calix’s spine.“Dad,” Calix breathed. The word sounded wrong in the silence. Too misplaced. It didn’t belong here. Not anymore. “Adam, let us go.”Adam tilted his head to the side, a smile creeping

Calix Meyer was dead.Josephine’s baby—her son, her lifeline, the only part of this wretched world that ever made her believe in softness—was gone.The air left her lungs in ragged, stuttering gasps. Her chest ached like something had been torn open from the inside.She still remembered the moment—the click of the door, the squeak of polished shoes on the marble. A guard had entered her suffocating safehouse room. Calix’s half finished painting was the only color in the room.He’d said it like it meant nothing.“Mr. Meyer is dead.”Just like that. Like it was the weather. Like it was traffic. Like it wasn’t the end of her world.Josephine had collapsed to the floor, a scream punching out of her throat like it had been clawing to escape for years. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.“I want to see him,” she’d rasped once her body had stopped trembling for long enough.And for once, no one had argued. Even Adam’s guards knew better than to challenge h