جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

(Keyla POV) The door opened before I could decide whether to knock.
Draxler Churchill stood in the frame, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a glass of whiskey in one hand that he hadn’t touched recently enough for the ice to melt. He looked at me the way people look at things they were half-expecting — not surprised, just confirming. I took a step back. The heel of my shoe caught the carpet.
“Wrong floor,” I said. He didn’t move. His eyes moved from my bare hand to the torn edge of my veil, then finally to my face. It didn’t feel like scanning. It felt like cataloguing the damage. “The elevator’s behind you,” he said. His voice was low, quiet in the way a room gets quiet when something’s about to be decided. “I know where the elevator is.” I held up the keycard. “I grabbed this by accident. I’ll go.” He looked at the keycard. Something moved across his face that I couldn’t read, and he didn’t reach for it. “Keyla.” Just my name. He looked at me once and seemed to unders

(Keyla POV) Voices.
That’s what pulled me out of sleep — low, somewhere in the corridor outside, two people talking in the muffled way hotel staff do when they’re trying not to wake guests. I was awake before I understood why I was panicking, and then I remembered, and the panic made complete sense. I lay still for three seconds. Draxler was asleep on the other side of the bed, breathing slow, one hand loose near the edge of the mattress. His watch was on the nightstand. 5:04 a.m. The voices outside got slightly closer, then stopped. A door somewhere down the corridor. Staff, probably. Maybe security.
Maybe someone looking for a missing bride. I got up carefully, keeping my weight off the side of the mattress that might creak. The wedding dress was on the chair where I’d left it — there was no version of putting that back on quietly and quickly, so I didn’t try. Draxler’s robe was on the hook behind the bathroom door. I took it, pulled it over what I was wearing, and tied it f

(Keyla POV) I gave myself sixty seconds after turning the phone on. That was the plan — turn it on, check if anyone had filed a missing persons report, turn it back off. Sixty seconds. I counted. I didn’t make it to thirty. The notifications hit all at once. Adrian, twelve times. My mother, seven. The wedding coordinator, four. Three unknown numbers. Then one message from Adrian made the rest irrelevant: If you don’t come back, everyone will know you ran to my brother. I read it once. Then again, slower, to make sure it said what I thought it said. He hadn’t apologized. He hadn’t asked if I was okay or tried to explain what I had seen in that room. He went straight to the threat, which told me exactly what would happen if I let him control the next twelve hours. I blocked his number, powered the phone down, and sat on the edge of the motel bed facing a mirror that split my reflection down the middle. The room had cost me forty-three dollars in cash. The front desk cl

(Keyla POV) I saw him before Nora did. Dark suit. No luggage. He stood near a pillar at the far end of the check-in hall, close enough to watch every line without belonging to any of them.The pin on his lapel was small, a flat silver disc most people would miss. I didn’t. I had spent two years at Churchill family events, where those pins showed up as often as name tags. He wasn’t looking at me yet. His gaze moved through the lines in sections. Maybe thirty seconds before he reached ours. “Change of plans,” I said quietly. Nora followed my eyeline. Took her about two seconds. “Economy check-in, other side.” We moved without rushing, which was harder than it sounds when every instinct told me to walk faster. Nora’s suitcase dragged slightly on the left. I had noticed the sticky wheel at her apartment and ignored it then. Now every catch of it felt too loud against the terminal floor. The alternate check-in line was longer. I got in it and kept my back to where the security man h

(Keyla POV) The article used my wedding photo. It wasn’t a stolen candid or some blurry shot from across the street. It was the engagement portrait Adrian’s family had commissioned six months ago and handed to the press themselves. Me in a cream dress, hair done, smiling at something off-camera. The caption underneath read: Sources close to the Churchill family describe increasing concern in the weeks prior. The headline was worse: Runaway Bride’s Mental Collapse Shocks Elite Family. I sat on the edge of the rented bed with the laptop open on my knees and read it at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in a city where nobody knew my face. Thin curtains let in too much grey light. The radiator clicked every few minutes, with or without heat. Nora’s contact had arranged the room for two weeks, prepaid and quiet. It smelled like the previous tenant’s laundry detergent and a floral spray I couldn’t locate. The article barely used my name. Most of the time I was the bride. Once, I became Miss Tamara,