“Good night.”
And then he’s gone.
The lights click off as he leaves, the door left open behind him, and I’m alone again in his bed. Wrapped in his scent. His sheets. Wanting more than he was willing to give.
Sleep comes slowly.
I drift somewhere between waking and dreaming, suspended in that fragile space, when my phone vibrates against the mattress.
The sound snaps me back into myself.
Groggy, I reach for it, squinting at the time first.
2:09 a.m.
Then I see the message.
Unknown:
He can’t hide you forever from me.
The words sit there, stark against the dark screen.
My chest tightens, breath catching as my eyes trace them again, slower this time.He can’t hide you forever from me.Not a warning. Not a question. A certainty.
This isn’t a one-off. I know that instinctively. This is the opening move of something that hasn’t finished revealing itself yet. A promise made in advance.
I glance toward the open bedroom door, half-expecting movement in the shadows beyond it. The apartment is silent. Still. Too still. Khai is somewhere else in this place, close enough to feel, far enough to be unreachable.
I lock the phone and set it facedown on the mattress, as if that might dull the weight of it. As if ignoring it could keep whatever comes next at bay.
I don’t have the energy to unravel this now. Not tonight. Not when my body is heavy with exhaustion and my mind is already stretched thin. Whatever that message means, whatever it’s warning me about, it can wait until morning.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I pull the covers tighter and turn onto my side, staring into the darkness. Sleep eventually claims me, not gentle, not peaceful, but edged with unease. With the sense that something has already started moving, whether I’m ready for it or not.
And that this was only the beginning.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Khai
For the second time tonight, I leave her alone in my bed. The act carves something hollow into my chest. I hate the distance immediately, the empty space where she should be. Every part of me wants to stay, to crawl in beside her and pull her against me. To hold her until the world goes quiet. To breathe her in. To lose myself in her warmth and forget, just for a few hours, everything else.
Instead, I walk away.
I return to the kitchen and pour myself a drink, heavy, unforgiving. I’m going to need it if I’m going to get through this. The burn of whisky is familiar as I sit at the breakfast bar, the manila envelope clenched tight in my fingers.
I didn’t let myself look at it properly earlier. I couldn’t.
Now, I don’t have the luxury of avoidance.
Whatever is inside has to matter. It has to be enough to finally bring my father down. To ruin him the way he ruined everything else. To finish this.
With a slow breath, I pull the papers free.
Almost every document inside is dated to the day Liam died.
