It’s late by the time I check into a hotel under a fake name. I don’t trust going home, not with the press sniffing around.
The room’s sterile and cold, a corporate gray suite with no personality and overpriced mini bottles on the nightstand.
I sit down and see the messages lighting up our group chat.
Cora is spending the night with Noah and Elias, but it seems they went dancing, too.
I throw my phone face down. None of them know. None of them realize my father vandalized Cora’s bakery. Any suspicion they may have had faded.
I don’t even know how to tell her—what it’ll do to her. I only know that the moment she finds out, everything between us might shatter.
I drink until I can’t taste anything. Until my limbs feel too heavy to move and the edges of my vision start to blur. I pass out, still in half my clothes, sprawled over the sheets.
Morning comes with the kind of headache that feels stitched into my skull. I squint at the bright light sneaking past the blackout curtains and blindly reach for my phone. Dozens of messages, but one from my father is pinned at the top.
Well done, idiot. You and Damien were photographed brawling at that cesspool you call a bar. Your face is all over the morning press. Fix it. You’re being sent a location to stage some photos. Smile. Pretend to give a fuck. I will not have bad press.
Then a follow-up text, short and sharp:
Or don’t bother coming back.
I sit up slowly. Read the words again.
My thumb hovers before I hit call. The second he picks up, I don’t bother with greetings.
“I’m not doing it.”
He laughs, low and disgusted. “Then you’re walking away from everything we built. Everything I gave you.”
“You didn’t give me anything. You built a prison and called it a legacy.”
“If you leave now, you’re done. You don’t get the inheritance. You don’t get the seat. And you don’t come back crawling whenthe town girl breaks your heart and you realize you gave up an empire for some sweet-smelling Omega and a half-dead seaside dump.”
“She’s not just—” I stop myself. My voice cracks at the edges. “You didn’t have to destroy her bakery.”
“I didn’t destroy it. I just sent a message.”
Silence.
I can hear his breath on the other end. Cold. “Here’s your choice. You finish the Driftwood Cove project and continue working for the family company. You come home. You let go of the girl. Or you’re done. You walk away with nothing.”
I hang up before he can say more.
The room’s too quiet.
I stare at the cracked screen of my phone, the fragments in the corner where I dropped it last night. I think about the bakery.
About her soft laugh behind the counter, the way she looked at me that first morning, like she hadn’t already known I was trouble.
About the way her scent lingered on my skin no matter how many goddamn showers I took.
I run a hand through my hair, jaw clenched.
There’s no way to win this without losing something.
And the truth is... I already know what I can’t afford to lose.
35
