She didn’t hear him call her name. She didn’t hear anything but the rush of blood in her ears, a roaring tide that drowned the world.
Each step away from the pier was a century. Away from the man who was a stranger. Away from the woman with the sad eyes. Away from the little boy with the teddy bear.
His other family.
The words were a brand on her soul.
She walked until the smell of the sea faded, replaced by the city’s exhaust and grit. She didn’t know where she was going. She just knew she couldn’t stop. If she stopped, she would shatter.
Back on the pier, Kian watched her disappear into the darkness, a silhouette swallowed by the city. A vital part of him was being ripped out, and he couldn’t move an inch to stop it.
He turned to Cassandra, his face a mask of cold fury.
“What have you done?” he bit out, the words low and lethal.
Cassandra flinched, pulling her son closer. “Kian, I… she told me I had to.”
“She,” Kian repeated, the single word dripping with venom. “My mother.”
“She said it was for the best,” Cassandra whispered, her eyes pleading. “For everyone.”
“You let her use you. You let her use your son to destroy the one good thing in my life.” He took a step forward, his anger a physical force. “Get out of here, Cassandra. Go back to whatever hole she dug for you, and you tell her this isn’t over.”
Cassandra grabbed her son’s hand and practically fled, vanishing into the shadows as quickly as she had appeared.
Kian was alone. He pulled out his phone, his thumb shaking as he hit Audrey’s name. It rang. And rang. And went to voicemail.
He called again. Voicemail.
“Audrey, please,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please, pick up. It’s not what it looks like. It was a setup. My mother… she arranged it. Please, just talk to me.”
He hung up and stared out at the dark water. He was Kian Sterling. He had billions of dollars and the power to move mountains. And he had never felt so helpless in his entire life.
Audrey finally made it back to her apartment. The air was stale. The silence was an accusation. She locked the door and slid down against it, her body finally giving out. Sobs wracked her, dry and painful, torn from a place so deep she didn’t know it existed.
It was all a lie. The Crow’s Nest. The small apartment. The man who listened to her dreams about the museum. All of it was a carefully constructed fantasy, and she had been its willing fool.
She crawled to the sofa and curled into a ball. She didn’t sleep. She just lay there as the hours bled into a gray, meaningless dawn.
Her phone buzzed on the floor where she’d dropped it. She ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. A string of missed calls from Kian. A barrage of texts she refused to read.
Then, a new message popped up. From Jenna. Cole’s sister.
Audrey’s finger moved with grim curiosity.
The text was simple. A link to a website called “NY GOSSIP” and a single, taunting line of text.
Looks like your dockworker has been a busy boy.
Her blood ran cold. She clicked the link.
The screen loaded, and the world fell away.
A massive, splashy headline screamed at her in bold black letters:
SHIPPING HEIR KIAN STERLING’S SECRET FAMILY! Jilted Lover and Child Emerge As Magnate Romances New Museum Curator.
Below it was a gallery of photos.
The first was the tuxedo shot. Kian and Beatrice on a red carpet, looking like royalty.
The next was an older, candid photo of Kian and Cassandra, laughing together on a sailboat. They looked happy. Young. In love.
And then, the final, brutal blow.
A picture taken last night. On the pier. The lighting was perfect, the angle dramatic. It captured the exact moment Cassandra had approached him, her hand on her son’s shoulder. Kian was looking at them, his expression unreadable. Audrey was a blurred figure in the background, already turning to walk away. The forgotten woman. The other woman.
The article was a masterpiece of character assassination, clearly fed to the reporter by Beatrice’s PR team. It painted Cassandra as a tragic, forgotten lover, raising Kian’s son on her own while he gallivanted around the city with his new flavor of the month—Audrey Wells, curator at the Met.
Audrey felt the bile rise in her throat. She stumbled to the bathroom and was violently sick.
She gripped the cold porcelain of the sink, staring at her reflection. Pale. Hollow-eyed. A fool. A home-wrecker.
Her hand went to her stomach. A tiny, secret life was inside her. A life she had thought, had hoped, was Kian’s. Now, the idea was a horror. To be tied forever to this man, this liar, this stranger who had a whole other family he’d conveniently forgotten to mention.
The buzzing of her phone started again. Kian.
She picked it up, her thumb hovering over the answer button. Then she pressed block. She blocked his number, his texts, his entire existence.
It was an act of survival.
The day of the gala came. Audrey hadn’t left her apartment. The world outside didn’t exist. But her job did. Her career. The exhibit was the one thing that was still hers, the one thing they hadn’t taken from her yet. Hiding would be surrendering. It would be letting them win.
Beatrice. Kian. Cole.
No. She would not break.
She stood in front of her closet, pulling out the gown she’d bought weeks ago, in another lifetime. It was a deep emerald green, simple and elegant. Armor.
She showered. She did her makeup, painting a mask of calm over her ravaged features. She zipped up the dress, the silk cool against her skin.
She looked in the mirror.
A woman stared back at her, a stranger with haunted eyes. But she was standing. She was breathing.
Her phone chimed. Not Kian. A calendar alert.
Museum Gala. 7 PM.
It was time. Time to walk into the lions’ den.