Chapter Ten
LUKE
Mila’s words from the roof still scraped raw—Langley bleeding out, her mom panicking, and then them ran because they thought they were next.
I waited until after dinner to approach my dad. Timing mattered with him. Push too early and he would swat me away with, “I have calls.” Push too late and he would already be wound tight from the day, more difficult to read under the weight of it.
He’d retreated to his office as usual, phone in one hand and the glow of three monitors painting the mahogany desk blue. The whole room was slick, expensive, and cold.
The boardwalk studio kept circling my thoughts. First Langley disappears. Now the one space Mila ever claimed gets flipped overnight. Different moves, same pattern—erase the past, rewrite the future. My dad was good at that.
Drew had let it slip that morning—casual, as if it was nothing. Leased. A restaurant group out of L.A. Better profit margins than the studio had ever pulled. And for Dad, it was about the bottom line.
But it wasn’t just numbers. It was Mila’s sanctuary.
I leaned into the doorway, my shoulder hitting the wood. “You said the boardwalk studio wasn’t being touched.”
He didn’t look up. “And?”
“It was just leased. Lorne told me recently it was coming, but you swore it wasn’t.”
A microscopic pause. Then he turned his head, phone still in his hand. “And?”
“Now it’s official. Signed off. A restaurant group out of L.A.” I crossed my arms. “Better margins than a studio. That’s the line, right?”
His jaw ticked. Almost a smile. Almost not. “You’ve been busy.”
“You said we were keeping it.”
He set his phone down harder than necessary, the plastic knock abrupt against the desk. “And then I changed my mind.” No apology. No reason.
“Why now?” I kept my voice even. “That building wasn’t just another property. You told me it was good for the community. We were keeping it.”
“Plans change.”
“Not without a reason. You went back on your word—what happens to everything inside? The artwork, the history—you just erase it?”
His gaze sharpened, expression flat. “It doesn’t matter. End of story.” He stood. Slow. Deliberate. His shoulders settled into the posture that killed dissent in boardrooms, radiating don’t push me without raising his voice. “Back off, Luke. You’re playing with fire you don’t understand.”
The mask slipped for half a second. It wasn’t rage or fear—it was colder, control stretched thin. And beneath it all, the edge of guilt. Except my father didn’t do guilt. He did pressure points.
“Your fixation,” he went on, eyes cutting, “on Mila. On her family. It’s clouding your judgment.” A beat. “She’s not your future.”
The worst part was—he wasn’t wrong. In my father’s world, Mila could never be my future.
She was a risk, a liability, a flaw in the dynasty he was so desperate to cement.
But she was also the only thing I wanted that wasn’t carved from his blueprint.
And if that meant rebellion, I would lead the fucking charge.
Heat flared through my chest. I locked it down. He wanted me to snap. To prove his point. I didn’t give him that. I kept my jaw tight. Eyes steady.
When the lack of reaction bored him, he picked up his phone again, dismissing me without saying the word. Conversation over.
I found Drew out back twenty minutes later, leaning on the low stone wall by the pool. His tie was half-loosened, the phone in his hand glowing like he needed a pulse under his thumb.
I didn’t sit. “You told me this morning the lease went through.”
His eyes flicked up, taking me in. “Let me guess—you already hit Dad about it. Brave.”
“Save me the commentary.” My arms folded. “Why’d he change his mind?”
Drew slid the phone into his pocket with a sigh. “The new lease is lucrative. Lorne handled the paperwork. Simple as that.”
“Better margins don’t make him change his mind overnight. Figure out what.” Restaurants moved cash faster than canvases. Easier to pad numbers, easier to clean books with volume.
His brow lifted, lazy. “Why me?”
“Because Dad won’t tell me. And you’ve got more access than I do.”
Drew leaned back casually on his hands. “And what exactly am I supposed to be digging for?”
“The reason why,” I said flatly. “He promised it was staying. What changed?”
Something flashed in his gaze, but it was gone before I could fully take note of it.
He covered it with a twitch of his mouth. Not a smile. Not agreement either. “Fine. I’ll poke around. Quietly.”
But it seemed too easy. Drew never made anything easy unless there was something in it for him.
“Lorne signed the authorizations?” I asked.
He tipped his head. “If it’s a lease, it runs through him. I’ll see what paper he buried with it.”
“Do that.”
We held the stare another second. He looked away first.
Later, I sat in my SUV with the engine off. The driveway was hemmed in by dark hedges and fog.
I opened the glove box and pulled out a fresh burner phone. My thumb hovered a second before dialing a number that I hadn’t touched in almost a year.
Marcus Vega. Private investigator. Ex-cop who’d walked off the force with more enemies than friends. Not polished. Not political. That was why I’d kept his number. Because when he dug, he didn’t stop for the people who thought they were untouchable.
The line clicked alive on the second ring. Silence. Then a low voice, professional but edged with street: “Who is this?”
“Luke King.”
A pause. The faint scrape of breath. “This about the girl again?”
“No,” I said flatly. “Something else. Possible relocation. Maybe death. Either way, it was covered up.”
“Go on.”
“Name’s Darren Langley. Former VP at King Enterprises. Disappeared a year ago. I want what really happened to him—and who paid to make it vanish.”
Another pause. Then: “Timeline?”
“Yesterday.”
Another small silence, as if he was weighing me. “Anyone else know you’re digging?”
“No. And it stays that way. Especially from my family.”
“Understood.” A beat. “You’ll hear from me when I have something.”
The line went dead.
I leaned back into the leather and stared at the houses generously spaced beyond the driveway, their windows glowing against the dark, the lies loud in my head.
Dad was lying. Drew was evasive. And the boardwalk studio—the one place that was supposed to be left intact for the community but really for Mila—was gone.
It hadn’t even been my father’s vision. It was mine. An idea he’d once pretended to back, selling it as civic goodwill when it was the only thing I’d asked him to protect.
Now it was another deal on paper. Another promise broken.
Sophomore year, after practice, Mila and I had cut across the boardwalk, skates still clacking from where I’d had them slung over my shoulder.
The air had tasted of salt and sugar, funnel cake oil turning the wind sweet.
She’d stopped at the corner lot—the shuttered building with the peeling blue trim and sun-bleached sign.
And in the window, another sign that read for lease.
“What would you put in there?” she’d asked, hair in her mouth from the wind, pencil already out as though the answer was supposed to be sketched, not spoken.
“Smoothie shop,” I’d thrown out.
Her unguarded laugh hit me dead center. “You? Blending fruit for tourists?”
“Better than another T-shirt store.”
She’d stepped closer to the glass, breath fogging a small circle. “Art gallery.”
“Wouldn’t make a dime,” I muttered.
“Too perfect,” she murmured back, eyes on the empty building, and the way she lingered on it told me she meant more than the space.
Then she lifted her sketchbook, angled it against the window frame, and started drawing.
Quick lines. The window frames first. Then the door.
Then a line of light she imagined would hit the floor at sunset.
Half the time, she drew like she could force the world to bend to her lines.
I’d watched the way she bit her lip when a line didn’t land exactly how she wanted and how she kept going anyway. Watched her reflection in the glass look braver than either of us felt.
“Gallery’s a lot of work,” I’d muttered, because vulnerability made me stupid. “You’d have to—”
“—source artists and curate?” She’d shot me a look. “I know what to do with a door when it finally opens, Luke.”
I didn’t say it then, but I thought it. I wanted this one to open for her. I wanted that building to stay exactly where it was until we could make something out of it that she would stand inside and call her own.
I could still see her there if I closed my eyes. Her hair snapping in the wind. Pencil carving possibility where everyone else saw a tax write-off. She smiled sideways at me, a small curve that let me in on the joke, trusting I wouldn’t ruin it.
So yeah. It mattered. She mattered.
Whatever my father erased with that lease, I was going to get it back.
Dig it up. Hold it steady. Even if it meant tearing through every wall he built.
Because it wasn’t just a building. It was hers.
Her dream sketched in graphite and painted in oils, her laugh fogging the glass.
And if keeping that alive meant burning my father’s blueprint to the ground, then so be it.