Chapter 29
The city blurs around us as I sit between Cora and Owen in the back of the car, her clammy hand clutched in mine.
My stomach twists into knots, each pulse a warning I don’t understand.
Half asleep, and uncaffeinated, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming when Jonathan called.
I didn’t even know he had my number but I wasn’t going to question his clipped instructions.
Liam drives us through the early morning traffic in silence, but it’s heavier than words.
The quiet presses on me, growing unbearable with every passing block.
My mind races, trying to imagine what awaits me—Jonathan and Helen?
The whole inner circle? Confrontation? A warning to stay away from Matt?
Or… something worse? My throat tightens and my hand presses to my knee, sweaty and trembling.
Before I’m remotely ready for what lies ahead, Liam has parked the car and is holding Cora’s door open.
She gently tugs my hand when I remain frozen in the backseat, and in silence we head for the lift.
As we climb up to the penthouse, my head starts spinning, the urge to run screaming at me.
But there’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.
The second the doors open, Helen is in front of me, wringing her hands with Jonathan at her side.
“What’s… happening?” My voice is barely more than a whisper.
Jonathan swallows, opens his mouth, then closes it again.
Helen bites her lip, glances at him, then back at me.
Fear and regret swim in her eyes. I reach out toward her instinctively, and for a brief moment, she clasps my hand, offering me more comfort and support than my own mother ever has, but then the lift dings again, shattering the moment.
Ciaran storms in first, scowl carved into every line of his face, hands tight into fists at his sides. Brennan follows, eyes blazing, every inch as furious as his twin, and then Matt appears behind them, calm in a way that makes my chest seize.
I haven’t seen him much since Abbie and Logan’s honeymoon a few weeks ago, and our texts have been scattered at best as I keep trying to tell myself to do the right thing, to shut this down before things escalate even further…
but the sight of him hits me like a punch to the gut, and my breath snags.
Want claws through me, sharp and painful, even as danger hums around his edges.
Even dishevelled—five o’clock shadow, bags under his eyes, and messy hair—he steals every drop of air from my lungs. But when he refuses to so much as look at me?
My stomach caves in, the walls tilt, and the whole damn room shrinks down around me.
Cora steps slightly in front of me, small but fierce, Owen mirroring her at my side.
“Lily had nothing to do with this,” she says, voice shaking but sharp.
“Silence,” Ciaran snaps, glaring so harshly I flinch.
“Mind your tongue,” Jonathan bites out. “That’s my daughter you’re talking to.”
Jonathan takes a step closer to my stepdad, placing him in the middle of the room.
The imagery of him being stuck between his family and his men has a rock lodging its way somewhere behind my ribs.
What the hell is going on? I risk a glance in Matt’s direction, but he’s too busy looking at the floor where he’s scuffing his shoe against the hardwood.
His folded arms and slumped shoulders do little to reassure me things will be okay.
“You saw the emails, Johnny, she’s just as guilty as Jen.
That mother of hers was recruiting girls for that bastard’s sex trafficking ring and she fucking knew.
She’s their asset,” Brennan sneers, his glare pinning me in place.
My mind whirls at a million miles an hour trying to process what he’s saying, but the picture he’s painting is so distorted I can’t even begin to fathom it.
I stagger back, mouth dry as what he’s implying sinks in. “No… no, that’s not—”
“Don’t you dare try and lie to us, girl,” Ciaran snaps, his voice like steel as redness creeps up his neck. Seeing his tightly leashed furry aimed at me, makes me stumble back a step, only Owen’s hand on my shoulder and Cora’s threaded through mine keeping me from running.
“You’re trash,” he snarls. “Just like that bitch. And if I had my way, you’d meet the same fate as her.”
The words hit wrong—flat and sharp, like a blade to the ribs.
Same fate.
My brain snags. Stutters. Trips over itself trying to make sense of it.
My mouth goes dry. “What… fate?” I whisper, barely conscious of speaking.
He smirks. “Dead. It’s the least she deserved, that backstabbing cunt.”
For a second, the world stops. A ringing fills my ears—high, shrill, and endless. I thought I’d feel nothing when this day came. I told myself I would feel nothing. But something hot and ugly claws up through my chest—grief, disbelief, fury, all tangled into something nameless and feral.
I look for Matt—stupidly, desperately—searching for any sign of him stepping in, shutting this down, reminding me I’m not alone in a room full of men who suddenly hate the sight of me.
But he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak.
Just watches, jaw tight, eyes unreadable.
A crack echoes through my chest. My hands tremble, fists clenching to keep me upright as the word dead ricochets through me.
Jonathan steps forward, voice tight. “Lily… please understand, we have to be seen to be dealing with this.”
Helen lifts a hand, eyes glossy, a tremor in her lips. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. But she doesn’t step forward, and she doesn’t reach for me. An empty apology is not enough to fill the gaping void of abandonment that’s sinking its teeth into me in this icy penthouse.
With a squeeze of my hand, Cora steps forward again. Her shoulders are back, chin tilted up, and if looks could kill, Ciaran would be six feet under.
“I’m telling you she’s innocent, she doesn’t deserve this. You can’t punish her for something you can’t even prove she did. Those emails don’t match the girl we know, and if you’d just stop for a second, you’d see you’re making a mistake.”
Her frustration falls on deaf ears. It does nothing to sway Ciaran or Brennan. Matt stays silent in the corner, and I know that image will haunt me, lingering in the shadows of my mind at the worst possible moments.
“You think that matters? There’s enough proof for half the men to be demanding her head on a spike, and if it was up to me, that’s exactly what would be happening.” Ciaran’s words are cold and merciless in a way I’ve never heard aimed at me before.
The room spins around me, my lungs tighten, and my heart hammers like a drum I can’t escape.
Betrayal so thick it’s nearly tangible presses down on me.
Everyone I called family—the people I trusted, who I believed had my back—turns their gaze away or watches silently as I am condemned.
Even Matt. My Matty. My throat burns as I swallow a sob.
And then the blow I cannot even begin to process lands.
Brennan’s voice drops, low and venomous. “We’ve seen the emails, the photos, and your real birth certificate. So cut the crap before we change our minds about letting you walk out of here alive.”
The words hit like a physical strike and my knees nearly buckle. The penthouse walls close in, suffocating, shrinking. My heartbeat thrashes so loud I barely hear my own breath.
My eyes snap to Matt. He’s only a few feet away—close enough that I could reach for him—but he stays silent. Still. Unmoving. Present and yet completely absent.
My love, my hope, my anchor… doing nothing.
The pain of it sears deeper than anything Brennan could ever say.
“I… I don’t understand,” I manage, voice torn apart. “What emails? What photos? Photos of who? My birth certificate has been blank my whole life. There’s nothing—there’s no one—”
Cora steps forward, eyes wide, trembling. “Lily… it doesn't matter—”
Jonathan cuts in, calm in a way that makes my chest ache even more. “Lily, please. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. We know. All that’s left is damage control.”
“Damage control?” I echo, horror tightening my throat. “You know? Know what?”
“We know about your mother. Recruiting girls. Feeding the ring,” Ciaran bites out. “And your father? Your real father? He’s tied to them, too. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
I stagger again, the floor tilting beneath me. Father? What father? I don’t even know who he is! My hands shake as if trying to hold onto something solid, but there’s nothing. The ground has disappeared. Whatever was holding me up fractures. Cracks. And suddenly I’m standing alone in the wreckage.
“You’re tied to them at best and one of them at worst,” Brennan sneers, each word dripping venom. “No matter how you dress it up, that’s what you are. After tonight, you’re nothing. This exile? It’s mercy, princess. More than you deserve.”
Tears burn hot at the corners of my eyes. My throat aches from holding in a scream. Every cold stare, every folded arm, every silent witness around the room becomes a blade slicing deeper. And Matt—God, Matt—just watches as ugly accusations are tossed my way.
The emails. The photos—Jen beside a man, that same man holding me in a hospital room, hours old. My mother. My father. Their ties to the trafficking ring.
Supposed proof, laid bare.
It burns through me, stripping away whatever illusions I had left, exposing a truth I was never meant to carry.
I want to scream—at them, at Matt, at the universe—but the sound dies in my throat, swallowed by disbelief and fury.
My chest tightens, every breath sharp and burning.
My vision blurs, tears pressing close, but I force them back.
I won’t give these strangers the satisfaction of seeing me break.
Because that’s what we are now, isn’t it? Strangers. Enemies. Where once family and loyalty lived, now only judgment and condemnation remain. Family wouldn’t do this. Family would listen, argue, fight, protect, before casting one of their own into exile without a backward glance.
Cora and Owen flank me, their silent support barely a whisper against the roar of betrayal.
Their presence should be enough, but it isn’t.
Nothing is enough. Not the shaking of Cora’s hand in mine, not Owen’s tight-lipped worry.
The weight of being cast out of my home, judged for sins I didn’t commit, presses down so hard I can barely breathe.
It’s only as Owen and Cora are ushering me out of the penthouse and into Jonathan’s private lift that the weight of everything the twins spat my way sinks in.
My mother is dead, my father is tied to that sick and twisted ring that held Helen captive, and my mother very well could be the reason Cora was kidnapped.
The reason Cole was killed. My head spins, my knees threaten to buckle under the weight of her sins.
The lift tilts, swaying with the dizzying rush of shock, grief, and rage.
The city outside—the life I thought I had, the sanctuary I believed in, fractures into too many broken pieces to hold.
And in that spinning, hollowing moment, the truth burns into me—the people I loved, the people I called family, have all turned their backs.
Now I’m alone, exiled from the place I once called home and betrayed by those I trusted. In the back seat of the car, familiar streets smear past the window for the last time. Nothing will ever be the same. How could it?
The stupid, trusting girl who entered that penthouse is dead. The one who walked out was born of ash and silence.