Chapter 44 SHATTERED ILLUSIONS
Agron Berisha
We have another assignment for you. We need more influence with the Andersons. Remember to bring your precious wife to dinner tonight. Wouldn’t want her brothers getting too comfortable.
My fist clenches my phone as I reread the asshole’s message from last night.
It’s getting more and more dangerous for Lana to stay in this world.
My office chair creaks as I swipe to my surveillance feeds, watching her make her daily pilgrimage to the third floor.
Normally, I’d watch her from my monitors inside the locked room, but not today.
Not after yesterday, when she saw my scars and still gave me her love.
Because it’s time to tell her the whole truth.
She deserves to know.
The sickness in my soul. The obsession. The depths I’ll go for my revenge over my family’s deaths.
I bite my cheek, stopping myself from pressing the kill-switch button to wipe away the damning evidence in the room.
I’m tempted. So very tempted. One little press and I can keep on pretending.
I can make every day feel like Christmas for her. I can feed her chocolate cake I don’t eat because I can’t deal with the sweetness reminding me of that tragic day.
I can cradle her in my arms at night like we’ve been doing since she learned what happened to my family.
We’ll read books in the library together, watch old movies in bed until we fall asleep. I’ll make sweet love to her in the middle of the night and ignore the violence and bloodshed in my real life.
I can pretend this is forever, that the monster inside me is enough.
That she’ll stay with me despite who I’ve become.
But no. Maybe she’s right. Maybe there’s still a flicker of Kian inside my ruined soul.
Because she deserves a choice.
If she leaves me after this, good. Because I’m not strong enough to leave her.
Cece nuzzles Lana’s arm. My zemer buries her nose in the calico’s fur.
My heart squeezes. Useless images of an alternate reality appear behind my eyelids. Me seeing my patients at a vet clinic. Lana playing with the animals, doing whatever her heart desires because that’s all I need.
For her to be happy.
But that future belongs to Kian Leste.
Elias Kent doesn’t wallow in the past or live with regrets, because I’m damn good at what I do now.
I swallow the growing lump in my throat and reach for a button hidden beneath the top drawer’s false bottom.
I press it.
She freezes. She’s surprised.
I draw a stiff inhale and look at the screen. As expected, she heard the click of the door unlocking.
The unbreakable mystery room where all the ugliness lies.
The scar on my cheek throbs. My rib cage tightens as I watch her set the cat down and creep forward, her hand pressed to her chest.
She grips the doorknob and hesitates, as if she knows she might not like what’s hiding inside.
Open it, Lana. Find out who you really married.
Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, she straightens. My pulse kicks at the fierceness in her eyes.
That’s my girl.
Then she twists the knob and takes a step inside.
She gasps.
Cece meows and digs her claws into my foot, clearly unhappy I’m ignoring her.
But I can’t help it.
Earth has lost its gravity, and I can’t find my balance.
My gaze snaps to the security camera on the ceiling. The familiar red light winks at me.
He’s watching.
I turn back to the room, but that’s too little a word for what this apartment-sized space is.
Roses fill my vision everywhere I can see—dark reds, lush oranges, soft pinks—they grow on lattices built into the walls and in pots of all sizes spread throughout the area.
Gold filigree wraps around the ceiling in the shape of a lone rose, and dark green ivy climbs up the walls, interspersed with birds of paradise and peonies, flowers I didn’t even know could coexist.
It’s an indoor garden.
My indoor garden, the dream I shared with him all those years ago.
I strain in a breath, my eyes already filling with tears as I stagger inside and survey this secret shrine he’s been hiding from me, this emblem of our past.
There are large arched windows in the far corner, wrought-iron lattice grids stretching from floor to ceiling where a skylight sits. Under it rests a lavender chaise lounge and an antique coffee table matching the desk in my room, stacked with books.
I walk over and pick up the volume.
The Unending Love of Hades and Persephone.
Greek Myths and Romance.
They’re all books about my favorite story—the goddess of spring who changed the king of darkness.
A shadow crosses the floor, and I look up, finding a thousand stars smiling at me from the night sky, a stray cloud moving aside for the moonlight.
“An indoor garden,” I say. “Like a greenhouse filled with roses, more books, a comfortable chair, the best hot chocolate, and big windows I can watch the stars from.”
Everything. He’s done it all. The wish I let go of—but he never did.
My heart bangs against my ribs, aching to find the man behind it all.
Then I spot it.
A cordoned-off space to the far right—a wall of glass and a room so different from the rest of this paradise.
Monitors—a full wall of monitors.
My chest tightens as I move toward the dark side, recognizing the images on the screens—the dungeon, my New York City apartment, my bedroom here, the library, my office inside The Orchid.
The floor sways and I grip the doorframe. A corkboard tacked with paper scraps awaits me.
Love your smile. Thanks for the extra coffee.
A busy day for you. Here’s an extra tip for your troubles.
Life is full of surprises. Today’s storm may be tomorrow’s rainbow. Hang in there. If you ever need help, call this number.
All receipts. All from me. He’s amassed stacks of them—from my coffee runs in New York to my hastily scrawled notes to a chef in Paris.
I don’t know how he got them, but as I flip through the stacks, I see the dates going back years before he joined my family in New York.
Years. He’s been watching me for years.
A monitor flickers, drawing my attention, and a cursor hovers over a folder, like someone is accessing the monitor remotely.
The folder name: Anderson Strategy
Dread tightens like a noose around my neck when the folder opens.
Inside are dossiers on my siblings, their spouses, photos of me over the years—things I’m not even surprised to see, because Elias is the dealer of secrets. Of course he’d have information on us.
But then I see the emails. The timestamps. The annotations.
And notes from one particular day ten years ago.
Aim the knife at a forty-five degree angle to avoid major organs.
Medical strategies on other survivable angles.
Then, his masculine scrawl underneath.
Twins—alley loop, twice a week. Bodyguards peel off at the entrance. Window: five minutes.
There are observations of my brothers—their personalities, with Elias underlining Maxwell’s name, musing the oldest brother will be the most likely to help him.
Notes on how to convince Maxwell to trust him, on engineering opportunities to showcase his morals—stop a bad-faith deal, fake-rescue a sex worker on the Rose floors inside The Orchid.
Every “chance” to look like a savior. Every offhand favor meticulously planned.
Strategies upon strategies on how to infiltrate my family and become one of us.
The knife in his gut when my brothers found him in the alley the day they met?
Scripted. Blocked out frame by frame like a scene.
Birthdays, weddings, which brother has what weakness—Ethan with his bucket list for his wife, Rex with his penchant for coffee pills. No stone is left unturned.
Then there’s me—photos of me, files on the men who’ve shown interest in the past, their pictures crossed off with black marker and hasty scrawls underneath.
Interested in her money.
Secretly has a girlfriend.
Abuser. Eliminated.
Hate the face of this fucker.
The words blur. I collapse into the nearest chair, my mind spinning with the revelations.
This isn’t just revenge. This is carefully crafted obsession.
Years of my life mapped out like a strategy board. Every coincidence, every conversation, every action premeditated.
I’ve married a man who’s sold his soul to the devil to get revenge and use my family as stepping stones.
He has been telling me the truth all along.
Kian is dead. He’s been dead for years.
The boy who kneeled in the rain and offered me his chocolates never made it into The Orchid.
My lungs strain in staccato breaths. The walls close in. I cling to the armrest for dear life.
I can’t think. I can’t process it all.
And most of all, I don’t understand why my heart thrums stronger, why a fire travels down the length of my body, igniting every single nerve.
Why the urge to find him—not to run away—is stronger than ever.
Click.
Click.
My pulse jolts at the familiar sound.
Then the alluring scent of vetiver, smoke, and mint.
Then chocolate. Rich, creamy chocolate I know is from Geraldine’s.
I feel his heat first, then hear him setting something in front of me.
I open my eyes, finding a cup of piping hot chocolate, because that was also part of the dream I’d told him. A magical indoor garden and a cup of hot chocolate.
He remembered every single detail.
His breath ghosts my neck, close enough to touch, and yet, he doesn’t.
“You know everything now. The worst of me,” he murmurs. “Meet me in the foyer tonight for the Berisha dinner if you want to stay.”
His heat presses closer—almost a brand.
“Or run while you still can. I won’t stop you.”
Cold crashes into me when he withdraws. Two paths. One choice.
Fear wins.
I spin around and dash out of the room.