Chapter 35
LEXI
The house-turned-film-set was chaos.
Sirens blared somewhere in the distance, a piercing echo of everything that had gone wrong.
The light rig had been cleared, but the smell of scorched metal still lingered in the air, sharp and metallic, clinging to my skin.
People were talking in frantic bursts—producers, security, medics—but it all sounded far away, muffled, like I was underwater.
I couldn’t stop staring at the red rose on the floor.
Someone had bagged it now, tucked it into evidence with the note that said You should have stayed at Dominion Hall. But I could still see it in my mind—the deep, velvet petals, the wet ink bleeding into the paper. A threat dressed up as something beautiful.
It was meant for me.
Carrie was the one who found me frozen by the doorway, fingers pressed to my lips like I could somehow keep the scream in. “Lexi,” she said, her voice shaking, “come sit down.”
“I’m fine.” The lie came out hollow. “Where’s Franklin?”
“On the phone with the studio. And the police. He—”
Before she could finish, someone shouted from the porch. “She’s here!”
And then I saw her.
Hannah.
She stepped into the doorway like she didn’t belong to the same world we did anymore—pale, trembling, her hair windblown.
She still wore the clothes Meghan had given her at Dominion Hall that morning, and her eyes—those same green eyes as mine—looked wild, too bright, like she hadn’t blinked in hours.
“I was running late,” she said, her voice breaking. “Is everyone okay?”
For a second, all I could feel was relief. My body moved before my brain caught up. I crossed the room, grabbed her hands, pulled her in. She was cold, despite the warm weather.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered. “You should be at Dominion Hall.”
I heard the words as they came out of my mouth. Ironic.
“I couldn’t.”
There was something brittle in her tone, something off.
“Come on.” I led her through the narrow hallway, away from the noise, toward the green room—a quiet space where she could breathe. Except I wasn’t sure who I was trying to calm anymore—her or me.
She sank onto the small sofa, hands twisting in her lap. “I just needed to see you,” she said. “To know you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” Another lie. “You should’ve stayed away. Or at least, called first. There’s security everywhere.”
“I did call,” she said softly. “You didn’t answer.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I had no knowledge of that. My phone was probably still somewhere in the chaos of the set.
“Listen,” I started, sitting across from her. “Something happened. Someone left a message for me.”
Hannah flinched. “A message?”
I nodded. “A note. A real rose. It said I should’ve stayed at Dominion Hall.”
Her breath caught audibly, and I saw it—the flicker of panic she tried to hide.
My pulse quickened. “Do you know what that means?”
“No.” Too fast.
“Hannah.” I leaned forward. “If you know something—anything—you have to tell me. Please. This isn’t just about me anymore. A staffer was hurt. Someone could’ve been killed.”
She shook her head, eyes darting toward the window. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand!” My voice rose, sharp, desperate. “I heard you this morning, Hannah. On the phone. You said it’s gone too far. That someone’s going to get hurt.”
Her head snapped toward me. “You were listening?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said quickly. “But I heard enough to know you’re hiding something.”
She stood up, her shoulders shaking. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Then tell me the truth,” I said, standing, too. “Who were you talking to?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter anymore!”
The words came out strangled, half a sob. She turned away, pacing toward the window. Her reflection flickered in the glass—small, fragile, a ghost of the sister I knew.
“You’re scaring me,” I said.
“Good.” She laughed—a broken, hollow sound. “Maybe you’ll finally see it’s not just about you.”
The words hit harder than they should have. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t answer.
The door burst open, and Franklin appeared, breathless, holding a clipboard like a weapon. “Lexi, the police want to speak with you about—” He stopped short when he saw Hannah. “Oh. Hannah.”
Hannah turned, face pale. “Yes?”
He frowned. “Security just told me your badge access pinged the side door twenty minutes before the accident.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
“That can’t be right,” Hannah said quickly. “I wasn’t even here—”
“They’re pulling the logs now,” Franklin said. “If there’s a mistake, fine. But if not, we’ve got a serious problem.”
I took a step back. “What’s he talking about?”
Hannah’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know! Maybe it was someone using my badge. You think I wanted any of this?”
I didn’t know what to think. My chest hurt, my pulse racing so hard it made me dizzy.
Franklin glanced between us, sensing the tension. “I’ll let the two of you talk. But stay put. Security’s on their way.” He left, the door clicking shut behind him.
For a long, awful moment, we just stood there.
The silence pressed in, thick and claustrophobic, broken only by the faint hum of the lights above. My pulse was a drum in my ears.
Not long ago, my life had been routine—exhausting, yes, but predictable.
I’d wake before dawn, paint on someone else’s emotions, and go to sleep wondering if I’d ever feel something real again.
Then Lucas had appeared like a collision—dark, steady, unstoppable—and suddenly everything that had felt scripted cracked open.
He’d made me remember what it was to want something for myself. To be seen, not staged.
And yet, even now, with him somewhere out there chasing shadows and leads, this was where I’d been pulled back—to my sister.
No matter how far I went, no matter who I became, Hannah was the constant thread, the one person who tied me to the version of myself that existed before the fame, before the pretending.
We’d survived too much together for me to imagine a world where she wasn’t on my side.
But standing there, watching her twist her hands and avoid my eyes, I felt the terrifying possibility that maybe I didn’t know her anymore. Maybe I’d been too busy running from my own reflection to notice that she’d been running, too—just in the opposite direction.
Finally, Hannah whispered, “They made me do it.”
My voice barely worked. “Made you do what?”
She turned toward me, tears streaking down her face. “I didn’t know what would happen. I thought—it was supposed to be a warning. That’s all. No one was supposed to get hurt.”
Cold rushed through me. “Who, Hannah? Who made you?”
She pressed her hands to her mouth like she could shove the words back inside. “You have to believe me.”
“I’m trying,” I said, stepping closer. “But you have to give me something. Tell me who they are.”
“I can’t,” she said again, voice breaking. “If I do, they’ll kill me. They’re crazy.”
My throat tightened. “Then let me help you. We’ll go back to Dominion Hall. We’ll tell Lucas, and Noah, and—”
“No!” she cried, stumbling back. “You can’t tell them. You can’t tell him.”
Her panic sliced through me. “Hannah? Talk to me.”
But she wasn’t listening anymore. She was crying in that small, contained way she used to when we were kids—no sobs, no noise, just shaking shoulders and silent tears.
“Please,” I said, softer now. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Together. I’m your sister.”
She lifted her head slowly, and what I saw in her eyes made my stomach drop. Guilt. Fear. Resignation.
“You were always the strong one,” she said. “The one who made it look easy. But you don’t know what it’s like being the one in the shadow. The one who gets left behind. I was the better actress but you were prettier, better at getting your own way.”
“Hannah, that’s not—”
“You think you saved me,” she said, her voice trembling, “but you just put me in their hands.”
My pulse roared in my ears. “Who?”
She backed away another step, toward the open window. The breeze caught her hair, lifting strands around her face like a halo.
“Hannah, stop.”
“I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” she whispered.
I took a step toward her. “Then we’ll go together. We’ll—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s too late for me.”
The look in her eyes was something I’d never seen before—something final.
“Hannah, please,” I said, my voice cracking. “We can fix this. Just tell me who they are.”
She smiled faintly, heartbreakingly.
And then—
She turned.
For a split second, time stopped. Her body pivoted, one hand catching the window frame, and then she was gone—her sweater flashing against the sunlight as she fell.
“HANNAH!”
The scream tore out of me raw, feral. I ran to the window, the world tilting as I leaned out. Two stories below, chaos erupted—crew members shouting, someone sprinting toward her. She’d landed on a patch of mulch beside the loading ramp, motionless.
I flew down the stairs, my bare feet slipping on the tile, my heart slamming against my ribs. By the time I reached the ground, a small crowd had formed—security, medics, Franklin barking orders.
“Move!” I shoved through them, dropping to my knees beside her. “Hannah! Oh, God—Hannah!”
Her eyes were half-open, unfocused, her lips trembling. She was breathing, barely.
“Don’t move her,” one of the medics said, kneeling opposite me. “We’ve got it.”
I couldn’t let go of her hand. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
She tried to speak, her voice a rasp. “Lexi …”
“I’m here.”
She coughed, blood flecking her lips. “Don’t …”
“What?” I leaned closer. “Don’t what?”
Her fingers went slack. Her eyes rolled back.
“Pulse is weak!” someone shouted.
I couldn’t breathe. The world narrowed to the sound of sirens getting closer, the blur of uniforms rushing in, hands pulling me back.
“Ms. Montgomery, you need to step away.”
I stumbled, my palms slick with her blood. Carrie caught me before I hit the ground. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let them work.”
But I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop seeing the moment she turned toward me—the calm, the surrender, the way she’d said you already know.
I didn’t. Not really.
As I watched them lift her onto the stretcher, something cold and certain settled in my chest. Someone had been pulling the strings all along. Someone close. Hannah.
And whatever Hannah had gotten tangled in—it wasn’t over.
I stood there in the driveway, the sun burning hot on my face, the world spinning out beneath my feet. The paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, doors slamming shut, sirens wailing as they sped away.
Franklin’s voice was somewhere behind me, barking into his phone, security radios crackling, but I barely heard it.
I could still feel her hand in mine. Cold. Trembling. Trusting me with a secret she hadn’t been able to say.
Carrie’s voice broke through, soft and scared. “Lexi … what did she mean?”
I stared at the empty road where the ambulance had gone.
“I don’t know,” I said. My throat burned. “But I’m going to find out.”
I lifted my gaze to the house, to the shattered window above, where the curtain still fluttered.
I watched the ambulance disappear down the road and felt the world contract until it was nothing but the hollowed-out space Hannah had left behind.
The sirens receded and the noise of the set came back in shards.
My chest ached with a dozen things at once: grief, anger, a cold, keening fury that wanted someone to answer for this.
But beneath it all there was something steadier, a line of clarity.
Dominion Hall had my back now. The men there—Lucas, Noah, Ethan, Atlas, Ryker, Elias, and the others—moved with the single-mindedness of people who protected what they loved.
They didn’t look at me like I was a liability or a problem to be managed by PR.
They moved like family. That mattered. That made them allies in the only way that will help me now: with muscle, with reach, and with a kind of fierce loyalty that isn’t performative.
Someone had sent a message in a red rose. They thought they’d scared me back into whatever corner they wanted. They were wrong. I would be there when Dominion Hall got their hands on whoever Hannah had gotten tangled up with. And we would make them pay.
I wiped my hands on my jeans, squared my shoulders, and walked back toward the house. The curtain over the broken window still fluttered, and I let that small, stubborn movement be a promise: This wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.