Chapter 26
Stella
I had no idea how long I had lain there.
The anticipation was its own kind of torture.
Part of me almost wished whoever had done this would just come back and get it over with.
Having someone to fight, someone to face—that would be better than lying in the suffocating darkness, waiting for something that might never arrive.
As the minutes stretched into what felt like hours, a new fear took root: maybe no one was coming back. Maybe the plan was to leave me here, sealed in this metal coffin, and let the desert do the rest. Film my slow suffocation while the sun turned this trunk into an oven.
And somewhere, someone was watching it happen.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Tate, praying he would find me. Willing him to somehow know where I was, even though that was impossible when I didn’t know where I was myself.
Fragments of the night before drifted through my mind like debris after a storm. Bridget’s face. The club. My drink had tasted strange—bitter and salty. I remembered feeling my mind go hazy, my limbs going heavy, and the world tilting sideways. Oliver had been there, and then he wasn’t.
The gaps in my memory were maddening. I couldn’t even remember who had done this to me. It was like being blackout drunk, only worse, because I hadn’t done this to myself. Someone had taken my memories along with my freedom.
Why did I go out? Why didn’t I just stay home?
I’d let my anger fuel me. My hurt over Tate pulling away. My resentment toward my parents. I’d acted like a rebellious teenager instead of the adult I kept insisting I was. And now I might die for it.
No. I shoved the thought away, clenching my bound fists.
I refused to cry. Whoever was watching on the other side of that little red light wasn’t going to see me break.
If I was going to die in this trunk, I was going to die with my dignity intact.
My parents hadn’t managed to crush my spirit in twenty-six years.
I wasn’t going to let some stranger do it in a matter of hours.
Then—a sound.
Faint at first. So soft I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard it. My mind had been playing tricks on me for a while now, conjuring phantom noises in the oppressive silence. But this sound grew louder. Rhythmic. Footsteps.
My heart rate spiked. I braced myself, muscles tensing despite the restraints. If this was my attacker coming to finish the job, I wasn’t going down without a fight. I’d kick and do whatever damage I could manage with my hands tied behind my back and—
“Stella!”
The voice cut through the darkness like a blade of light and I whimpered, the only sound I could make with my mouth being taped shut.
“Stella!”
Closer now. Desperate. Raw. Tate.
For one terrifying moment, I was certain I was hallucinating. That my oxygen-starved brain had conjured the one voice I most wanted to hear. But then the trunk lifted open and there he was.
Tate stood above me, silhouetted against the blazing Nevada sky, and I had never seen anyone look so wrecked.
His hair was disheveled, his shirt untucked, his eyes wild with a fear that cracked wide open into relief the moment he saw me.
His chest heaved like he’d been running, and his hands—his normally steady, capable hands—were shaking.
“Fuck, sweetheart.” His voice broke on the words, his eyes tormented. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He reached down and peeled the tape from my mouth as gently as his trembling fingers would allow. Then his arms were around me, hauling me up and out of that metal tomb, crushing me against his chest like he was afraid I might disappear if he let go.
I burst into tears. The sunlight was merciless after so many hours in the dark, bleaching the world white for several seconds before my vision adjusted.
When it did, I found myself in some kind of junkyard—rows of rusted vehicles and the skeletal remains of machines left to decay.
The black sedan I’d been trapped in sat coated in dust, looking as abandoned as I’d felt.
Tate sank to his knees in the dirt, still holding me, and worked at the bindings on my wrists and ankles. The moment the rope fell away, blood rushed back into my extremities with a vengeance. I cried out as pins and needles exploded through my hands and feet, the pain sharp after so much numbness.
“That’s it,” Tate murmured, guiding me through small movements, helping me flex and extend my cramped limbs. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
I curled into him, burying my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him. Tate. Safe. I was safe. The sobs came harder then, wrenching out of me in waves I couldn’t control.
Tate just held me. Rocked me gently in the dust and the heat, one hand cradling the back of my head, letting me fall apart in his arms.
There was movement around us—other people arriving, voices calling out, the crackle of radios—but it all felt distant. Background noise. The only thing that felt real was Tate’s heartbeat against my cheek, steady and strong.
“Let’s get you home,” he said finally, his lips brushing my hair. “Your family is going out of their minds with worry.”
I clutched at his shirt. “Don’t leave me again.”
He went still for just a moment. Then his arms tightened around me. “You’re safe,” he repeated quietly. “You’re okay. And there are a lot of people who are going to be very glad to know that.”
A lot of people? I had no idea what he meant by that.
Tate carried me to a waiting SUV, where he helped me drink water and continue stretching my aching limbs. Once I was settled in the back seat, he showed me his phone.
My followers.
Thousands of comments. Hundreds of posts. People I’d never met sharing photos, comparing notes, coordinating search efforts across Las Vegas like crime show sleuths.
“Bridget is really Siobhan O’Hagan,” Tate explained, his voice low and steady. “Her father was Michael O’Hagan—someone in the mob your dad helped put away years ago. He died in prison. She’s been planning this for a long time.”
He walked me through the rest, how Oliver’s partner Carl had gone on television to spread the word. How someone at a rental car company had recognized Siobhan and provided the license plate number. How, even with that, they’d struggled to track the car through Vegas’s maze of traffic cameras.
“Your followers filled in the gaps,” Tate said.
“They scoured social media, cross-referenced sightings, analyzed everything they could find. One of them spotted this car in the background of someone else’s Instagram post from yesterday—some tourist’s photo taken near the edge of town.
They matched the plates, figured out the general area, and started digging.
Turns out one of the women who works in accounting at this junkyard follows you.
She saw the posts, recognized the car sitting in their lot this morning, and called it in.
” Tate’s voice roughened. “That’s how we found you.
A stranger who watches your videos online saved your life. ”
I stared at the screen through fresh tears, overwhelmed by the sheer number of strangers who had dropped everything to help find me.
“Your father was sent a small clip of a video of you in the trunk. We think Siobhan planned to film... whatever happened to you, then send that footage to your father,” Tate continued carefully.
“Make him watch someone he loved die slowly, the way she had to watch her father’s trial, his mental decline, his death in prison. ” His jaw tightened.
I nodded numbly, trying to process how close I’d come to dying.
“Vegas PD has units searching for her now,” Tate added. “We’ll get her, Stella. I promise.”
I believed him. Despite everything—despite the terror still humming beneath my skin, despite how close I’d come to dying alone in that trunk—I believed him. Because Tate had found me, just like I knew he would.
“I don’t know how to thank all these people,” I whispered, scrolling through the endless stream of messages from strangers who’d worked together to save my life.
Something warm flickered in Tate’s eyes. “I think the best way to thank them is to open your store and let them wear your designs.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
The driver’s door opened and another man slid behind the wheel. “Police have finished processing the scene,” he said, glancing back at us. “Miss Hayward—I’m Kane. Glad we found you.”
“Thank you.” I studied him briefly—tall, broad-shouldered, with light brown hair and the kind of calm, watchful eyes that suggested nothing much rattled him. Another Noble and Associates bodyguard, clearly.
Tate held me the entire drive home. I alternated between crying and simply shaking, tremors I couldn’t control working through my body as the adrenaline slowly drained away. His arms never loosened. His hand never stopped stroking my hair and my back.
I felt safer than I had any right to feel, wrapped up in him, and I dreaded the moment I’d have to let go.
* * *
Reporters and police cruisers clogged the street outside my family’s house. Tate released me as we approached, and he and Kane shifted seamlessly into professional mode—flanking me, shielding me from cameras, guiding me up the front walk with expressions that betrayed nothing personal.
It hurt more than I expected, that sudden distance from Tate once again.
The front door flew open before we reached it. Mom rushed out and threw her arms around me, sobbing my name. Dad was right behind her, then Charlie, and for a few minutes I let myself be passed from embrace to embrace, accepting their relief, their tears, their murmured reassurances.
It was nice to feel wanted. But the person I most wanted to be with was standing three feet away, carefully not looking at me. Back to being reserved and guarded.
Sutton appeared in the foyer, his expression grave but relieved.
“The police have apprehended Siobhan O’Hagan,” he announced.
“She was picked up trying to cross into California. Your family is no longer in danger, Mr. Hayward.” He paused, then added, “We can keep a security detail on the property overnight to manage the press, but after that, our job will be complete.”
“Thank you, Sutton.” Dad’s voice was thick with emotion. “For everything. We’re grateful.”
Sutton nodded, then turned to Tate. The look that passed between them was brief but weighted with meaning.
Tate’s jaw tightened and I stepped toward him.
He finally met my eyes, just for a moment.
I saw everything there—the longing, the uncertainty, the duty pulling him away. His throat worked as he swallowed.
“Get some rest,” he said quietly. “I’ll... I’ll be in touch.”
Then he followed Sutton and Kane out the door, and I was alone with my family. The silence that followed felt heavier than it should have.
Mom hovered, fussing over me as she ushered us into the living room. Dad stood with his hands in his pockets, looking lost now that the crisis had passed. Charlie watched me with an unreadable expression. He was probably trying to process the fact that Bridget was behind my abduction.
I’d just survived something horrific. Every instinct told me to retreat, to collapse into bed and deal with everything else tomorrow. But I was so tired of waiting. Of putting off the conversations that mattered. Of letting fear dictate my choices.
I took a shaky breath.
“I’m glad to be home.” My voice came out hoarse, roughened by hours of screaming against the tape Bridget had put on my mouth. “I’m glad I’m okay. I’m glad this nightmare is finally over.”
Mom reached for me. “Sweetheart—”
“But I need you to hear me.” I held up a hand, stopping her.
“Really hear me. I’m accepting Tate’s investment offer.
I’m opening my store.” I met my father’s gaze directly, not missing his deep frown.
“I know you don’t approve. I know you think I’m being naive, or reckless, but this is my life and my choice.
I don’t need your permission to do any of it. ”
Dad’s expression flickered—frustration, concern, something that might have been grudging respect.
“I’m also moving out to my own apartment, with my own lease, as soon as I can arrange it,” I continued, because I refused to be beholden to my parents for anything.
Mom’s eyes welled with tears. “Stella, after everything that just happened—”
“After everything that just happened, I know exactly how short life can be,” I said, cutting her off.
My voice cracked, but I pressed on. “I spent hours in that trunk thinking I was going to die. And you know what I regretted? The risks I didn’t take.
The dreams I put on hold because you and dad didn’t believe in me, or support me. ”
I wiped at my eyes, not bothering to hide the tears.
“I love you, but I can’t keep shrinking myself to fit into the life you want for me.
I won’t.” I straightened my shoulders. “And there’s something else you should know.
Tate and I... what’s between us isn’t just professional.
I care about him. Deeply. When everything settles and I’ve had time to breathe, I intend to pursue a relationship with him. With or without your blessing.”
The silence stretched. No one seemed to know what to say.
It wasn’t like the movies—no swelling soundtrack, no perfectly crafted mic-drop moment. Just my family staring at me in shock, processing, recalibrating everything they thought they knew about their daughter. Their sister.
That was okay. This wasn’t their moment. It was mine.
“Now,” I said quietly, “I’m going to take a shower.”
I turned and walked upstairs without waiting for a response. The nightmare was over. My life—my real life, the one I’d been too afraid to claim before Tate—was finally ready to begin.
I just hoped, when I finally had the courage to reach for what I wanted, that Tate would be there reaching back.