Scarlett
The world is too bright when I lift my head.
Not warm bright.
Not gentle bright.
The kind of bright that feels like knives—thin, white, merciless—cutting through my eyelids, stabbing the base of my skull.
My mouth tastes like iron and wine and regret.
My limbs feel wrong, heavy, like someone poured sand into my bones while I slept on the kitchen floor. I barely remember dragging myself from the tiles to the sofa. I barely remember the room spinning around me like it was trying to shake me off.
I don’t know how long I slept.
Minutes.
Hours.
Years.
The house is too quiet.
The silence feels loaded, like something is holding its breath behind the walls.
Noah should be here.
It’s late enough that he should be pacing or shouting or slamming doors—should be scolding me or apologising or pretending last night didn’t happen.
Instead—
Nothing.
I push myself upright slowly, palms sweating, head pounding so violently it feels like my skull is full of broken glass clinking with every movement.
“Noah?” My voice comes out small. Brittle. Scraped thin.
No answer.
I force myself to stand, legs trembling, robe hanging off one shoulder. The locket bumps against my collarbone with every step, cold enough to make me shiver.
The living room is immaculate.
No overturned cushions.
No glass on the floor.
No sign I screamed into the sofa until my throat gave out.
The housekeeper must have come.
Or Noah did.
Or—
Or Kai.
My stomach drops.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “He didn’t come back. He didn’t—”
My own denial tastes like poison.
The corridor stretches long and quiet as I move toward the bedroom. The wooden floors gleam beneath the sunlight spilling through the skylights. Everything looks pristine. Perfect.
Too perfect.
I reach the bedroom doorway.
Stop.
Noah is sitting on the edge of the bed.
Perfect suit.
Perfect posture.
Perfect anger simmering just beneath the polished surface.
His hands are clasped together loosely between his knees, but his knuckles are white from the pressure. His jaw ticks once, twice, in that slow, deliberate way he does when he’s holding in the kind of rage he thinks makes him look weak.
He looks up.
Those blue eyes—icy, assessing, cutting—drag over me.
Over my robe.
Over my swollen, tear-burned eyes.
Over the locket on my chest.
He sees it immediately.
Immediately.
His entire body goes still.
A terrifying still—collected, composed, mechanical.
“Where were you?” he asks.
Not loud.
Not soft.
Just steady enough to make my pulse falter.
I swallow, throat aching.
“Downstairs,” I rasp. “I didn’t… sleep well.”
“That’s obvious,” he says.
No warmth.
No concern.
Just cold calculation as his gaze flicks to the wine stains on the hem of my robe, the tremor in my fingers, the faint redness under my eyes.
“You were drunk,” he says plainly.
I flinch.
“I—”
“And you were alone.”
It’s not a question.
It’s a verdict.
His gaze drops to the locket again, lingering—slow, assessing, dangerous.
“Where did that come from?”
My heartbeat spikes so hard I nearly stumble.
“I found it,” I say quickly, too quickly, voice cracking in a way that gives me away immediately.
Noah’s eyes narrow.
“Found it where?”
“In the house,” I lie, throat tightening. “In a drawer. I—I must’ve forgotten I still had it.”
His head tilts slightly.
“Scarlett,” he says slowly, each syllable measured, “this house has been inventoried eight times since we moved in.”
I freeze.
His eyes sharpen.
“If that was here,” he continues quietly, “I would know.”
A cold ripple slides across my skin.
My fingers twitch toward the pendant without meaning to.
His gaze follows the movement.
Then he stands.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Like a man adjusting his mask.
He steps closer.
One step.
Another.
Until he’s standing directly in front of me, his breath brushing my cheek, his fingers reaching up—not gently—to touch the locket.
His thumb presses hard against the metal.
“When did you get this?” he asks.
I swallow again.
My tongue is thick.
My vision wavers.
“I told you—”
“Noah.” His name sounds like it breaks in my throat. “I don’t… I don’t want to fight.”
He steps closer.
Still touching the locket.
Still staring at me like he’s peeling my skin back layer by layer.
“Then don’t lie.”
My stomach twists.
My breath stutters.
He leans down, lips brushing the edge of my jaw in a way that should feel intimate but feels like surveillance.
“You look different,” he murmurs.
My chest tightens.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m hungover,” I whisper.
“No.” His hand slides from the locket to my wrist, fingers cold, grip firm. “It’s more than that.”
I pull my wrist away too quickly.
His eyes darken.
He notices everything.
“Where were you last night?” he asks again, voice lower, tighter. “Before you passed out downstairs.”
His breath brushes my cheek.
His cologne curls around me like a trap.
“I—”
A sound cuts through the room.
A faint vibration.
On the vanity.
My phone.
Still face-down.
Still holding the voicemail I listened to until I broke apart.
Noah looks at it.
Then at me.
His voice sharpens, edges honed to a blade.
“Who’s calling you, Scarlett?”
Everything inside me seizes.
My heart drops like a stone.
I step back without meaning to, hitting the dresser, breath caught in my throat.
“No one,” I lie.
“It didn’t sound like no one.”
My hand trembles.
My chest aches.
My head throbs violently.
My voice barely makes it past my lips.
“It’s just a notification.”
“For what?”
I can’t answer.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
Noah steps closer again, shadow falling over me like a closing door.
“Scarlett,” he murmurs, “if there’s something you need to tell me…” His fingers brush my jaw. “…you tell me now.”
My pulse slams.
My stomach rolls.
The locket burns against my skin.
And somewhere deep in the woods behind the house—
I swear something shifts in the shadows.
Watching.
Waiting.
Listening.
Like he already knows:
I’m about to lie to both of them.
Again.
Noah watches me like he’s waiting for a crack to appear —not because he wants to fix it, but because he wants to crawl inside it and own whatever breaks.
My back hits the vanity.
The glass bottles on the mirrored tray clink softly, chiming like warning bells.
I swallow hard, throat scraped raw.
“Noah,” I manage, my voice barely there, “it’s no one. I told you.”
He steps closer.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
Just… inevitable.
Like a tide swallowing sand.
“You keep saying that.” His tone is quiet enough to be worse than shouting. “Do you know what that makes me think?”
He reaches for my chin.
I flinch.
Minuscule, but he sees it.
He always sees it.
His fingers cup my jaw anyway, tilting my face up toward his as gently as someone putting their hand around a wounded animal —
gentle enough to pretend he isn’t the one doing the wounding.
“That you’re hiding something.”
My breath stutters.
“I’m not.”
His thumb traces my lower lip —the swollen part.
The bitten part.
The part that still aches from someone else’s mouth.
His eyes narrow to slits.
“Your lip is bruised.”
My entire body goes cold.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe past the ice climbing up my spine.
“I fell,” I whisper. “I must’ve… bumped it. Last night. In the kitchen.”
He doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t breathe.
Doesn’t believe me.
“I’ll pretend I buy that,” he murmurs. “But only for today.”
His hand slides down my neck, fingers brushing the chain.
Then he grips the locket.
Hard.
Too hard.
My breath skips.
Noah’s jaw flexes as he studies the pendant like it has personally insulted him.
“This,” he says quietly, “was not in any drawer in this house.”
I press myself back against the vanity, wishing the marble could swallow me whole.
“Noah, please—”
“Where did you get it?”
I try to pull away.
He doesn’t let me.
His fingers tighten around the chain, not enough to hurt me, but enough for the message to land like a blade:
This is mine to question.
You are mine to answer.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
His eyes sharpen.
“You don’t know?”
His voice is razor-soft.
“You just… woke up wearing a necklace I’ve never seen before?”
I swallow.
“I must have found it last night. I don’t remember—”
“You don’t remember a lot of things from last night, do you?”
His thumb brushes the hollow of my throat.
It should feel intimate.
It feels like he’s checking for a pulse he already knows he controls.
I try to inhale.
It stutters.
Noah steps even closer, the air between us collapsing.
“You were drunk. You were emotional. You were out of control.”His voice lowers, a steel wire pulled tight. “And you know I hate it when you’re out of control.”
The words hit like a warning wrapped in affection — Noah’s favourite brand of manipulation.
I clench my jaw.
His hand moves to my waist, sliding over the robe, fingertips pressing just a little too firmly into my hipbone.
“You worried me,” he says. “Do you know that?”
The softness is fake.
But it sinks its hooks in anyway.
I hate how good he is at this.
I hate how practiced.
How precise.
He waits for my answer.
I give him nothing.
His lips brush my temple.
“You’re going to tell me what’s going on with you,” he murmurs. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll wait. I’ll pull it out of you if I need to.”
My stomach twists.
I feel sick.
His hand slides behind me, splaying across my lower back like ownership branded in heat.
“And that phone?” His gaze flicks toward it, still glowing faintly on the vanity. “You’re going to open your notifications and tell me exactly who that was.”
My blood runs cold.
“Noah—”
“Now.”
His voice cracks like a whip.
I reach for the phone with trembling fingers.
I know what’s there.
What can’t be opened.
What cannot be seen by him.
But I also know something else:
Noah doesn’t ask twice.
I unlock the screen.
The notification is still pinned at the top:
1 New Voicemail
Unknown Number
Noah’s breath touches the side of my face.
“Play it.”
My vision blurs.
“I—I can’t.”
His fingers dig into my hip.
“Scarlett,” he says softly, “who the fuck called you?”
My heart hammers.
Kai’s last words slam into my skull with brutal force:
I’m not knocking next time.
I swallow hard.
I can’t tell Noah the truth.
I can’t let him hear the voicemail.
I can’t survive the explosion that would follow.
So I do the only thing I can think of— I lie.
“It was a scam number,” I whisper. “Probably one of those automatic voicemails. Spam.”
Noah doesn’t move.
Doesn’t breathe.
Doesn’t buy it.
“Let me hear it.”
Panic slams into my chest.
“It was deleted.”
By who?
Not me.
Kai.
I realise it too late—the voicemail is gone.
Wiped.
Removed.
Noah sees my shock.
His eyes sharpen, suspicion slicing through his careful facade.
“Deleted,” he repeats slowly.
“You’re telling me it deleted itself?”
My breath trembles.
“I—maybe. I don’t know. The phone glitched, or—”
Noah steps back, just barely, but the shift feels like the floor dropping out under me.
He studies me the way a surgeon studies an open body—no emotion, only assessment.
“You’re lying to me.”
I shake my head.
“No, I’m not—”
“You are.”
His voice is flat.
Cold.
Deadly calm.
“And I will find out why.”
He turns from me, smooth and controlled, adjusting his cufflinks like he didn’t just threaten to peel my secrets out one by one.
“I’m going to the office,” he says without looking at me. “When I get back tonight, we’re going to talk properly.”
Fear squeezes my lungs.
He pauses at the doorway.
Doesn’t turn.
Just stands still, shoulders squared, the polished silhouette of a man who believes he owns every inch of the house he walks through — including the woman he’s talking to.
“And Scarlett?”
My heart stutters.
His voice is quiet.
Too quiet.
“If someone is trying to get between us…”
A beat.
The air tightens.
“…I will take care of it.”
A shiver slices through me.
Not from him leaving.
From the door closing behind him.
And the terrifying realisation that settles in my bones the second the house falls silent again:
He didn’t believe me.
Not for a second.
Noah is suspicious.
Kai is watching.
And I am trapped between two men who do not lose.