Chapter 29
Alexander
That Same Morning
She hasn’t looked me in the eye in three days. She hasn’t said my name in four. The last thing I heard from her lips was “Of course, sir,” before she turned away—before she let the door close between us like her heart had already followed.
Grace stood on my arm. Evelyn stood on the edge of breaking.
And I stood right in the middle, letting both destroy me.
Evelyn isn’t angry. She isn’t cold. She isn’t dramatic.
She’s vanishing. Quietly. Methodically. Like she’s preparing to erase every trace of me before I have the chance to hurt her again. And I can’t stop her.
Every time she walks past my office, I feel the precise, deliberate way she keeps her head down, the way she moves like a shadow that refuses to cast itself.
The way she slips papers onto my desk without a word, without breath, without looking at the man who memorized the sound she makes when she first wakes up.
I want to grab her wrist. I want to pull her into this office and lock the door.
I want to tell her everything. That Grace is a lie; I’m entertaining to keep Evelyn safe.
That Grace is a threat. That the past is not a lover—it’s a loaded gun.
And I’m holding the barrel away from her as long as I can.
But if Grace suspects anything—if she sees Evelyn’s name flicker across my face—if she realizes the one thing she can use to hurt me—This whole thing goes up in flames.
So, I say nothing. I sit behind this desk like a king in a glass castle, signing documents, taking calls, pretending every piece of my life isn’t cracking under the weight of one woman’s absence.
I watch Evelyn through the tinted office window. Her shoulders are tighter. Her smile—gone. Her footsteps are softer, like she’s trying to disappear into the carpet. And every day, I feel myself losing her in real time.
She doesn’t knock anymore. She doesn’t linger when she brings reports. She doesn’t hum to herself when she thinks no one’s listening. The girl who once let me taste syrup from her fingertips now won’t even meet my eyes. And the worst part?
She thinks it’s because of Grace. She thinks I chose the polished woman with the perfect lips and catastrophic past. She thinks I traded her softness for poison, her warmth for history.
She thinks she was na?ve to believe a man like me could want her at all.
And that—that is what’s killing me. Evelyn, with her secondhand shoes and tiny apartment and off-key singing, is the only real thing I’ve touched in years.
When she slips down the hallway again, head lowered, holding a stack of files like armor, I stand without thinking.
I move toward the door. Hand on the handle.
Heart in my throat. I’m one second away from breaking the rules I set for myself.
From choosing her in the open. From damnation or salvation or both.
But then Grace’s voice floats from behind me, syrup-sweet and venomous: “Alex, sweetheart, we need to talk.” And I freeze.
My hand falls from the handle. My jaw locks. My breath turns to ash. I let Evelyn walk away again. Because until I know how to kill Grace’s threat, I can’t protect the one person I’d burn the world for. But God—if Evelyn looks at me like I’m a stranger one more time—I don’t think I’ll survive it.