52. Stefan
STEFAN
The bottle was empty beside him and the sun was in his eyes and for one confused second Stefan didn’t know where he was—porch railing against his spine, damp wood under his hands, the taste of tequila gone sour in his mouth—and then he saw her villa across the grounds, windows dark, curtains drawn, same as when he’d closed his eyes, and the dread hit before the thought did.
Morning. He’d fallen asleep. It was morning and he’d fallen asleep.
He grabbed his phone and stared at the screen. An hour. He’d missed her by an hour.
Mierda.
He was moving before the thought finished—stumbling down the porch steps, bare feet hitting dew-damp grass, breaking into a run—and nearly collided with Lily on the path.
She was running too. Face pale, still in yesterday’s clothes, mascara smudged under her eyes.
“She’s not in her villa.” Lily was gasping, hands on her knees. “I went to check on her and she’s just—her bed’s made, her bag’s still there, and she’s just gone.” She held up her phone, hand shaking. “Your text—Erika is in danger, Martin—Stefan, what does that mean?”
“Martin.” He was already scanning the grounds. “Isabelle came to me last night—he knows about the switch, the studio’s behind him, she’s—Lily, she’s a loose end and I tried to warn her and she wouldn’t open the door—”
“One of the interns just told me Lena was at Erika’s villa before dawn. Call sheets for a private rehearsal.” Lily’s voice was shaking. “There is no private rehearsal scheduled. Nothing on the board. Nothing.”
They stared at each other.
“Where would he take her?” Stefan was already scanning the grounds—the trailers, the empty set stretching toward the water. “Not the soundstage. Somewhere with no crew, no cameras.”
“I don’t know. He could be anywhere on this island, there are a dozen locations we haven’t—”
Lily’s phone lit up in her hand. Not buzzing, screaming. Notification after notification, the screen scrolling faster than either of them could read.
She looked at it and the color left her face.
“Stefan.”
She turned the phone toward him.
GlamGram. Anneliese’s account. A livestream. The image was tilted, chaotic, a phone on the floor filming sideways. Cracked tiles. Rotting wood. And audio that hit him: Martin’s voice, and then Erika’s scream—ragged, desperate, unmistakable.
The viewer count was climbing. Thirty thousand. Forty. Fifty.
“The south beach.” The words came out of his mouth before he’d finished thinking about them—the rotting wood on the screen, the cracked tiles, the salt-grimed windows. “The abandoned bar. Martin was scouting it last week.”
“Go.” Lily grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise. “I’m calling security and Isabelle. Go.”
Stefan ran, and he heard Lily behind him on the phone—“Security, now, the south beach bar, Martin has Erika”—and then her phone rang and she caught up and shoved it into his hand without stopping, and Anneliese was on the other end with jet turbines screaming behind her: “Bradley’s pilot has us twenty minutes out and I am watching my sister get—”
Her voice cracked and dissolved, swallowed by the noise from the engine.
The bar was rising from the dunes ahead and Stefan ran with the phone pressed to his ear and sand kicking up behind his bare feet and he said “I can see it, I’m almost there” and Anneliese was saying “Stefan—Erika—please, please—” and he said “estoy llegando” and she said “then run faster” and he did.
Timber and rust. Boarded windows. Canvas flap shifting in the morning breeze. From outside, silent. From outside, nothing.d
Don’t think about it. Move.
He reached the entrance, grabbed the canvas, ripped it aside.
Sunlight slashed through the torn canvas behind him into the darkness, and he saw her.
Erika. On the floor. Face down on stained concrete, blonde hair fanned across the grime, her dress torn at the bodice and blood tracking from her temple dark against her skin, and she wasn’t moving, and her hands were curled into loose fists, and that was the thing that nearly took his legs out—not the blood, not the stillness, but the fists, because she'd been fighting when she went down and she was still fighting even now.
No. No, no, no. ?Dios mío, no ella! ?Por favor, no ella!
Martin was on the other side of the room—stumbling backward, shirt torn, eyes darting between Stefan and the phone where the red LIVE icon still pulsed. Stefan crossed the space in three strides. His fist connected with Martin’s jaw, sending him down hard.
He stood over him for one second. Martin on the floor, the phone glowing beside him, fifty thousand witnesses already watching. Stefan’s hands were shaking and his knuckles were split and Martin was already finished—not by him, by her—and he knew it.
He turned toward the sound of her breathing.
Security came through the entrance behind him—two guards, then three, then Isabelle in the doorway with her phone already pressed to her ear and her face like stone.
They hauled Martin to his feet and he sagged between them, crying, snot running down his chin, babbling about context and misunderstandings and calling his lawyer, and Stefan didn’t watch them drag him out.
He was already moving toward Erika, because Martin was nothing.
Martin was already over. She had finished it before Stefan ever walked through the door.
Isabelle didn’t look at Martin as they dragged him past her.
She looked at Stefan. Then at Erika on the floor.
Then she said something quiet into her phone—Stefan caught “Solokov” and “evidence” and “tonight,” and he understood that Isabelle had been waiting for this moment for eight years and she was not going to waste it.
He knelt beside Erika and saw the scratches on her arms and the blood at her temple sticky and swelling to purple and her dress torn and her hands still curled into those fists, and she’d been fighting, alone, in this room, while he slept on a porch fifty yards from her door.
He touched her cheek with shaking fingers and brushed the hair from her temple, careful around the wound, and pressed two fingers to her throat to feel her pulse and it was there, weak but there, and he held his fingers against it and counted the way she’d counted his on the yacht, the way she’d pressed her hand over his heart and said Promise?
, and he thought I’m counting. I’m here. I’m not leaving.
“Estoy aquí,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Her breathing was shallow but steady. She was alive and he was here and it wasn’t enough, would never be enough.
“Lo siento.” He whispered it to her closed eyes, to her curled fists, to the bloodstain on the concrete. “I should have been here. I’m sorry. Perdóname.”
Her fingers twitched against the concrete. Her breathing changed—less shallow, more present—and her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened, unfocused, staring at nothing, and then her gaze shifted and found his face.
“Stefan.” The way she said it—not surprised, not relieved, just his name laid flat between them.
“Estoy aquí.” His hand found hers. “You’re safe.”
Her fingers curled around his—weakly, barely there—and for one second she let him hold her hand and he could feel her pulse in her fingertips and she was alive and she was looking at him and he thought just this, just let me have this for one more second before she remembers because he could already see it happening, could see the fog clearing and the yacht and the statement and Alex and all of it flooding back into her eyes, and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold it off, couldn’t do anything but watch the warmth drain out of her face.
She pulled her hand free.
“Don’t touch me.” Flat. Not angry. Worse than angry.
“Erika—”
“Where’s Annie?” She tried to sit up, winced, and pressed a hand to her head. “Where’s Lily?”
“They’re coming. Anneliese is almost—”
She turned her face away from him and closed her eyes.
And he understood that she wasn’t going to say anything else, wasn’t going to tell him to leave or explain why or give him anything to push back against, she was just going to lie on a floor with blood on her face and not look at him, and that was worse than anything Martin could have done to him because at least Martin’s damage would heal.
Lily came through the entrance at a run—face white, hands already reaching.
She dropped beside Erika and her hands were on her, checking, gentle and efficient, the same hands that had handled every broken thing on every set she’d ever worked on.
“Let me see, chica. Don’t move. Let me see.
” Her fingers were careful at Erika’s temple, tilting her face toward the light, and Erika leaned into her without opening her eyes and said “Annie, I need Annie” and Lily said “She’s coming, she’s almost here, I promise. ”
Stefan stood. His legs were unsteady and his hands were shaking and Erika was leaning into Lily with her face turned away from him and every part of him wanted to go to her and every part of her was telling him not to. He stepped back. Not out. Back.
A golf cart skidded to a stop outside. Crutches on concrete. And a voice—sharp, ragged, cutting through everything else in the room:
“Where is she? Where’s my sister?”
Anneliese Morgan appeared in the doorway with her leg in a white cast and Bradley Smart behind her steadying her elbow, straight from the airstrip in yesterday’s clothes with mascara streaked down her cheeks, looking nothing like the polished star the world knew and everything like a woman who’d just watched her twin get attacked from thirty thousand feet and couldn’t get there fast enough.
Her eyes swept the room—the rotting walls, the overturned furniture, the security guards, Stefan standing alone with blood on his knuckles—and found Erika. Sitting up against Lily, face pale and bruised and streaked with tears.
Anneliese made a sound that didn't belong anywhere near a red carpet or a press junket something between a scream and a sob.
Her crutches clattered to the ground and she half-fell, half-lunged toward her sister, and Bradley caught her and helped her the last steps, and then she was on her knees beside Erika with trembling hands cupping her face and her forehead pressed to her twin’s forehead—a gesture so practiced, so instinctive, it could only belong to them.
“I’m here, Bean.” Her voice cracked. “Annie’s here. I’ve got you.”
And Erika broke.
Stefan watched her face crumple against Anneliese’s shoulder. He heard that sob—raw, wrecked, and bottomless. Her sobs tore through him worse than the sharp pain of his own knuckles. He couldn’t do anything about it.
He remembered her hand over his heart on the yacht, counting his heartbeat. He remembered Promise? in the dark. He remembered the weight of her against his chest when she fell asleep and how he’d stayed awake just to feel her breath. He would hear that sound for the rest of his life.
“Annie.” Her voice was muffled against Anneliese’s shoulder. Strangled. “I want to go home. Please. I want to go home.”
“I know, Bean.” Anneliese pressed her lips to Erika’s hair, tears streaming down both their faces. “I know. We’re going. I’m taking you home.”
Bradley’s voice cut through the room. “She’s not talking to anyone. We’re leaving. Now.”
Bradley helped Erika to her feet. She swayed, leaning heavily on him and Lily, and Anneliese retrieved her crutches and positioned herself on Erika’s other side, and the four of them moved toward the entrance—Erika in the center, held up by everyone except him.
Anneliese stopped at the doorway, turned, and found Stefan across the room, and her face did something he would never forget—the grief still there, the tears still wet on her cheeks, but her eyes going flat and hard and still.
“This is on you.”
She was right. Not about Martin, Martin was Martin’s fault.
But he’d had the warning and the time and the chance to get her out and instead he’d fallen asleep, and Anneliese was right, and he would carry those four words next to the two he’d whispered to an unconscious woman for as long as he lived.
Lily caught his eye from across the room. “Security found Lena. She confessed: Martin threatened her sister. Told her he’d destroy her career and her family if she didn’t cooperate.” Her voice was flat. “She’s been trying to protect Erika all along. The coffee. The office interruption. All of it.”
Erika held his gaze for one more second and then she turned and followed her sister into the morning light and the canvas fell shut behind them.
Stefan stood in the ruined bar. Blood drying on his hands.
The phone on the floor with its screen gone dark.
He could hear the golf cart starting outside and voices and the sound of people leaving and then there was nothing—just the waves through the walls and the rot-smell and the stain on the concrete where she’d been lying when he found her.
He sat on the damp floorboards where she’d lain, and put his head in his bloody hands, and let himself break.