The morning I was supposed to submit my formal withdrawal to the Commission, an unread email on my laptop made me stop cold.
For a second, I only stared at the sender’s name, my pulse suddenly uneven.
Lai Halloway.
Hope hit first.
Fear followed right behind it.
I opened the message with shaking fingers.
It was short, but it landed like a bullet.
Lai: I am. But who told you? And more importantly… would you even believe me, Ica?
My breath caught.
Ica.
My real name. The name I had been born with. The name buried with my family the night everything was taken from me. No one had called me that in years.
My chest tightened painfully.
Could it really be him?
Could Damian—my brother, the one I had mourned for half my life—still be alive?
I sat frozen in front of the screen, staring at the words as doubt and longing tore through me at the same time. What if this was a setup? In our world, weakness was currency, and grief was one of the easiest things to weaponize.
Family had always been the wound I kept covered.
Now someone was pressing directly against it.
I swallowed hard and typed back.
Vivica: Then prove it.
What followed was an hour of messages that left me unable to think straight.
I asked careful questions, the kind only one person in this world should have been able to answer. Lai responded without hesitation. Dates. Places. Childhood details no outsider could have known. Fragments of a life that had burned down long ago, handed back to me piece by piece.
By the end of it, I could barely breathe.
Then another message came through.
A phone number.
Lai: Call me. This is easier said out loud.
I stared at it for several seconds before finally pressing dial.
The second I heard his voice, something inside me cracked.
“Vivica?” he said.
His tone was low and steady, but there was warmth in it—real warmth—and it shattered what little composure I had left.
“Lai…” I whispered, my throat tightening as tears rushed to my eyes. “Tell me the truth. Is it really you?”
“It’s me,” he said quietly. “And I know that isn’t enough yet, so I’ll prove whatever you need me to prove. I should have found you sooner. I know that.”
I closed my eyes, gripping the phone tighter.
My voice came out unsteady. “Then where were you? Why didn’t you come back?”
There was a pause on the line.
Then, more heavily, “It’s a long story. One I’ll tell you. But right now what matters is this—I’m out, and I can get to you. Tell me honestly, are you safe?”
The question split right through me.
He still knew how to hear what I wasn’t saying.
And just like that, everything I had been holding in spilled over.
“I need to leave,” I choked out. “Please… get me out of here.”
His answer came without delay.
“All right. Send me where you are. I’ll have a car to you immediately.”
I wiped at my face. “Where would I even go?”
“To Hollow Point,” he said. “It’s secure. Off the map unless you already know how to find it. You’ll be safe there.”
“Hollow Point?” I repeated, thrown by the unfamiliar name.
“You don’t need the whole story yet,” he said. “You just need to trust me long enough to get out.”
I pressed my lips together.
For the first time in years, trusting someone didn’t feel like surrender.
It felt like survival.
---
That evening, after formally delivering my withdrawal to the Commission, I returned to the Dacre estate one last time.
The meeting had been brief, efficient, and exhausting in a way no one in that room could have understood. By the time I reached my suite, I felt hollowed out.
I packed lightly.
Only what mattered.
Only what was mine.
When I reached the drawer where I’d kept the letters I once wrote Nikolai, my hands went still.
There were dozens of them. Pages filled with devotion, patience, faith, apologies I never should have made, and love he had never truly earned. I had written them during long nights, during fights, during absences, during those years when I still believed loyalty could fix what neglect had broken.
I gathered every one.
Then I carried them outside.
One by one, I fed them to the fire.
The edges curled first. Then the ink darkened, blurred, and disappeared. Sheet after sheet turned to ash until there was nothing left of that version of me except smoke rising into the evening air.
I stood there until the last page was gone.
That was my goodbye.
---
By the time Nikolai returned to the estate, the silence hit him before anything else did.
The house was too still.
Too empty.
He stepped inside and loosened his tie, already frowning.
“Vivica,” he called out, his voice carrying through the halls. “I’m home.”
Nothing answered him.
His pace quickened.
He checked one room, then another, irritation giving way to something sharper with every unanswered call. By the time he reached the back of the house, that unease had become something close to panic.
That was when he saw the ashes.
A blackened pile in the yard.
Burned paper. Half-destroyed envelopes. The remains of something deliberate.
He crouched, sifting through the debris until he found a piece of paper that hadn’t been fully consumed. The handwriting was unmistakable.
Mine.
The blood drained from his face.
He straightened abruptly and headed back inside.
“Where is she?” he barked at the first staff member he saw. “Where the hell is my wife?”
The poor woman flinched. “I—I don’t know, sir. She was here earlier, but—”
He didn’t wait for the rest.
He went upstairs, cutting through the corridor toward our room, and the moment he saw the open closet and missing luggage, whatever remained of his denial collapsed.
He turned and strode to his office.
There, in the center of his desk, was a note.
Placed neatly.
Waiting for him.
He picked it up with unsteady hands and read the line written across it.
For the husband who never deserved me. Happy freedom day.
His grip tightened around the paper.
For a moment, he just stood there, staring at the words as if they might change.
They didn’t.
Panic rose fast and vicious.
He could feel it then—not some mystical bond, but the brutal finality of absence. The unmistakable understanding that I had not stormed off, had not retreated for the night, had not left to cool down.
I was gone.
Truly gone.
And for the first time since I had become part of his life, Nikolai Dacre realized I had chosen to leave without asking for permission.
He reached for his phone immediately, dialing my number with trembling hands.
The second it rang, he spoke into the silence like a man already unraveling.
“Vivica,” he said hoarsely. “Why are you doing this?”
