"AHHH!!!" A scream tore through the room and dragged Annette back to the present.
She jerked her head up and saw her father's face, eyes wide and bloodshot with agony.
Her father, a man who could endure anything, was screaming like this.
She had never once heard him make such a sound.
For as long as she could remember, he had been the mountain in her mind that would never fall.
No matter the trouble, he always smiled and said, "It's fine, Dad's here."
Even after losing hundreds of millions in a deal, he would only sit alone in his study through the night, then walk out the next morning bright and steady as ever.
She had believed he would never fall.
But now he was strapped to that iron chair, drenched in blood, wailing like a slaughtered animal.
"Dad!!!"
Annette felt her heart breaking.
She broke completely and dropped to her knees in front of Nathan.
"Nathan! I'm begging you! Please!" She slammed her forehead to the floor, again and again. "Please, let my father go. I didn't kidnap Mila, I swear I didn't!"
She kept kowtowing, and before long her forehead split open.
Nathan sat on the sofa, watching her grovel into the dust, something dark and unreadable in his eyes. He didn't move.
Then his phone rang.
He frowned and answered. Naomi's voice came through. "Nathan, Mila's been found! She's at the hospital, a little shaken up. Come see her, quick!"
His face eased. "All right. I'm on my way."
And with that he simply left, his bodyguards with him.
Leaving Annette and her father exactly where they were.
The door closed.
Annette crawled to her father's side on her hands and knees.
"Dad, Dad, hold on! I'll get you out of here, I'll take you to the hospital..."
Her tears fell one by one onto the back of Oliver's blood-streaked hand.
Oliver forced his eyelids open. "Annie, stop fussing over me."
"Dad's not going to make it. Go. Go now."
"Dad got it wrong." His voice grew fainter, like a candle guttering in the wind. "I misjudged him... I'm sorry, Annie..."
Annette couldn't stop crying.
Her heart felt like a great hole had been torn through it, the wind howling in.
"Annie." Oliver gathered the last of his strength and closed his hand around hers. "Go now. Go to France. Go far away... and never come back."
His gaze was beginning to drift.
"Promise Dad... live well..."
Annette opened her mouth, wanting to say something.
But Oliver's hand went slack in her palm.
"Dad? Dad!!!"
Annette wept until the world went dark around her.
She had no idea how long she cried before she staggered to her feet.
She had to go, now. She couldn't let Nathan catch her again.
"Dad, wait for me."
Her tears had run dry, her voice gone hoarse, and she made her promise to her father's cooling body word by word.
"Once I'm settled, I'll come back for you. I won't leave you here alone."
Annette rushed to the airport that night and bought a seat on the last flight to France.
Just before takeoff, a text came in from Nathan.
"I'm sorry. I looked into it. A business rival was stirring up trouble. Dad didn't kidnap Mila."
"Wait for me. I'm sending someone to take Dad to the hospital right now. Annie, I'll make it up to you."
She read it twice.
The first time, it struck her as absurd.
The second time, it struck her as laughable.
Her tears were gone, her eyes dry and raw.
Just a few hours ago, he had sat on that sofa and watched the man he called "Dad" have his fingers broken one by one, and felt nothing.
Now he'd looked into it, and a weightless little "I'm sorry" was supposed to smooth all of this over?
He'd make it up to her. How, exactly?
Give her father's life back? Hand Butler Group back?
She didn't answer either message. She blocked him outright.
She wiped the last photo of the two of them from her album, and the plane lifted off.
The city behind her, that man, those absurd seven years of marriage, all of it left below in the clouds at thirty thousand feet.
Everything in New York was over.
Life had to go on. And Annette Butler owed it to herself, for once, to live for her own sake.
