That night, back in our bedroom, the air was thick with unspoken tension.
Xander was pacing. He had finally checked his phone, and whatever Ria had sent him had clearly put him in a foul mood. But he couldn’t show it. Not to me. Not tonight.
He needed me to be pliable. He needed me pregnant.
He walked over to where I was sitting at the vanity, brushing my hair.
“Lyanna,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky murmur. He placed his hands on my shoulders. He leaned down, kissing the curve of my neck.
“I really am sorry about today,” he whispered. “Let me make it up to you. Let’s… let’s start trying. Right now.”
His hands slid down my arms. My skin crawled.
I stood up abruptly, breaking his hold.
“I’m tired, Xander,” I said, walking toward the bed and pulling the duvet up to my chin. “The doctor said I need rest. The dengue… I’m still weak.”
Xander’s jaw tightened. I saw the flash of anger in his eyes—the annoyance of a man denied what he felt he was owed.
“Fine,” he snapped.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply.
“Well, okay. I will wait. You rest.”
He grabbed his phone from the nightstand.
“I’m going to the study. I have some… emails to catch up on.”
“Okay,” I murmured, closing my eyes.
I waited until I heard the door click shut. I waited until I heard his footsteps fade down the hallway. I knew he wasn’t going to the study. He was going to call her. Or worse, he was going to leave to see her.
I opened my eyes.
I reached for the burner phone I had hidden inside my pillowcase.
I dialed a number I had saved years ago, just in case.
“Hello?” A deep, gravelly voice answered.
“It’s Lyanna,” I whispered. “I need a favor. A big one.”
It was the family’s head butler. The man who had raised me more than my own parents had. The man who saw everything.
“Anything, Miss Lyanna.”
“Follow him,” I said, my voice turning to steel. “He’s leaving the house. I want you to follow him. Record everything. Take photos. Audio. Video. I want to know where he goes, who he sees, and what he says.”
“Consider it done.”
I hung up.
I lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling.
I wasn’t just leaving him.
I was going to ruin him.
The next morning, the sun streamed through the sheer curtains, mocking the gloom in my heart. Xander was gone. His side of the bed was cold, the sheets barely disturbed. He hadn’t come back to sleep.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my burner phone pressed to my ear.
“I want it done quietly,” I said, my voice low. “Discreetly. I don’t want a single whisper of this to reach the press or the family until I am gone.”
On the other end of the line was Arthur, the family lawyer. He had served the Millers and the Vancouvers for forty years. He knew where all the bodies were buried.
“Lyanna,” Arthur sighed, the sound crackling with static. “Are you absolutely sure about this? A divorce? It’s… extreme. I’m pretty sure your grandfather and his grandfather will not agree. You know the merger depends on this union. You’ve always been the power couple.”
Power couple.
The phrase tasted like ash in my mouth.
My mind drifted back.
I was twelve years old. Standing in the grand library, my patent leather shoes pinching my toes.
“This is Xander,” my grandfather had said, pushing me toward a boy with messy hair and an arrogant smirk. “He is going to be your husband one day.”
I had hated him instantly. He had pulled my pigtails and called me a doll.
I didn’t want him. I wanted… someone else.
I remembered a boy with gentle eyes and calloused hands. A boy who taught me how to skip stones on the lake. A boy I had to reject because my grandfather said he wasn’t “suitable.” He wasn’t an heir. He was nothing.
I had cried for weeks. But eventually, I had dried my tears. I had looked at Xander, the playboy prince, and thought, I can fix him. I can make this work.
I thought I could tame the storm.
I was so stupid.
“Lyanna?” Arthur’s voice snapped me back to the present. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I said. The memory faded, replaced by the cold, hard reality of my empty bedroom. “And I don’t care about the merger, Arthur. I don’t care about the grandfathers. I regret ever listening to them.”
I took a deep breath.
“Process it. I just sent you the proof of the affair. The photos. The audio recordings from last night. It’s all there. That should make the infidelity clause in the prenup enforceable. Everything is void.”
There was a long silence on the other end. The sound of a man realizing the empire was about to crumble.
“I see,” Arthur said finally, his tone professional. “If the evidence is as substantial as you say… then yes. We can proceed.”
“Good,” I said. “Send the papers to me in four days. Not a day sooner. Not a day later.”
“Understood.”
I hung up.
My hands were trembling. Not from fear, but from adrenaline. It was happening. The wheels were in motion.
I looked at the phone in my hand. There was one more call to make.
One number I had never deleted. One number I had memorized by heart, even though I hadn’t dialed it in ten years.
My thumb hovered over the keypad.
If I did this, there was really no turning back. If I did this, I was burning the bridge and the entire kingdom along with it.
I pressed call.
It rang once. Twice.
“Hello?”
The voice was deeper than I remembered. rougher. But it still had that same gentle cadence that used to calm my storms.
“Van?” I whispered.
Silence.
“Lyanna?” he breathed. Disbelief colored his tone. “Is that… is that you?”
Tears pricked my eyes. Just hearing his voice broke something inside me that I didn’t know was still holding on.
“It’s me,” I said, my voice cracking.
“Are you okay? Why are you calling? Is everything—”
“Do you still love me?” I interrupted.
The question hung in the air, heavy and desperate.
Whatever he was doing on the other side of the world, whatever life he had built, I needed to know. I needed to know if the boy who skipped stones still existed.
There was a pause. A pause that lasted an eternity.
“You know I do,” Van said softly. “I never stopped. Not for a single day.”
A sob escaped my throat.
“Then…” I took a shaky breath, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Can you pick me up? In five days? And… marry me?”
