Chapter 24 FALL IN
I wasn’t asleep, even though the clock on the wall glared 3:07 a.m. at me like a threat. Maybe I'm getting paranoid.
Sleep had become a stranger since the threat arrived at our door. Since Julian told me to “stay inside” like I was a pet he was worried would run into traffic. Since Victoria Thorne spent the entire evening reminding me I was useless, talentless, and—her favorite word—decorative.
So I was awake when I heard the front door open.
The sound was wrong.
Not his usual confident, controlled stride. More like a stumble instead of footsteps, like someone trying too hard not to show weakness even to the empty hallway.
I sat up immediately.
“Julian?” My voice carried.
No answer.
My chest tightened. I slid out of bed and walked toward the hall. The closer I got, the stronger the scent of something metallic became.
Blood.
And then he appeared.
Julian stepped into the soft light of the corridor, and for the first time since I had married him— since he had dragged me into his world of fancy cruelty— I saw him injured.
A bruise darkened his cheekbone, blooming like an ugly sunset. His shirt was torn at the shoulder. There was a smear of dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
He stopped when he saw me.
For a moment, he just stared… as if recalculating everything he wanted to say, everything he didn't want me to know.
I swallowed hard. “What happened to you?”
“Go back to bed,” he said, his voice low and flat.
“No.” I stepped closer. “Did someone attack you?”
He didn’t respond. He tried to brush past me toward the bedroom, but something inside me snapped…
Maybe it was the picture and bullet that arrived with my name on it.
Maybe it was Victoria calling me worthless for an hour straight.
Maybe it was just the look on Julian’s face, the cold dismissal as if my worry was an inconvenience.
But I snapped.
“Are you serious right now?” I said, my voice rising. “I get that I’m your property, but I at least deserve to know why people want to kill me. I deserve to know whatever the hell is going on.”
He stopped walking.
I kept going; anger, fear, desperation all mixing into one uncontrollable outburst.
“I’m getting a literal death threat and you come home injured—like this.” My breath shook. “What’s next? You’re going to be found dead? What do you think would happen to me if you die? Huh?”
His shoulders tensed.
“I don’t even have a life anymore!” My voice cracked. “My life is now within yours. Everything I do, every place I go, every word I say—you control all of it. So you can’t be reckless, Julian. What about me? What about what happens to me?”
He still didn’t look at me.
I stepped closer. “Julian. What the hell is going on?”
Slowly, very slowly, he turned to face me.
His eyes were hollow, like something inside him was unraveling thread by thread.
And then he said, in a voice that wasn’t loud or angry but terrifying in its quietness:
“Well, your shitty father isn’t dead. And it's good news for me because he deserves worse than a simple quiet death.”
My heart stopped.
He continued, each word landing like a hammer:
“But now there's a competition on who'd get their hands on the bastard first. And his enemies are trying to get to him through you.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Julian didn’t care.
“And now I have to protect you from them.” He exhaled, frustrated. “Because they’re too dull to realize they can’t get to your father through you.”
I whispered, “What… what are you talking about? My father is dead.”
“No,” he snapped. “He’s alive. I assure you he’s very alive.”
“But—”
“He doesn’t care about you, Eli.”
That shut me up.
Completely.
Julian kept going, his tone icy, precise, cruel… but not toward me. Toward the memory of someone else.
“I tried to get to him using you,” he said bitterly. “I literally married you.”
The world swayed.
Married me…
To get to my father?
He continued like he was confessing to a crime he regretted but couldn’t undo:
“But he doesn’t care if I kill you.”
My breath hitched.
“He won’t come out of hiding to save his son,” Julian said, pacing a step away. “So now I have to be the one saving you, because your father won’t save you from me.”
Silence.
Dead, suffocating silence.
He turned and walked toward the staircase.
I stood frozen, trembling.
“What—what are you saying…?” My voice was barely a whisper. “Who do you think my father is?”
Julian didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn his head. He just walked away like he hadn’t just torn my entire life apart with two minutes of words.
“Julian!” I called after him, voice cracking. “You’re mistaken. You have to be. My father is dead. I was at the— I saw—”
He disappeared around the corner.
He didn’t care.
Or maybe he cared too much, and that terrified him.
I leaned against the wall, knees threatening to give out.
My father is dead.
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
But Julian believed otherwise.
Or he knew otherwise.
And the worst part?
He wasn’t confused. He didn’t sound uncertain or speculative.
He spoke like a man stating a fact.
A fact he’d known for a long time.
The hallway felt colder. The air is thinner. My hands were shaking so badly I had to curl them into fists.
If Julian wasn’t lying—
If he wasn’t mistaken—
If he hadn’t confused me with someone else—
Then everything I believed about my childhood…
my mother…
my father’s death…
was a story built on sand.
And Julian Thorne:
my captor, husband, enemy, and supposed protector…
just told me the tide was coming.
I slid down the wall and pressed a hand over my mouth to stop the sob that clawed up my throat.
I didn’t know what was going on anymore. My cluelessness hurts as much as it should.
But one thing was certain:
Whatever I had gotten myself into…
I wasn’t getting out.
Not alive.