Chapter 51

Chapter 51
Vance's POV

I hadn’t heard from Mona in days. The silence had been suffocating. Since the night she left the pub with that look in her eyes, everything had gone cold. Every call I made to her voicemail, every text went unanswered. It wasn’t like her to shut me out like this. She had been distant before, but this—this was something different.

It was like she had slipped into another world, leaving me stranded in the wake of her absence. I couldn’t figure it out. Something had changed, and it was gnawing at me, distracting me. The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became. I needed to see her, to know what was going on. To make sense of whatever had crawled under her skin.

I decided to go to her mansion, to confront her face-to-face. The drive was long, my mind racing with all the questions I wanted to ask, but it didn’t matter. I needed answers, even if they would tear apart whatever fragile connection we still had.

Pulling up to the iron gates, I felt a twist of unease in my stomach. I hadn’t been here in a while. The place was more like a fortress than a home, the massive stone walls casting long shadows over the driveway. The mansion loomed in front of me, dark and foreboding, like a monument to something lost. Something broken.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Mona’s number, my finger hovering over the call button. I hadn’t spoken to her in days, hadn’t heard her voice, and now, just the thought of it made my heart race a little faster. The phone rang a few times before she picked up, her voice a ghost of the woman I had known.

“Vance?” Mona's voice was tight, almost distant.

I clenched my jaw, the frustration slipping through my guard. “Yeah. It’s me. I’m at your gate.” I paused, hearing her sharp intake of breath on the other end. I could practically feel the hesitation, the uncertainty radiating through the line.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her tone wary but edged with something I couldn’t quite place.

“I need to see you, Mona. I haven’t heard from you in days. What the hell happened? Why are you shutting me out?”

Silence. Then, finally, she sighed, long and drawn out, before speaking again. “I didn’t think you’d show up.” Her voice softened, but there was still a lingering coldness. “Come in, then. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Her words were clipped, but it was an invitation nonetheless. I could hear the resignation in her tone, and it made something heavy settle in my chest. Something was wrong. Something I couldn’t understand.

“Alright. I’m coming in.”

I ended the call and pushed open the car door, stepping out into the cool evening air. The gates creaked as they slowly parted, giving me entry into the manicured grounds. I walked up the long path toward the mansion, the gravel crunching under my boots with each step. The place had never felt so cold, so distant.

I reached the front door and rang the bell, the sound echoing in the empty space. A few moments later, the door creaked open. Mona stood in front of me, her eyes tired but guarded, like she had been waiting for this moment but didn’t know what to expect.

She was wearing something simple—dark jeans and a loose shirt, but there was something about her, some unspoken distance in the way she stood, the way she looked at me. She wasn’t the Mona I knew. The Mona I knew would have been angry or sad or… something. But this version of her? She was unreadable.

I didn’t know what to say first.

“Mona,” I said, my voice rough, fighting the tightness in my throat. “I—”

Before I could finish, she stepped back, motioning for me to enter. “Come in, Vance. I’m sure you didn’t come all this way just to stand outside.”

I followed her into the foyer, the grand chandelier above casting flickering shadows across the marble floors. The house was eerily quiet, almost too quiet, like something was lurking beneath the surface. Something felt off.

“Mona, what’s going on?” I asked, trying to read her, but she was a closed book. She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyes briefly softening before she turned away, leading me deeper into the mansion.

“Let’s just sit down first, okay? I don’t want to talk in the hallway.”

I followed her into the living room, where she gestured for me to sit. I took a seat on the couch, my hands gripping the armrests, trying to fight the feeling that something was wrong. Mona perched on the edge of an armchair opposite me, her posture stiff and guarded.

“Are you going to tell me what’s been going on?” I asked, unable to mask the impatience in my voice.

Mona didn’t answer immediately. She stared at her hands, her fingers twitching slightly, as though unsure of how to hold herself. Finally, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I just... I don’t know, Vance. Everything’s been so messed up lately. I thought I could handle it, but now I’m just... I’m so tired of pretending.” She looked up at me then, her eyes dark and tired. “I needed some space.”

My heart clenched. “Space? Mona, you’ve been shutting me out for days. You didn’t even bother to answer me. What’s going on?”

She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I leaned forward, my frustration flaring. “Try me.”

Before she could respond, the sound of the door opening and closing caught our attention.

Flynn stepped into the room, her presence like a gust of wind cutting through the air. I froze, not expecting her at all. I had never seen her before—not up close, anyway—and the sight of her in the flesh was enough to steal the words from my mouth.

She was stunning, a perfect contrast to Mona’s ice-cold beauty. Flynn was everything Mona wasn’t—warm, inviting, with a fire in her eyes that commanded attention. She was tall, her dark hair falling in waves around her face, her posture strong but relaxed.

I didn’t know why, but the instant my eyes landed on her, there was a shift. An electric pull, an attraction that I couldn’t explain. It was as if everything else in the room had faded, and she was the only person in the world who mattered in that moment.

Flynn glanced at me briefly, her expression unreadable, before turning her attention to Mona. “Is everything okay?” she asked, her voice low but steady.

Mona didn’t answer right away. She seemed to hesitate, and for a moment, the two of them just looked at each other—like they were sharing some unspoken conversation that I wasn’t part of.

I felt a knot form in my stomach as I sat there, a part of me wondering if this was why Mona had been distant, why she had shut me out. And now, seeing Flynn standing there, something inside me told me this wasn’t just about me and Mona anymore. This was bigger.

Flynn’s eyes briefly flicked back to me, and for the first time, I saw something else in them—a flicker of recognition, something that I didn’t understand, but it was enough to make my pulse race.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” she said, breaking the tension before I could respond. Without waiting for an invitation, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving me and Mona alone in the silence that followed.