Chapter 114 CHAPTER 114
Late night alone
Lady Bianca sat at the edge of the bed, her robe hanging off one shoulder, the room around her a blur of cold, expensive quiet. The curtains were drawn halfway, letting in only a sliver of morning light that cut across the marble floor like a wound. Her eyes were red, her mascara streaked down her cheeks.
The television in front of her was muted, showing the same footage over and over — black smoke billowing from what was once her boutique. Firefighters, ash, chaos.
She pressed the remote to her chest and turned away.
Her boutique. Her pride. Everything she’d built with her hands, her taste, her name. Gone.
The phone rang once more on the bed beside her, the sixth time she had called Marcus in less than an hour.
She waited, her hand trembling slightly as she lifted it to her ear. It rang. And rang.
Then the screen flashed: Call ended.
Her throat tightened.
Bianca wiped her tears roughly with the back of her hand and threw the phone down, her voice breaking into the stillness.
“Answer me, Marcus! Just—” Her voice cracked. “Just answer me please! I need someone to talk to.”
The echo of her cry filled the room, bouncing off the high ceiling and the mirrored walls.
She rose unsteadily and walked to the window.
Her reflection stared back at her in the glass: the perfect face she had spent years maintaining, red eyes, trembling lips, a woman cracking behind the polish.
She pressed her forehead to the cold glass and whispered,
“Why now? Why me?”
The phone buzzed again. Hope flickered for a second. She snatched it up, a new message from Marcus.
(Can’t talk right now. In a meeting. After all, you listen to no one.)
That was all.
No I’m sorry.
No Are you okay?
No I’ll fix this and find out what happened.
Her chest rose and fell unevenly.
She typed back furiously, fingers shaking.
My boutique is gone, Marcus. Everything is gone. You don’t even care?
She stared at the message, waiting for the three little dots that never came.
When nothing appeared, she hurled the phone onto the bed again, the impact making the remote and a few papers scatter.
She sank to the carpet, hugging her knees. The robe slipped down further, her bare shoulder glinting under the weak light. Her sobs came quietly now, not the loud kind, but the kind that comes when the fight in you has already died.
She stayed like that for a long while, until her breathing slowed and her tears dried into silence.
Across the hallway, the door to another hotel room was ajar.
Tessa lay curled on her side on the large white bed, the sheets tangled around her legs. She had fallen asleep with her clothes still on, a soft hoodie, dark jeans, her hair spilling over the pillow in disarray. The TV flickered silently across her face, showing some late night rerun no one was watching.
The door creaked softly as it opened wider. Ares stepped in. He didn’t turn on the lights.
He moved slowly, almost noiselessly, until the door clicked shut behind him. He stood for a moment, his silhouette caught against the pale rectangle of light spilling from the corridor.
Then he walked closer.
Tessa stirred slightly, her lips parting as if she wanted to speak, but no words came. She didn’t wake.
Ares stood at the foot of the bed, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. He watched her in silence, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he exhaled through his nose.
He had barely slept.
He moved to the chair beside the bed and sat down, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. The faint blue light from the television painted his face in restless shadows.
He rubbed his palm over his mouth and let his eyes close for a moment.
He could still hear his mother crying in the other room, muffled through the walls.
He didn’t need to ask what happened. He already knew. The fire wasn’t an accident, maybe it was Ethan.
He opened his eyes again, looking at Tessa. There was a small scar near her temple, barely visible under her hair. He had seen it before but never asked about it.
She was tougher than she looked. He knew that.
But even the toughest people broke when the world turned this quiet before a storm.
He leaned back in the chair, the leather creaking softly under his weight.
Tessa shifted in her sleep, her hand brushing against the sheet as if reaching for something.
Ares’s chest tightened.
He thought of everything that had happened and how it always ended like this. In silence. In waiting.
His phone vibrated once in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. One new message.
Her breathing had steadied again, slow and rhythmic. The glow from the TV made her look calm.
Ares leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His voice was low, barely above a whisper.
“I don’t know how to fix this anymore.”
The words hung in the room, swallowed by the hum of the air conditioner.
He sat like that for a while, listening to her breathe, listening to the city outside, the distant horns, the faint wail of a siren far away.
He thought about Lady Bianca again, her screams earlier, her broken voice when she begged him to find out who did it.