Chapter 54 Like A Broken Record

Chapter 54 Like A Broken Record
I felt my heartbeat in the hinges of my jaw, in the center of my throat, in every trembling pulse beneath my skin. It was like the world narrowed itself to the thin line of Nina’s smirk. Everything else—the breeze, the murmured voices of the corporate men behind us, even the weight of the foreclosure papers in my hands—blurred into a fog around her words.

“What’s your condition?”
I asked because she was going to say it anyway. I asked because not knowing was somehow worse than the truth.
I asked because I needed an anchor, even if that anchor was made of pure poison.

Nina stepped closer, so close that I could smell her perfume—something sharp and expensive and utterly out of place on my family’s dying front lawn. She plucked the tablet from my fingers as if reclaiming something that belonged solely to her power.

“Leave,” she said.

At first I genuinely thought she meant leave the conversation. Or leave the porch. Or leave this specific confrontation because I was no longer worth her time.

But she just stood there, expression stone, voice unshaken.

I blinked. “What?” It slipped out of me—bewildered, hollow, and disbelieving.

“Disappear,” she clarified, the word rolling off her tongue with a kind of sickening grace. “And never return. If not…”
Her smile stretched, small but vicious.
“I’d personally upload your sex video with Kevin for the world to see.”

My entire body went cold.
Not chilled.
Not startled.
Just—cold.
The kind of cold that sinks straight to your bones and settles there like a permanent resident.

Nina lifted the tablet again, tapping the screen once.

And there it was.

The video.

The one I thought only Stephen possessed.
The one he had dangled over my head like a threat, a leash, a constant shadow.
The one that had controlled me for weeks.

The one that… wasn’t supposed to exist anywhere else.

My fingers spasmed around the foreclosure notice, almost crushing it as I stumbled back—not because she was moving toward me, but because everything inside me felt like it was collapsing inward.

I didn’t realize I was trembling until my knees threatened to give way.

How did she—
How did she get this?
How did it leave Stephen’s hands?
How did something that was supposed to be locked behind his threats end up with her?

My thoughts raced—faster than my breath, faster than my logic.
Did Stephen give it to her?
No. No, he wouldn’t. Not after everything he’s done, everything he’s insisted, despite all the ways he’s hurt me—
But then again…
What if he did?
What if he panicked?
What if he needed leverage?
What if…
What if I never really knew him at all?

My mind spiraled down that tunnel so fast I felt sick.

I watched Nina’s face, the satisfaction radiating off her like warmth from a fire—only her fire was built on the ruins of everything I thought I still had.

“Leave,” she repeated, like she was talking about something as simple as changing outfits. “And all of this—your father’s ruined company, the foreclosure, the scandal, the video—vanishes with you.”

She said it as though I was the problem, the cause, the rot beneath every cracked piece of my life.
Like all of this would magically heal if I disappeared.

But no matter how shaken I was, I wasn’t stupid.

This wasn’t about healing anything.
This wasn’t about restoring reputations or protecting legacies.

This was about removing me.

I took another step back, the gravel under my shoe crunching like brittle bones. My throat tightened, the sting of tears I refused to let fall burning behind my eyes.

“I…”
My voice didn’t even know where to go.
The words tangled up inside me, strangled by fear, anger, disbelief.

The video.
The foreclosure.
The company.
Kevin.
Stephen.
My father.
Everything.
Everyone.

The ground beneath my feet felt like it was tearing open, and somehow Nina was standing comfortably on solid earth.

I swallowed hard, the taste of panic sharp on my tongue.

I didn’t have an answer for her.
Not yet.
All I had was the smallest, most dangerous seed of suspicion blooming inside me:

Someone had handed her that video.
And whoever did…
did it with the full intent of destroying me.

So I stood there, frozen, as the last traces of Nina’s perfume drifted past me like smoke after an explosion. My mind couldn’t catch up with anything—my thoughts were a pile of scattered glass shards, and every time I reached for one, it sliced me.

I felt crippled, confused, and stupid.
All at once—like my entire world had folded in on itself so violently that I couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore.

I swallowed hard, or tried to, because my throat felt like it had closed off completely.

“H—how did you get that?”
My voice barely made it out. It sounded like a stranger’s voice, thin and shaking and raw.

But halfway through the question, I lost it.
I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Because I genuinely could not understand what in the hell was happening in my life anymore.

Stephen had the video.
And now Nina had it.
And she had no reason to hold back.
No reason to protect me.
No reason to spare Kevin either… which made everything so much worse.

If she was so hell-bent on destroying me, would she really ruin Kevin in the process too?
Even though he wasn’t her son?
Even though he was her nephew—still family?
Still someone she pretended to love in her cold, rigid, performative way?

The thought made my stomach twist.

“You should be smart enough to know that that doesn’t matter right now,” Nina said, her tone dripping with that sick superiority she thrived on. “What matters is that you disappear before I make your whole existence a nightmare.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
What could I even say?
What words existed for something like this?

Despite how dire the situation was—despite the foreclosure papers trembling in my grip, despite my father lying in a hospital bed, despite the video hanging over my life like a guillotine—my brain kept circling the same question over and over and over like a broken record:

Why should I be the one to disappear?

Why me?
Why was I suddenly the problem?
Why was I the rot she wanted to scrape away?

I hadn’t ruined the company.
I wasn’t the one involved in shady acquisitions.
I had done nothing but exist in the wrong place, love the wrong person, trust the wrong people.

Why was I the one being erased from my own life?

But Nina wasn’t done. Of course she wasn’t.

She wore that sly smile again—the kind that said everything was a game she’d already won.

“When you’re ready to give me a response,” she said, brushing imaginary dust off her designer sleeve, “meet me in my study.”

She stepped closer, her heels clicking with an irritating confidence.

“Just bear in mind that I’m the bigger person here,” she added with a mockingly gracious tilt of her head, “who’s only doing you a favor.”

It took every atom of strength in me not to flinch.

Then she walked past me—no, glided—heading toward the mansion like she owned every breath of air on the property. On her way in, she said something to the corporate men, words I couldn’t hear but could interpret easily from the way they straightened and nodded immediately.

She dismissed them.
Just like that.
With a flick of her intention, the foreclosure notices, the chaos, the looming disaster… temporarily vanished.

Which only meant she was capable of controlling all of it.
That she had been orchestrating half of it.
Maybe even all of it.

I watched as they left—their polished shoes tapping down the steps, their cars pulling away one by one—while Nina kept walking with her chin lifted like nothing in the world could ever touch her.

And maybe nothing could.
Maybe she really believed that.

I stood there long after she disappeared inside, the papers crushed in my stiff fingers, my puls e hammering so hard I could hear it in my ears. The air around me felt wrong—tilted, suffocating, like the whole mansion was leaning forward, waiting to see if I would break.