Chapter 56 Like A Fair Deal

Chapter 56 Like A Fair Deal
I was halfway down the hallway—my chest still tight, my hands still shaking—when I heard someone call my name softly.

“Abby.”

Catherine’s voice.
I stopped, even though every instinct in me screamed to just keep walking and lock myself in my room until my brain stopped spiraling.

I turned, and she was standing there a few steps behind me, worry etched deeply across her face. She looked… smaller somehow. Or maybe I just felt too big—too heavy with everything twisting inside me.

“She’s a dangerous woman, Abby,” Catherine said quietly. “You don’t have to disappear like she proposed.”

And that was when it hit me.
She had heard.
Maybe not everything, but enough. Enough to know what I had agreed to.

I swallowed hard and shook my head, not wanting to relive that conversation or explain anything. “Where’s Stephen?” I asked instead. My voice sounded tired—paper thin.

Catherine blinked, surprised I wasn’t addressing the monster in the room, but she answered anyway.

“He dashed out minutes ago,” she said. “He said he needed to take care of something.”

Of course he did. Stephen was chaos stitched into a human body—always running toward something he shouldn’t or away from something he caused.

I nodded, though the movement felt mechanical. I tried to keep walking, but Catherine stepped closer.

“Abby… don’t do what she wants,” she urged, her voice trembling just a little. “Please.”

I let out a humorless breath, part snort, part disbelief, part exhaustion. “Then what do you propose I do?” I asked. “She’s willing to burn my family down if I don’t leave.”

The words tasted bitter. But they were true.
Kevin, my dad, the company—everything was standing on a cliff Nina was fully prepared to shove off.

Catherine’s expression tightened with something fragile… helplessness maybe. “But you’re not sure Nina will keep to her own end of the deal.”

Her voice fell softer. “She lies, Abby. She manipulates. She destroys when it’s convenient.”

My throat squeezed painfully, a single tear slipping out before I could stop it. I wiped it away with the heel of my hand as fast as I could, like I could erase the evidence of how pathetic I felt.

“I know,” I whispered. “God, I know.”

The uncertainty was eating at me. There was a very real possibility Nina would let me walk out of this house, out of this country, just to ruin my father anyway. Or Kevin. Or even the company alongside everything I loved. But I didn’t see another way. Not a clean one, or a safe one.

And maybe that’s what she wanted—to trap me in this impossible choice until leaving didn’t feel like an option, but a duty. Almost noble. Almost self-inflicted.

“I have to trust that she will…” I murmured.

As soon as the words came out, I realized how desperate they sounded. Like I was convincing myself, not Catherine. Like I was praying with no belief behind it.

Catherine took another step toward me, her eyes softening. “But what if she doesn’t?”

I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.

Because the truth was, I had no plan B. No escape route. No miracle waiting around the corner. And no strength left to fight a woman who held every card, every secret, every threat.

So I did what I always do when it gets too heavy—I hid behind motion. Behind moving forward even when I’m falling apart inside.

“I need to pack,” I said quietly, almost numb.

I wanted to walk away but I just stood there, staring at Catherine, my breath snagged somewhere between my lungs and my throat. It was like my body forgot how to function for a moment, like everything inside me was suddenly too heavy for my bones to carry. Her words knocked into me harder than Nina’s threats ever could, because they came from someone I never expected to be part of this tangled mess.

I turned around and began to walk.

“Abby, I know it's hard but still, you shouldn't just leave. What about your father? What about Kevin and the love you both share? I’m sure he is equally in a tight position as you are…” she said gently, and I froze mid-step.

The love Kevin and I share?

My body turned before my mind caught up, my voice barely holding together. “H—how did you find out about Kevin and I? How long have you known?” The question shook out of me like a startled animal. My heart thumped painfully, like it wanted to beat its way out of my chest.

I swallowed hard. “Was it recently, through the media?” I pressed, my voice too sharp, too rushed, too desperate to control.

Catherine’s face fell in confusion—real confusion, not the pretending kind. “I had no idea it’s already on the media,” she murmured, like she was realizing something for the first time.

My stomach twisted. “Well, what do you think?” I snapped, though the anger wasn’t for her—it was for the situation, the trap I had been shoved into. “It’s one of the things I’m being threatened with.” My fingers dug into my own palms as I bit my lip. “If you didn’t find out through the media, how did you find out?”

Catherine blinked, slow and steady, the way someone does when they’re trying to brace themselves before tearing open a wound they prayed would stay closed. “The day I found out was weeks ago… the day before I told you that I cut myself,” she whispered. “Somehow, Nina knew about it before I did. She threatened me with a knife and there was a little struggle… that was how I obtained the cut.”

For a long moment, I just stared at her. Her voice kept talking, but my mind drifted backward—to that night I’d noticed the tiny droplets of blood leading down the hallway, staining the floor in a thin trail that Catherine never explained properly when I asked her the next morning. I remember how something inside me twisted with unease, but I brushed it aside, thinking she was simply struggling privately and didn’t want to burden me with the details.

But now… now it all made sense. Horrifying, ugly sense.

My mouth parted, but no sound came out. The realization sank in slowly, painfully: Nina had known everything. Not just recently. Not because of any slip-up I made. She had been lurking in the shadows like some vulture picking apart a carcass—watching, calculating, waiting. For weeks. Maybe months.

A cold shiver crawled down my spine.

I wasn’t just trapped. I had been trapped from the beginning.

My throat burned. My hands trembled. “My relationship with Kevin is…” I choked on the words, because saying them out loud suddenly felt like admitting something sinful to a priest. “It’s the forbidden kind,” I whispered. “The kind that shouldn’t be known or spoken of. But somehow Nina found out and has been plotting behind the shadows all this time, only to decide for me to disappear like I never existed.”

The words came out in breathless, broken pieces. “And… you—you knew about it too…” My voice cracked, the betrayal stinging sharper than I expected. “Only God knows what you think of me—”

The rest broke off in a sob I didn’t have enough strength to swallow down.

Before I could even flinch backward, Catherine stepped toward me, quick but gentle, reaching for me like someone reaching for a falling child. “Abby…” Her voice was soft, trembling a little. “You must know that I don’t think ill of you at all.”

My vision blurred as tears swelled again. “You’re sure?” I whispered, hating how small I sounded, hating how I seemed to shrink into myself with every word. I couldn’t help it though. I needed the reassurance. I needed something to hold onto that wasn’t collapsing beneath my feet.

Catherine nodded instantly, firmly. “I don’t.”

Something inside me deflated—not with relief, not completely—but with the fragile comfort of not being entirely alone. My shoulders sagged as the smallest slice of warmth fought its way through the cold panic still tightening its grip around my ribs.

I didn’t need her to explain herself. Her response was all I needed.

And even as I breathed out, shaky and uneven, the truth sat heavy in my chest: Nina had been three steps ahead of me from the beginning, and if she knew enough to corner Catherine with a knife… what else had she been hiding? What else had she already set into motion?

I suddenly felt like the walls around me were closing in, the air turning thick with dread. And yet, standing there with Catherine’s earnest eyes on mine, the only thing I could think was:

How much time do I even have left before everything collapses?

But Catherine was intent on convincing me not to leave.

“Don’t trust her, Abby,” she whispered, but the urgency in her voice barely reached me. It sounded distant, like something spoken from the other side of a fogged-up glass window.

I shook my head, more out of exhaustion than disagreement. At this point, everything in me felt wrung out, like someone had taken my heart and squeezed until there was nothing left to drain.

“We made a fair deal…” I muttered, even though the words tasted bitter, like something I didn’t fully believe. “I have to disappear for my Father… for my family… for Kevin.” My voice shook, and I hated myself for it. “If not, they’ll burn, Catherine. They’ll burn while I live to regret that I didn’t make a move to protect them from Nina.”

My throat tightened so hard it hurt. The moment I said it out loud, the weight of what I was planning to do pressed down on me in full force. Leaving. Hiding. Vanishing like some stain everyone was desperate to scrub out of existence.

Catherine opened her mouth—probably to argue again, to pull me back from the edge I was inching toward—but I couldn’t let her speak. If she did… if she said one more soft thing, one more kind thing, one more thing that sounded even remotely like hope… I swore I’d break.

And breaking wasn’t an option anymore.

Before she could form another word, I stepped back. My feet moved automatically, like they were running on instinct rather than intention. I walked away from her, down the long hallway that suddenly felt colder than usual.

I didn’t look back, I couldn’t.

My steps sounded too loud against the polished floor, echoing in a way that made it feel like the house itself was listening, storing my footsteps as evidence for later. The silence behind me grew thicker, heavier—as if Catherine was still standing there, watching me leave, probably wondering if there was anything else she could say to pull me back.

But I was already too far gone.

Each step toward my room felt like walking deeper into my own grave. I hated how dramatic that sounded, even inside my head, but that was exactly how it felt—like I was lowering myself into darkness one slow inch at a time, preparing to disappear from the world I had fought so desperately to remain part of.

My chest tightened the closer I got to my door. My hand trembled when I reached for the doorknob. It wasn’t fear of Nina—though I had plenty of that. It was the fear of what came next. The fear of actually going through with it.

What does it genuinely mean to disappear?

I hadn’t thought that far. Nina just shoved the threat into my face, and I grabbed it like someone grabbing a dagger by the blade because there was no other choice. Now I had twenty-four hours left. Twenty-four hours to pack my life into whatever tiny fraction she allowed. Twenty-four hours to swallow the truth that I wouldn’t see my father again—not properly, not without risking everything. Twenty-four hours to convince myself that walking away from Kevin was the noble thing, the right thing, the necessary thing.

Twenty-four hours to kill whatever was left of Abby.

A shaky breath escaped me as I finally pushed my door open. The quiet of my room hit me like a slap. My bed. My books. The sweater I threw over the chair earlier. The framed picture of Father and me from years ago. Everything felt like a goodbye I wasn’t ready for.

The air felt heavier. Or maybe it was my chest constricting again.

Behind me—somewhere far down the hallway—I thought I heard Catherine move. A small shuffle, like she took a hesitant step forward before stopping. Maybe she wanted to follow me, or maybe she realized it was pointless.

Because no one could save me from this.

Not her.

Not Kevin.

Not even myself.

The only thing I could do now was sit in the suffocating quiet of my room and try to convince myself that leaving everyone I loved behind was somehow an act of love.

That disappearing was a sacrifice, not surrender.

That this pain—this tearing, burning pain—meant something.