Chapter 48: Chains of Betrayal

Chapter 48: Chains of Betrayal
MARCUS’S POV

The penthouse is too quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that's serene… the kind that chokes in. The city's outside somewhere, breathing and screaming, but in here it's all glass and quiet.

Isabelle’s latest hospital report is open on the table, pages flat under my palm. The words blur until they’re nothing but black streaks. Numbers. Prognoses. Terms I’ve read too many times to pretend they mean anything new.

It’s as empty as this place. As our marriage.

I once thought that home was something you could breathe. This is merely a location where I am. Where Isabelle and I share a bed but we each have our own dreams. Where I drink.

I blink once, and already the memories hit.

Isabelle—small on the white sheets, her face almost as pale. Her hand limp in mine.

Then Ava… candlelight draping over her skin in the chapel, her breath catching beneath my lips, her eyes locked on mine like she'd decided drowning with me was better than breathing without me.

Betrayer.

I betrayed my wife… with her daughter.

The shame weighs on my chest like lead, choking every breath. Not just wrong… it's an injury I inflict on myself. One that still bleeds no matter how I try to bind it.

I pour a drink of whiskey. Not a shot… a glassful. It's burning its way down, but the burning doesn't quite reach the rot inside. Nothing ever does.

Julian's voice cuts in, from that night at the estate, and with it, the sight of the grainy video of the breach along the edge of the estate perimeter. That one figure moving where it didn't belong. The threat hanging over all of us. Ava's face breaks in again… gentle, innocent.

And then it hits me. The thing I'd forgotten.

My heart speeds up. I pick up my phone and text before I can change my mind.

"Julian. The perimeter situation. It must be contained. Between us ONLY. Caleb can't find out. Under no circumstances."

If Caleb finds out, he'll go to her. He'll tell her that we’re being watched, photographed. He'll steal away what little security she still has and destroy everything.

I sent. The message reads like an order, but it's a plea in disguise. He'll listen. He has no other choice. He must defend her because defending her protects him too. at least, for the moment.

The minutes that follow are agonizing minutes. Julian may answer right away or take hours. And if he's already active, he'll play it by his own rules… cold, razor-sharp, efficient, and not caring one whit about collateral damage.

I can't leave it in his hands only.

I dial a number that's on only a locked list. A man who's served me long enough to know better than to ask questions. He answers on the second ring.

It's me," I whisper. "I need eyes. Off-book. Sterling Estate perimeter. Three nights ago, between nine pm and eleven pm. Sweep for any unauthorized individuals. Any sign of surveillance… photo, video, drone. Deep sweep. Find the shadow. Report to me and me only."

There is a momentary grunt in the earpiece, then it is dead. No questions. No trail.

No Julian.

The room closes in. I pace, the whiskey searing my hand.

Isabelle. I swore oaths. To protect her. To love her. Her face comes before me… eyes soft, trusting even when her body betrays her. But it hazes, distorts… becomes Ava. Ava looming in the evening of the estate, inviting me to step in too close. Ava shoving at me in the chapel, acknowledging the ruin that we both knew was coming.

Her pull isn't just desire… it's a cord I spun myself, strand by thread, until it sank too far to be cut.

I recall even now the touch of her flesh against my hands, the tiny tremor in her breathe, the look she gave me… half afraid, half intractable. That look burns through all the vows I ever made.

I vowed to protect Isabelle. But how do I protect her from me? How do I protect Ava from me… from the rest of them coming at her?

The glass is again empty. I don't remember drinking all of it.

I need air. Sound. Something to wash this away before I tear the walls down myself.

I'm in the car on automatic pilot, city lights blurring past indistinguishably. I drive on until streets become dark and signs become neon. I drive into The Veil's underground parking.

Inside, the bass thuds in my chest. Perfume and smoke cling to the air. The crowd is motion and shadow. I order another whiskey, drink it down in one shot, and feel the fire searing my chest.

"Rough night, handsome?"

The voice is a kid's, mocking. She's likely twenty-one, leaning against the bar with a look of practiced ease. Her eyes pass over me, slow and open.

"Looks like you could use some… forgetting." Her smile slopes, her eyes falling to my lips.

I meet her stare. My voice is flat, low. "Not interested."

She doesn't flinch. If anything, she moves closer, her smell cutting through the smoke. A finger follows the wood next to my hand. "You sure? I'm good at making men forget. Even the complicated ones."

I look at her. Dark hair. Glaring makeup smudged to be smoky. She's trying to be dangerous. Magnetic.

But she isn't her.

The copy is so bad it makes me sick.

And then the sickness is blended with something worse… loneliness. That empty space inside me that no stranger can fill.

"This isn't forgetting," I say to the bartender, tossing money on the bar and standing. "It's just another hell."

Her eyebrows meet, whether trying to decide if she should be upset or not. I don't give her a chance.
"Like I told you," I tell her, my tone absolute, "not interested."

I brush aside the body of people to reach the door. The girl's perfume disappears in moments. Her face is forgotten before I reach the door.

The only face I'm left with is Ava's.

The way she seemed to regard me in that chapel, as if she belonged to me already and didn't mind the price. The whuff of her breath against my mouth when it was on her neck. The tiny catch when my fingers roamed over her skin.

Even here, in the din and the crowd, it's her that I see. It's her that I desire. It's her that I cannot have.

The chains tighten.