Chapter 86
Emily Windsor's POV
Lawrence's countdown didn't stop, though his eyes grew increasingly sinister.
"If he wanted to save me, he wouldn't have waited this long," I continued goading him, as much to convince myself as anything. "Kill me—you'd be doing him a favor. He could walk away from this mess with a clear conscience."
"Shut up!" Lawrence snarled, his knuckles bone-white around the gun grip.
I clamped my mouth shut, but my heart was in my throat. Luke, don't come out. Please don't come out. This is a trap—the moment you show yourself, you'll have no way out.
"Seven... six... five... four..."
Lawrence was speeding up now, his patience clearly exhausted.
The cold metal pressed against my temple felt like it had already bored through my skull.
"Three."
Just as Lawrence was about to speak the next number, a hoarse, exhausted, yet steady voice finally emerged from the darkness at the end of the corridor.
"I'm here."
A tall figure slowly materialized from that impenetrable blackness.
It was Luke.
He looked like hell. His shirt, soaked in blood, had dried to a sickly brown. His face was paper-white, his lips bloodless. But he stood ramrod straight, like a dying cedar—swaying but refusing to bend.
He raised both hands in surrender. Those bottomless eyes, no longer clouded with confusion or vulnerability, held only an ice-cold, heart-stopping clarity.
"Put your gun down."
He glanced at me once, then his gaze—sharp as frozen blades—locked onto Lawrence.
As he approached, he raised his other hand and tossed a black handgun onto the floor. The metallic clatter against the ground rang out with finality, cutting off every escape route he had.
"What do you want?" he asked Lawrence, his tone utterly calm.
Lawrence's bodyguards surged forward like a tide, surrounding Luke in seconds. Black gun barrels pointed at him from every direction.
Watching him stand alone, weaponless, encircled by armed men—a cornered beast trapped with nowhere to run—I could barely breathe from the ache in my chest.
Run!
I tried desperately to convey it with my eyes, but he didn't even look at me. His entire focus remained on Lawrence.
"Lawrence, you despicable coward!" Desperation finally broke through, and I whirled on the man beside me, voice raw with fury. "You killed all these people just to frame him! You're a monster!"
Lawrence looked at me like I'd told the world's greatest joke. He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head with the kind of pitying amusement reserved for the hopelessly naive.
"Emily, even now, you still believe in him?"
As if I hadn't heard him clearly—or perhaps deliberately speaking for Luke's benefit—he enunciated each word with cruel precision, tearing away the bloody veil of reality.
"He's the killer, Miss Windsor. Your Mr. Victor personally sent everyone on this ship straight to hell."
Lawrence's words fell like ice water, dousing the last flicker of hope in my heart.
But that bone-deep chill only ignited something fiercer inside me—the stubborn, unyielding core I'd always possessed.
"Where's your proof?" I met those cat-and-mouse eyes, my voice trembling with rage but my mind razor-sharp. "You claim he killed them—where's the evidence? That surveillance video you've edited God knows how many times?"
I was, after all, a lawyer who could argue black into white in court.
Even cornered, my instinct was to find logical weaknesses, to weaponize words.
Lawrence looked genuinely entertained. Rather than anger, he clapped his hands together in slow, mocking applause.
"How touching." He shook his head, gaze crawling between us like a serpent's tongue. "Luke, I'm almost jealous. Finding a woman who'll defend you to her dying breath—what are the odds?"
His tone shifted, taking on the magnanimity of a benevolent king offering mercy. "How about this—" He looked at Luke, dangling his final chip. "Give her to me. Be my dog. All our bad blood? Water under the bridge. What do you say?"
The air itself seemed to freeze.
He didn't just want my life—he wanted Luke's dignity.
He wanted to grind this golden boy into the filth, make him personally offer up the woman he cherished most along with every shred of his pride, and beg like a beaten cur.
My blood rushed to my head, heart clenching with rage and humiliation so extreme I could barely think.
I whipped my head toward Luke, terrified I'd see even the slightest hesitation on his face.
But before Luke could answer, the fury churning in my chest exploded.
"In your dreams! I will never stand with a devil like you."
The amusement in Lawrence's eyes instantly combusted into cold fury.
"You're asking for it!" Livid, he jerked his arm up and fired at the ceiling!
The gunshot cracked through the enclosed corridor like thunder, leaving my ears ringing.
Just as I braced for him to turn the barrel on me, Luke's hoarse, exhausted, yet heartbreakingly resolute voice cut through the air.
"I agree."
Those two words seared into my heart like a red-hot brand.
I spun toward him in disbelief, eyes wide.
He still stood there, surrounded by guns, pale as death. But those unfathomable eyes locked onto mine, churning with something I couldn't name—a desperate, all-or-nothing resolve.
He's lost his mind! He must have! Just to keep me alive, he was willing to accept conditions tantamount to torture!
"No... Luke, you can't agree to this!" Tears flooded my vision, blurring everything through despair and anguish. I shook my head violently, voice breaking. "Just go! Leave me! I believe you—I trust you!"
I screamed myself hoarse, trying to convey every ounce of faith I had, trying to wake this fool who was ready to sacrifice everything for me.
"He killed them all! Luke, it was Lawrence who murdered everyone! Please, just run!"
My words drove into Lawrence's ears like steel needles. The rage on his face twisted into something murderous.