Chapter 93: Chapter Ninety Two

Athena

The walls were cold. Damp. The room reeked of mildew and something metallic—blood, maybe. I’d stopped keeping track of time. My wrists ached where the rope bit into my skin, and the ticking near my ribs was constant, like a metronome counting down to my end.

I’d stopped struggling hours ago. Or was it minutes? The bomb strapped to my chest made every breath feel like a gamble.

Was this how it would all end?

Suddenly, the front door exploded open, wood splintering into jagged pieces. Shouts filled the air—heavy boots pounding the floor, commands barked with lethal authority. I blinked through the haze, barely able to process what I was seeing.

"Eros!" I cried hoarsely, my throat raw from screaming earlier.

He was a blur of black—combat vest, gloves, sharp jaw set in determination. His men flanked him, moving fast, precise. One of them dropped to his knees beside me, assessing the bomb. Eros was already at my side, his hands cupping my face like I was something breakable.

"I’ve got you," he murmured. "Athena, look at me. Stay with me, alright? You’re safe now."

Safe? With a bomb ticking inches from my heart?

But at that moment, I believed him. Because it was Eros. Because even after everything—after the betrayal, the mistakes—he came.

A slow, mocking clap echoed through the room.

We turned.

Lysander stepped from the shadows like a phantom from my past. Dressed in his usual tailored cruelty, he smiled without warmth, his hands coming together in sarcastic applause.

“Well done, Eros,” he said, voice cool and venom-laced. “You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”

Eros stood, shielding me instinctively. “Move out of the way, Lysander. You don’t want to be here when this goes off.”

Lysander chuckled. “I’m not here to stop you. Do what you must. But I have to say—you’re a fool.”

His eyes slid to me like I was nothing more than a stain on the floor. “Athena isn’t worth all this trouble.”

The words sliced deeper than the ropes digging into my skin.

“How dare you,” I whispered.

He arched his brow, as if my voice was an annoyance.

“You made me a promise,” I said louder now, angry and trembling. “On our wedding day, remember? You said you’d love me. That you’d never walk away from me, no matter what.”

Lysander's smile faltered for a moment, replaced by something that looked almost like guilt. “I said it,” he admitted with a shrug. “But things change. You changed. You left me… for him.”

His gaze flicked to Eros with disdain.

“I left because I had to,” I replied, voice shaking. “Because staying meant losing myself.”

His jaw clenched. “You never loved me, Athena. Not really. I was just convenient. I was the one who stayed, the one who picked up the pieces when your world fell apart.”

My throat tightened. I had once believed that too—that Lysander had saved me. But it had never been love. It had been survival.

“I tried to love you,” I said quietly.

He laughed bitterly. “Tried? Right. You tried, and I paid the price. But I should’ve known. You were never mine. Not really.”

“Lysander,” I said, but he held up a hand.

“No. Let me finish.”

There was something wild in his eyes now. Not just pain, but rage barely contained.

“You want the truth? You want the real reason I was always there? Why I showed up in your life when you were seventeen, just when everything was falling apart?”

My breath hitched. “What are you talking about?”

He leaned in, his voice a whisper and a scream all at once.

“Your father sent me.”

The room spun.

“What?” I choked.

He nodded slowly, savoring the devastation in my face. “James Carter. The great Detective Carter. He handpicked me. Said you needed someone to watch you. To steer you in the ‘right’ direction. I was his insurance. His puppet.”

“No,” I breathed. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Why would I lie now? There’s a bomb strapped to your chest and nothing left to lose.”

I shook my head violently, tears springing to my eyes. My father. The man who had broken me in more ways than I could count, even after prison… he had planted Lysander in my life like a landmine.

“You’re lying!” I screamed, my voice cracking from the weight of betrayal. The words tore out of me like a wound being ripped open.

My heart pounded in my chest, so loud I could hear it echo in my ears. My entire world was unraveling right before me, thread by treacherous thread. I wanted him to say something else—anything else.

But he didn’t.

“I didn’t intend to fall in love with you, Athena,” Lysander said, his voice thick with something I couldn’t place—remorse, maybe. “My order was to keep you close, watch over you, and deliver you to your father at the right time. He requested I do whatever it took to keep you compliant... So, I thought of marriage.”

A laugh—cold, humorless—escaped me before I could stop it. Marriage. So that’s what I was to him? A mission objective? A target wrapped in white lace and vows?

I couldn’t breathe.

Had it all been fake? The long nights we spent talking, the quiet ways he held me when I cried, the warmth I thought I saw in his eyes? I wanted to hate him. God, I should have hated him.

But a part of me—the foolish, battered part—still wanted to believe some of it had been real. Before I could process that blow, another one landed—this time in the form of a voice I thought I’d buried with my nightmares.

“He’s right, baby doll.”

The voice.

That voice.

The one that had haunted my nightmares for nearly two decades.

I froze. My blood turned to ice in my veins. Slowly—terrified of what I would see—I turned.

There he was.

Standing in the doorway like the monster who refused to die.

My father.

James Carter.

He didn’t look a day over forty, though he had to be nearing sixty. His smile was a grotesque parody of joy, and worse—he was pointing a gun directly at my head.

I went cold all over. My limbs felt heavy, as if rooted to the floor.

How was he here? He was supposed to be rotting in a maximum-security cell. He was sentenced to life with no parole. No parole. That was justice.

Had he escaped?

"How did you..." My voice faltered, choked by disbelief. The words dissolved on my tongue.

“I escaped,” he said with a smug grin. “Did you really think I’d let myself rot in jail without finishing what I started?”

The world tilted again. Of course he wouldn’t. That monster had always been relentless. My childhood was proof enough. The devil doesn’t die quietly.

His gaze flicked to Eros, and the hatred in it was volcanic, that same twisted smirk still curling his lips. “Lover boy, tell your men to drop their weapons. Kick them far away, or I’ll blow her brains out. Step away.”

Eros gave me a tortured glance before complying. I hated how powerless he looked. Still, his men followed suit, kicking their guns across the room. I could see Eros calculating, planning—but it didn’t matter. Not fast enough.

I watched in horror as James raised the gun. This time, he pointed it at Eros—and pulled the trigger.

“Eros!” I screamed as he dropped to the ground, pain etched across his face, blood blooming from his thigh like a red flower.

“That’s for the sins of your father, you bastard,” James spat, unmoved. “I would have killed you, but I didn’t come for you.”

I snapped.

All the pain. All the fear. Every broken memory and sleepless night he’d gifted me came rushing back like a tidal wave.

“What about your sins, you bastard?!” I roared. “If you’re man enough, let’s fight. Hand-to-hand combat. No weapons.”

He blinked, clearly not expecting that. He wanted me trembling. He wanted me small.

But I wasn’t that little girl anymore. I hadn’t begged him to spare me the night he killed my mother, and I sure as hell wasn’t starting now.

“What do you say, asshole? Are you man enough?” I sneered, daring him.

A glint of something dark danced in his eyes, and then he smiled. “I’m going to enjoy this.” He turned to Lysander. “Fine. Let’s go. Defuse the bomb.”

Thank God for that tiny shred of logic. I exhaled. So he’s not completely unhinged—still afraid of death, even in his madness. Vengeance didn’t matter much if we all ended up in pieces.

As Lysander carefully removed the bomb strapped to me, I stretched out my aching limbs, calling on every ounce of training I had forced myself to remember over the years.

I was grateful someone had given me a change of clothes earlier—fighting in that ridiculous gown would have been impossible. I felt the adrenaline flood my system.

I took a step forward. No more fear. No more hesitation.

I squared my shoulders and faced him. I was more than ready.

“Let’s end this once and for all, James.” I said, my voice steady now. I meant every word.

I wasn’t just fighting for myself.

I was fighting for my mother. For my sister.

For every scar I carried—inside and out.

For the little girl who once hid in a closet, praying for the screams to stop.

I wasn’t a child anymore. I wasn’t his victim. I was the storm he didn’t see coming.

It was now or never.

And I wasn’t planning on losing.