Chapter 66 Escaped
Chapter 66 Escaped
Chapter 66.
I Escaped.
Lucas tries to take his hand, but Arthur weakly pulls it back.
“The corporation… the people. Everything is collapsing. Undoing this. Get rid of that girl. Send her away. To the other side of the world. And marry Carolina. Save everything.”
“I can’t, Uncle,” Lucas whispers, the word “uncle” now a lead weight.
Arthur looks at him with the intensity of a dying man. “You’re ruining everyone with this madness. Stop now, Lucas, stop all of this. Or my death will weigh on your conscience and hers… that girl is a disgrace. The best thing is for her to go far away, to move away so that everyone can cal—”
Arthur coughs violently. The last word is lost. His heart monitor begins to beep. The doctor rushes in.
Lucas remains frozen, his hand extended, Arthur's last word, “save” or “calm,” unspoken, but the message is clear: Alicia must leave. The price of their love is Arthur's life and the Jank empire.
The Flight into Exile
Lucas’s house, which until a few hours ago was the sanctuary of their forbidden love, is now a torture chamber. Outside, the press is still shouting. Inside, the pressure from the media, the threat of Arthur’s death, and the relentless calls from the Jank family, who do not hesitate to blame Alicia for the empire's fall and the patriarch's illness, create an unmanageable hell.
Lucas is exhausted, consumed by the struggle between saving Alicia from media destruction and saving the Jank Corporation from financial collapse. Everything he tries to stop has become a reality that attacks Alicia more fiercely than himself. The social media attacks are vile and personal against her; he, on the other hand, is seen as a businessman manipulated by an ambitious young woman.
“You have to go, Alicia,” Lucas tells her, his voice broken by desperation, the morning after the explosion.
Alicia looks at him, sitting on the sofa with dry, empty eyes. She has cried herself to exhaustion.
“You are kicking me out,” Alicia states, without asking. It is a cold declaration of betrayal.
Lucas kneels before her, taking her hands. “I’m trying to protect you, understand. If I don't do something, this will continue to escalate and Arthur… Arthur might die. The whole family, everyone is against you. You have to leave. I need time. Time for the press to calm down, time to regain my position, and time for Carolina to let her guard down.”
He tries to sell the separation as a tactical sacrifice, as the only way to guarantee their future together. “It will only be a few months. I need you to disappear so they think you regretted it, that the relationship was a fleeting romance.”
“And what’s the difference between this and what Arthur asked you for in the hospital?” Alicia retorts, bitterness in her voice. “Send the disgrace away? Lucas, you’re asking me to give up my dignity to save your empire.”
“I’m asking you to trust that I will come back for you,” Lucas pleads. “This is for us, Alicia. So we can be together without destroying ourselves.”
She gives in, not out of conviction, but out of emotional exhaustion. In the middle of the night, as if she were a thief fleeing a crime, Alicia is taken by Gael to a private jet. There is no public farewell, only the shadow of her departure. She is sent to a coastal town in England, a discreet refuge, far from the tabloids and the public eye.
The Void and Oblivion
The refuge is a small, elegant house with a sea view, cold and desolate, a reflection of her own state of mind. Lucas calls her religiously at first, three times a day, promising that everything will be resolved, that they will soon be together. He gives her vague details about the corporate battles against Carolina, about Arthur's convalescence.
A month passes. The story of the forbidden relationship, thanks to Carolina's astute management and Lucas's official version, transforms into a “fleeting romance,” an “imprudent niece-uncle infatuation” that was smothered before it caused more damage. People forget, and the press attention shifts to other scandals.
But Lucas’s calls become less frequent. They drop from three a day to one a day, then to one every two days, and finally, to sporadic text messages with excuses about emergency meetings and corporate crises. Alicia begins to feel unwell, not just emotionally, but physically sick, with a persistent fatigue that she dismisses as post-traumatic stress.
One morning, two months after her departure, in the middle of lunch, Alicia feels a sudden wave of nausea. She rushes up, unable to stop the impulse, and vomits all the food in the bathroom. It is not the first time, but the intensity is unusual.
The logic hits her. The delays, the fatigue, the dizziness… Secretly, without mentioning it to Lucas, she buys a package of pregnancy tests at a local pharmacy.
The result is almost instantaneous. Two lines. An unequivocal positive.
She discovers with astonishment and panic that she is pregnant.
The Impulsive Return
The news, instead of sinking her, injects her with a brutal dose of purpose. It is no longer just her; it is Lucas's child. This baby is the irrefutable proof of the truth of their love, the definitive reason for Lucas to break the impasse and abandon the facade game.
Determined to tell Lucas the surprise personally, Alicia ignores Gael’s pleas to await his orders. She books a commercial flight, leaves the coastal house, and travels back to her country. Two months have passed since her departure.
She lands in the early morning. As the taxi takes her from the airport to the city, her eyes catch a tabloid forgotten on the seat. The headline in gigantic letters hits her with the force of a meteorite.
“JANK LIGHTNING WEDDING! Lucas Jank and Carolina Jaeger Marry in an Intimate Ceremony to Calm the Market.”
She avoids the media, relying on Lucas’s calls. In the morning newspaper she hasn't seen, the news is fresh, a desperate act by Lucas to secure control of the company and appease Arthur.
Alicia’s world stops. The triumph of love she had imagined turns into a nightmare of betrayal. Lucas is going to marry Carolina. Lucas has chosen the empire.
The taxi stops in front of the Jank mansion. Alicia, with the pregnancy test in her pocket and anger boiling in her veins, pays the driver and heads to the front door.
She enters the house. It is late, and an unsettling silence dominates the grand foyer. She runs into Berta, the head maid.
“Miss Alicia! What are you doing here?” Berta is surprised, her eyes filled with fear. Alicia’s presence is a ghost returning to torment the newly established peace.
“I live here, don’t I?”