CHAPTER 217. THE ISLAND AND THE VOID

CHAPTER 217. THE ISLAND AND THE VOID
CHAPTER 217. THE ISLAND AND THE VOID

“Gloria, are you there?”

He called out into the suffocating silence, the sound of his own voice swallowed by the vast, empty space of his living room. Tristan shook his head, a gesture of desperate denial, and stood abruptly from the sofa. A cold, liquid panic, thick and nauseating, moved through his body, coiling tight in his chest.

“Gloria?”

“Tristan,” she finally replied.

The relief that flooded him was so immense, so immediate, that he physically sagged, exhaling a breath he realized he’d been holding since she first stopped responding. “Oh my God, you scared me. Why did you keep quiet for so long?”

A sound escaped her, a brief, sharp noise that was supposed to be a chuckle, but it caught in her throat. It was brittle, hollow, and utterly unlike her. Tristan froze, every instinct he possessed—instincts honed by years of navigating treacherous social and corporate landscapes—screaming a warning. He could feel it; a seismic shift had occurred beneath the surface of their fragile world. Something was profoundly, fundamentally wrong.

He shook his head slowly, leaning back against the cool, dark leather of the sofa. “Is everything okay?”

She let out a long, shuddering exhale on the other end of the line. “I don’t really know what to say, Tristan.” Her voice was tight, stretched thin like a wire about to snap. “I just… I can’t do this anymore.”

He heard the words, but his mind refused to process the meaning. “What are you talking about, Gloria?”

He could almost see her on the other end, the familiar gesture of stress. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together, a sound so faint he might have imagined it, yet it vibrated through the connection.

“This mess,” she whispered, the word imbued with exhaustion and defeat. “It’s just too much. Everything has gotten so much worse since the news broke. And I just think the best option would be for the both of us to stay apart from each other for now. Do you know? Just lay low until we figure things out.”

Tristan felt the blood drain from his face. He frowned, shaking his head again, a desperate, futile motion. “Gloria, no. No, please, no. Don’t do this. I beg you, please. This is wrong. We can do this together.”

A genuine, albeit bitter, laugh escaped her this time. “Yes, I know, Tristan. But it’s not in my power right now.”

The phrase struck him with an odd, cold terror. Not in her power. Tristan frowned, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. “What are you talking about? Who is stopping you?”

“My parents,” she confessed, the word heavy with dread. “They heard the news, and well, they are requesting a family reunion. They have requested that I and my sister return back to our home in a far away country. Out of this entire country.” Her voice faltered, heavy with reluctance. “And well, I don’t know. I can’t disclose the location to you because if you get there, Tristan, things are really, truly going to be bad.”

He paced the length of the living room carpet, his steps muffled yet frantic. The air felt thin, suffocating. “Gloria, if you leave, I promise I’m going to track you,” he vowed, his voice husky with desperation. He had the resources, the technology, the network. He would find her.

She scoffed, but the sound held no amusement, only sad resignation. “I knew you would say that, and I’m really, truly wishing you could right now. But I don’t think that’s even an option.”

“Why do you think so?” he demanded.

“My family is not what you think, Tristan. Okay?” she insisted, her tone hardening slightly, injecting a note of cold, unfamiliar pride. “We have our empire. We have our own laws, and we have our own rules. Our entire system and environment is closed off with technology that makes it very, very hard to track us. And we are on an island.”

Tristan stopped dead center in the room, the color draining from his face until his skin felt clammy and pale. His eyes went wide, fixed on a point far beyond the phone in his hand. “Are you kidding me right now, Gloria? You should fight this! Tell them what you want!”

She chuckled again, a broken, defeated sound. “I don’t have power over my family, Tristan. I can fight so many things, but not my mom and dad. Not when they are unified on this. I really, truly wish this could have worked, and I am really, truly so sorry.” Her voice cracked, the carefully constructed wall she had built beginning to crumble. “At this point in time, it seems like the best option. Let’s just wait this out until the entire scandal has died down and the dust has settled. Then maybe we could figure things out, okay?”

Tristan was silent for a very long period. The weight of her words—laws, empires, islands, technology—crushed him, rendering him speechless. He heard the faint, static hum of the line, the sound of his own ragged breathing, but no coherent thought formed in his mind.

“Tristan, are you there?”

He blinked rapidly, shaking his head and then nodding quickly, though she couldn’t see the motion. “Yes, yes, yes, I’m here.”

She choked back a sob. “I know how this must hurt. I’m really, truly so sorry. Believe me, it hurts me too. But I don’t know what I can say that will make them listen to me, especially Annabelle. And she’s really intent on this. She is supporting them. And I guess she must have been the one to also add to the entire plan of we returning back home.”

Tristan closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool, glass surface of his picture window, trying to absorb the sheer magnitude of the betrayal and the loss.

“Please, I really wish you could understand, okay?”

Tristan exhaled, the sound strained, defeated. “Okay. Can you at least wait for me? Let me greet you goodbye.” His voice was a raw plea, stripped of all pride. Just five minutes, one final look.

She choked again, the sound closer to a gasp now. “I wish that could happen, but there is no time now. We are already moving. We are on our way.”

Tristan’s eyes snapped open, wide with disbelief and horror. “What? And you are just telling me this now?” The panic returned, sharper and colder than before.

“Yeah, but they didn’t give me the time, okay? I told you this is not within my power. We are requested to move right now. And I think the entire plan was set up just so that you won’t be able to follow us.” Her voice faded slightly, replaced by a strange, metallic echo, as though she were moving into a restricted area.

And then the call instantly ended.

Tristan stood frozen, the silence of the disconnected line a physical blow. His phone beeped continuously, the insistent chime of a lost connection, forcing him to frown in confusion and disbelief.

What the hell?

He looked at his phone, his hand shaking violently, and dialed her number again, placing the device against his ear. Panic, hot and sharp, raced through his body, demanding a resolution he knew wouldn’t come.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he kept on muttering, a desperate, futile prayer.

Then the automatic voice came through, cool and impersonal, severing his last thread of hope. “the number you dialed is currently not reachable.”

His eyes went wide, staring blankly at the wall. Then Gloria’s recorded voicemail came through, her voice bright and cheerful, a cruel mockery of the truth. He ground his teeth together, the sound loud in the sudden, ringing stillness of the room, and hurled his phone against the sofa. It struck the plush cushion with a dull thud, bouncing once before settling inert.

“Fuck! Freaking fuck!” he roared, shouting the words out loud, the trapped panic finally erupting through his bones. He slammed his fists repeatedly against the soft leather armrest, the futile action doing nothing to quell the inferno of rage and despair consuming him.

He staggered back, shaking his head, grinding his teeth together until his jaw ached. Oh my God, he thought to himself, the realization a crushing weight. He began pacing his living room, a caged animal trapped by his own failure. What the hell have I done? What the fuck have I done?

He had failed her. He had fucking messed up. He muttered the words, raking frantic fingers through his hair, pulling at the roots as if to anchor himself to reality. He exhaled a long, shuddering breath, the energy draining out of him as suddenly as it had arrived. Finally, he collapsed against the sofa, his body heavy and defeated, gazing blindly at the ceiling.

Oh my God.

Unable to keep the desperate urge to fix it to himself, he took out his phone again, retrieving it carefully from the sofa cushion. He traced her number, attempting to track it through his advanced technology—the sophisticated surveillance and tracing programs he usually employed to monitor his own operations. But all he could see was nothing. Everything was blank, every digital doorway slammed shut. It was as though she had suddenly vanished, disappeared entirely from the face of the planet.

Oh crap, he thought, the reality sinking in with the cold finality of deep water. The technological system Gloria had mentioned was real. His power, his influence, his ability to find anyone, meant nothing against the closed island of her family’s empire.



SIX MONTHS LATER

“Look, I don’t know what they are trying to tell me, but this applesauce is the best I’ve ever tasted, and it’s nothing you can ever imagine in this city.”

Adrian’s voice, loud and aggressively cheerful, flashed through Gloria’s ears. She sat at the massive, polished mahogany table, positioned stiffly beneath the imposing family crest that dominated the dining hall. She looked across the expanse of the table at her younger brother, Adrian, and her older sister, Annabelle. They were taunting each other, making jest of one another, fully immersed in a family meal that Gloria would never have wanted to attend.

She managed a small, strained smile and shook her head, watching the theatrical argument between her siblings. Amusement, a fleeting, almost forgotten emotion, moved through her expression.

“Oh, is that what you think?” Annabelle countered, leaning forward, her eyes bright with mischief. “Alright, fine, why don’t you take a taste of this?” She lifted up another separate juice—a murky, vibrant green—and gave it to Adrian.

Adrian looked at it with a theatrical raised eyebrow, suspicion etched onto his youthful features. He scoffed, but succumbed to the challenge, taking the glass and sipping it quickly. Immediately, his face scrunched up with disgust, his skin paling.

“Oh my god, what the fuck is this? Did you trick me?” he screamed, slamming the glass down.

Gloria watched as Annabelle threw her head backwards, her silvery laughter loud and echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Psyche! I got you there,” she said, her voice dripping with mockery.

Adrian was glaring at her, the playful anger momentarily genuine. “I’m so going to get you back for this, Annabelle.”

Gloria sat where she was, looking at the both of them with a detached smile, observing the familiar, petty dynamics of her siblings. The energy in the room was suffocatingly close, yet she felt miles away.

Annabelle finally diverted her focus, her sharp, calculating gaze settling on Gloria. She exhaled a sound of mild annoyance.

“Well, it looks like our petty, scandal-ridden sister here is still in a war zone,” Annabelle drawled, her voice laced with judgment, “done about all the other incidents months ago.”

The comment forced Adrian to turn and look at Gloria, his playful mood instantly dissolving into something more serious, more probing. He sighed. “Ah, well, I don’t really know what to make out of this, sis. But come on, I expected that by now you would have gotten over this. Six months is too long for you to be worrying about someone who nearly ended your entire reputation.”