Chapter 57
Chapter 57
Anna's POV:
The rear window of the car rolled down halfway.
There were two people inside.
A man and a woman.
The man's profile flickered in and out of the dim light — sharp features, strong bone structure, young-looking but radiating a kind of dangerous authority. He was leaning in close to the woman beside him, his head bowed low.
I could see the woman's face more clearly.
Because she was tilting hers upward.
She was smiling. That particular kind of smile — carrying a trace of resignation, a trace of indulgence, a trace of what am I supposed to do with you.
Then the man lowered his head and kissed her.
Not the furtive, hurried kind of kiss.
The unhurried, unashamed kind. The kind that felt like a declaration.
The cigarette nearly fell out of my mouth.
Because that woman —
That woman sitting in the back of a luxury car, kissing a man who looked both wealthy and dangerous —
Was Elise.
Elise Vance.
My cousin. The orphan who'd been taken in by our family. The one I'd always looked down on — the piece of trash who'd sold herself to earn the Sterling family's pity.
In an instant, every fragment snapped into place.
How those thugs had found the tattoo parlor — she was the one who'd made enemies. Why Benjamin had suddenly found himself targeted by loan sharks — she had everything to do with it. Why those men had shown up tonight, at this precise hour, and why Elise's car happened to be parked at exactly the right angle to see everything —
It was her.
It was this woman.
I stared in the direction of the car, and the cigarette burned all the way down to my fingers. The heat jolted through me and I flinched hard, the butt tumbling to the ground and scattering a brief shower of sparks.
The two people inside the car didn't seem to notice me.
Or maybe they had, and simply didn't care.
The man raised his head and looked in my direction. Across the full width of the street, through the murky glow of the streetlamps, through the half-open window — I felt his gaze land on me. Cold. Appraising. The kind of look that was quietly calculating whether I might become a problem.
Then he said something to Elise. The car started.
The Maybach slid silently into the dark, and its taillights vanished around a distant corner.
I crouched where I was, a lighter in one hand and an unfinished cigarette in the other.
My clothes and toothbrush were scattered across the ground in front of me. Behind me, my foster parents were still tearing into each other.
And what I'd just witnessed had driven itself into my skull like a nail —
Elise.
Everything came back to Elise.
Anger. Fear. Jealousy. And something else I couldn't name — like being shoved hard from behind, pitching forward, face-first into cold water. Every emotion hit at once and flooded over my reason. My hands were shaking. My legs were shaking. Even my breathing had gone ragged and shallow, like someone who'd just sprinted eight hundred meters and hadn't stopped yet.
I don't remember walking over to my suitcase.
I only know that I crouched down and started tearing through the pile of scattered clothes with frantic fingers. Toothbrush. Charger. That stupid bag of chips. Where was my phone? Where was my phone?
There.
Wedged between two pieces of underwear, face-down. I flipped it over — still on. Thirty-seven percent. Enough.
My fingers trembled as I scrolled through my contacts.
Liam Sterling.
I'd had his number for half a year, picked up at some party where he'd offered it out of politeness. I'd never used it. Not once. What right did a Miller girl have to bother the Sterling heir? I knew my place.
But right now —
To hell with my place.
The line rang.
Once. Twice. Three times.
It connected.
"Hello?"
Liam's voice came through — but not the Liam I knew. Not the composed, restrained one with that faint edge of polished distance. This voice was blurry around the edges, like he was chewing something, or like his tongue had gotten tangled.
He'd been drinking.
"Liam? It's me. Anna." I tried to make my voice sound normal. "Anna Miller."
Silence.
"...Anna?" He repeated my name like he was confirming he hadn't misheard. "Why are you —"
"I need to talk to you. About Elise."
Silence again. But a different kind of silence this time. I could hear the background noise bleeding through — the low roar of a crowd, the clink of glass on glass, something heavy being set down on a bar top. A bar. He was at a bar.
"I'll send you the location."
He finally spoke, his words coming slightly faster than usual, his voice a shade clearer than a moment before.
A place called The Pit, somewhere in the old district. Not the kind of place anyone from the Sterling family would normally set foot in.
I stared at the darkened screen, my chest still heaving. Behind me, the shouting and scuffling hadn't stopped — Benjamin and Margaret were still going at it in the middle of the road, like two animals trapped in the same cage.
I didn't look back at them. Not once.
I stood up, pulling the suitcase upright with me. The wheels ground against the asphalt with a low, grating rumble. An ugly sound. Grating. But I was past caring.
I started walking in the opposite direction.
Away from this street. Away from those two lunatics. Away from this wretched, completely shattered night.
I was going to take care of this myself.
---
Liam's POV:
Fourth glass.
Or maybe the fifth. I'd lost count.
Whiskey. Single malt. Twelve years. It came in with a taste of smoke and went down like fire. But I didn't stop. Because as long as the alcohol was still burning through my stomach, I didn't have to think about anything else.
Like everything that had happened this afternoon.
Like Elise.
Like Victor.
I set the glass down on the bar with a dull thud. The bartender glanced at me but said nothing. He'd probably seen enough wealthy men drinking themselves into the floor to stop keeping track. Two seats to my left sat another one — suit and tie, loosened collar, face buried in the crook of his arm, either asleep or passed out.
Absurd.
The whole thing was genuinely absurd.
I had turned down Isabella for Elise. Do you understand what that means? Edwin's three-day deadline was up tomorrow. The family was furious. My mother had called three times and I hadn't picked up. My father had sent his secretary to wait outside my apartment door for an entire afternoon. Everyone was waiting for me to bow my head, to admit I'd been wrong, to go back and be a well-behaved Sterling heir — to get engaged to the Sinclair girl, to put the family's interests above everything else.
I had been ready. I genuinely had been ready. Even if it meant a full break with the family, even if it meant being cut off financially, even if it meant moving out of that gilded house — I had thought it all through.
I was going to find Elise. Tell her I'd been wrong. Tell her I would make it right. Tell her I was willing to give up everything if she would just give me one more chance.
And then?
Then Victor appeared.
My uncle. The youngest of the Sterling family. The one who'd been sent to the Church since childhood, who'd spent years in black robes doing pastoral work at some Protestant congregation. The man who had voluntarily surrendered his inheritance rights to give the family a respectable name to point to.
He and Elise were together.
He'd said it to my face, in that offhand, almost careless tone of his: We're seeing each other. And then, as if that weren't enough, he'd added something even more outrageous — I could marry her, if I wanted to.
Marry her?
Had he lost his mind?