Chapter 75 Chapter seventy-five
Lena’s POV
I don’t answer the burner phone the first time it rings.
I just stare at it.
It sits on my coffee table like something alive—small, black, anonymous. Wrong. Everything about it feels wrong, like it doesn’t belong in my apartment, in my life, in the fragile quiet I’ve been trying to rebuild since everything fell apart.
Avery is asleep in the other room. I can hear the soft hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of a car passing outside. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
The phone vibrates again.
My stomach twists.
I pick it up before I can talk myself out of it.
I don’t say hello.
The voice doesn’t either.
It’s distorted—low, warped, mechanical. Genderless. Emotionless.
“You’re listening again,” it says.
My fingers tighten around the phone. “You said you’d explain.”
A soft sound comes through the speaker. Almost a laugh.
“I said I’d tell you what he didn’t.”
My chest tightens at the word he.
Sebastian’s face flashes in my mind—cold eyes in his office, his voice sharp and cruel, the way his jaw tightened like he was bracing for impact while he destroyed me.
“I don’t want games,” I say. My voice shakes, but I keep going. “If you’re going to talk, then talk.”
There’s a pause.
Then the voice says, “He didn’t leave you because he wanted to.”
The words land softly.
Too softly.
I let out a short, disbelieving breath. “That’s funny. Because he was very clear.”
“Yes,” the voice agrees calmly. “He was meant to be.”
My heart starts to pound. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” the voice continues, “that every cruel word was chosen. Every dismissal calculated. Every inch of distance deliberate.”
My throat goes dry.
I think of the way Sebastian wouldn’t meet my eyes.
The way his hands shook—just barely—when he told me he was tired of me.
The way his face looked… wrong. Too controlled. Too rigid.
“Why?” I whisper.
Another pause.
“He was threatened.”
The word slices straight through me.
Threatened.
I shake my head even though no one can see me. “You’re lying.”
“If I were,” the voice says smoothly, “you wouldn’t still be listening.”
My pulse roars in my ears.
“Threatened how?” I ask.
“Not him,” the voice replies. “You.”
My breath catches painfully.
Images flash through my mind—
The note on my desk.
The missing files.
The car parked outside my building.
The way Sebastian rushed toward me when I almost fell… and then stopped himself like he’d been burned.
“You’re saying… someone is using me?” I ask.
“You were never the target,” the voice says. “You were the leverage.”
Rage sparks in my chest, hot and sharp. “Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter,” the voice answers. “What matters is that Sebastian understood the rules very quickly.”
“What rules?”
“If you believed he didn’t care,” the voice says, almost gently, “you stayed alive.”
My vision blurs.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help. My mind fills with memories—him turning his back on me, his voice flat, his words brutal.
It was just a fling.
I’m tired of you.
Stop taking it so seriously.
My chest aches like something is breaking open from the inside.
“He didn’t mean any of it,” I whisper, more to myself than to the voice.
“No,” the voice agrees. “He meant to hurt you. That was the point.”
Tears spill down my cheeks.
“You don’t get to rewrite what he did,” I say shakily. “You don’t get to excuse it.”
“I’m not excusing it,” the voice replies. “I’m explaining it.”
I swallow hard. “Prove it.”
There’s a pause—longer this time.
Then the voice says, “Private jet. Three nights. Medical records. A hospital visit logged under his personal account. Security rerouted. A pilot diverted for a ‘minor emergency.’”
My heart slams violently against my ribs.
“How do you know that?” I whisper.
“Dates. Times. Footage,” the voice continues. “Photos of him carrying you. Messages you never saw. Threats he received the night before he ended things.”
My hands start to shake.
“You’re saying… he was already being threatened,” I say.
“Yes.”
Before the board meeting.
Before the office conversation.
Before he shattered me.
“And the business trip?” I ask. “Was that… real?”
The voice doesn’t hesitate.
“Everything between you was real,” it says. “That’s why it became dangerous.”
A sob tears out of me before I can stop it.
The way he touched me.
The way he looked at me.
The way he held me like I was something precious.
It wasn’t fake.
It was a risk.
I drag my hand down my face, trying to breathe. “Why tell me this now?”
“Because he’s losing control,” the voice says. “And because you’re starting to notice.”
I think of the elevator.
His clenched fists.
His uneven breathing.
Because both are true.
Rage surges through my grief.
“Then why didn’t he tell me?” I demand. “Why didn’t he trust me?”
“Because trust wasn’t the objective,” the voice replies. “Distance was.”
I laugh bitterly through my tears. “So he decided for me.”
“Yes.”
My chest burns with a mix of fury, heartbreak, and something worse—guilt.
All this time, I thought he abandoned me.
But what if he was standing in front of a fire, holding the door shut so it wouldn’t reach me?
I sink onto the couch, the phone pressed to my ear.
“You’re not doing this to help me,” I say quietly. “What do you want?”
The voice lowers. Sharpens.
“I want you to understand,” it says. “Because understanding changes choices.”
The line goes dead.
The silence feels louder than the voice ever was.
I stare at the phone, my thoughts racing, crashing into each other.
Sebastian lied to me.
Sebastian protected me.
Sebastian broke me on purpose.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
A text message.
Sebastian:
Please. Don’t do this.
My breath catches.
Before I can process it, another message appears—this time on the burner phone.
Unknown number.
“Ask him about the acquisition.”