Chapter 155 Chapter 155
Stanley’s POV
Rain had a way of exposing people, no matter how polished, how powerful, how perfectly composed under the rain, everyone looked human.
Liana stood in the street, rain streaking her hair, the taste of Dominic Hale still on her mouth and I watched helpless and furious from the black car parked across the café.
For a moment, I thought I’d imagined it. That maybe the closeness, the whispering, the touch of his hand on her neck were tricks of the rain-blurred glass but then he kissed her.
The driver said something, I didn’t hear it. The city noise vanished. All I saw was them, Dominic’s hand on her cheek, her body leaning into him before she realized it.
Betrayal doesn’t announce itself. It bleeds slow, then floods all at once. I told myself I wouldn’t follow her home. That I’d let it cool, handle it like a civilized man. But civilization was a thin skin stretched over something primal, and mine had just torn.
When she arrived at the penthouse, she didn’t expect me to be there. She froze in the doorway still carrying the storm on her shoulders.
“Stanley,” she said quietly.
My voice came out raw. “You were with him.”
She shut the door behind her, set her bag down carefully. “It wasn’t what you think.”
I laughed. “Then enlighten me, What exactly do I think?”
“That I went running back to my ex-husband in the middle of a downpour because I missed his company?”
“You kissed him, Liana.”
Her jaw tightened. “He kissed me.”
“Don’t play semantics.” I took a step closer, the anger clawing up my throat. “You didn’t stop him.”
Her voice hardened. “Because Stanley, he was protecting me. Something you should have done from the start.”
That landed like a slap. “Protecting you? The man who destroyed your life?”
“No.” Her eyes flashed. “The man you framed for it.”
She didn’t mean to say it, I could see it in her face the moment the words left her mouth but once something like that is spoken, it can’t be taken back.
I smiled “You’ve been talking to him.”
“I’ve been looking for answers.”
“And what answers has he fed you this time?” I asked softly. “That he’s innocent? That poor Dominic Smith was just a victim of circumstance?”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “He showed me things, Stanley. Files. Timelines. Your name is all over them.”
I felt the muscles in my neck tighten. “You think you understand what happened? You think you’re ready to carry the weight of what we did?”
“We?” she repeated.
I turned away, pacing toward the window, the skyline fractured in the rain-soaked glass. “You weren’t supposed to find those drives.”
“So it’s true.”
“You have no idea what’s true,” I snapped. “You look at images, documents, incomplete reports and you think they tell the whole story but they don’t.”
She stepped forward. “Then tell me. Tell me what really happened the night Elia disappeared.”
I exhaled hard, my pulse pounding in my ears. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Her voice was quiet but unrelenting, the same tone that made CEOs stammer and senators backtrack. I used to admire that about her, that fire. Now, it burned in my direction.
I turned, meeting her eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to watch a company crumble because of someone else’s weakness? To build something from nothing, only for one person to threaten to expose it all?”
Her face hardened. “Elia wasn’t a threat”
My control cracked. “She was going to destroy everything!”
The words thundered through the room before I realized I’d raised my voice. Liana flinched. “So you silenced her?”
“No!”
The next words slipped out like blood through a cut I didn’t know I’d made. “I forged the evidence to make it look like Dominic did it, thats all.”
Her face went blank. “You forged the evidence.” It wasn’t a question.
I swallowed, throat dry. “It was supposed to end there. He’d take the plea, disappear, and everything would stay contained.”
“You sent an innocent man to prison,” she said softly.
“He wasn’t innocent!” I snapped, desperate now. “He was reckless and dangerous. He would have exposed everything Elia had uncovered, the offshore accounts, the shell foundations. Your father’s foundations.”
She took a step closer, voice shaking with fury. “So you ruined him to protect my father’s corruption? My family’s name?”
“I did it to protect you.”
“Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare make this about me.”
I tried to speak, but the words caught in my throat.
She looked at me like I was a stranger, like every lie I’d ever told had suddenly materialized in front of her.
The room felt smaller. The walls closer. The rain outside pounding like judgment.
“Liana,” I said quietly. “You have to understand. I did what I had to do. Elia…”
“Stop saying her name.”
Her voice broke. “You don’t get to say her name after what you did.”
For a moment, neither of us moved. The only sound was the rain against the glass.
Then she turned, grabbed her bag. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t look back. “To find the truth you buried.”
“Liana…” But the door slammed before I could finish. just like that, she was gone.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the space she’d left behind. The confession still hung in the air, thick and heavy, impossible to take back.
I’d built my entire life on control, controlling narratives, people, outcomes but one slip, one moment of rage, had undone it all. She’d go to Dominic now and when she did, everything — the lies, the evidence, the cover-ups would surface.
For the first time in years, I felt something I’d forgotten how to feel. Fear of losing her not to Dominic, not to truth but to the person she’d become because of what I’d done.