Chapter 170 Chapter 170

Chapter 170 Chapter 170
Dominic’s POV

I stare at the words until my eyes blur.
Liana: You could’ve told me.
Dominic: You needed to stand on your own first. You did.
Liana: What now?
There’s a pause. Then one last message.
Dominic: Now, it’s your turn to build. 
The city stretches endless before me, and in its reflection, I whisper to the quiet skyline,
“Thank you, Dominic.” Because even unseen, he still keeps his word.
The echo of suitcase wheels, the muffled boarding calls, the smell of jet fuel and bad coffee. It’s all movement and here I am, in the middle of it, holding a one-way ticket to New Zealand.
It doesn’t feel real yet. The surgeon’s words have been looping in my head for days: She’s alive. She paid me to make sure no one ever found her.
That should’ve been relief. Closure but instead, it’s left me hollow because if Elia is alive, it means she chose to vanish. 
The line for security snakes ahead, full of strangers with lighter burdens. I move through it on autopilot  shoes off, belt off, tray filled, scanner passed. It’s easy to go through the motions when you’ve been running for years.
Once I’m through, I check the screen above the terminal Flight 972  Auckland, On Time.
There’s still an hour before boarding. Enough time to talk myself out of it if I wanted to but I don’t. Not yet.
I sit by the window at the far end of the concourse. Outside, the runways are streaked with light, a grid of movement and escape. People drift past me, dragging lives behind them in rolling suitcases.
I take out my phone, scroll through old photos. Most of them are gone, years ago, when grief made the sight of her face unbearable but one remains. 
Elia at the edge of the pier, her hair whipping in the wind, laughing at something I said. It’s the only picture that still feels alive.
New Zealand. I whisper it under my breath, like testing the shape of her absence. It feels too far and too close all at once.
The boarding announcement crackles overhead. “Flight 972 to Auckland, Group A may now board.”
I close my eyes. I can almost hear her voice, the one from that old recording buried in her “grave.”
I want out. Let me go. I’ll disappear forever. My throat tightens. I used to think those words were meant for Stanley, her captor, her manipulator but what if they were meant for me, too?
I stand, boarding pass in hand. That’s when my phone buzzes. Unknown number.
I almost ignore it, but the message flashes on the screen, and everything inside me goes still.
She doesn’t want to be found. Respect that.
I stare at it, the noise of the airport falling away. My heartbeat feels too loud, too deliberate.
Who would send that? How could they know?
I scan the terminal, faces, phones, luggage, laughter. Nobody is looking my way. I type back quickly.
Who is this?
Three dots appear. Then vanish. Nothing. I try calling the number. It rings once, then disconnects.
I lower myself into the nearest seat, phone still in my hand. My reflection in the black screen looks foreign, the same haunted man who’s been chasing answers instead of peace.
Maybe this is Elia. Maybe she’s the one warning me off or maybe it’s someone protecting her. Either way, the meaning is clear: Stay away. The question is, can I?
Another boarding call. “Groups B and C, you may now board for Auckland.”
The line moves forward, slow and steady. People with plans, people with hope. I should be one of them. I’ve spent too long searching not to see this through but my body won’t move.
What if I’m the thing she’s still running from? What if showing up destroys the life she built?
I open the message again. She doesn’t want to be found. I can almost hear her saying it herself,  calm, certain, tired of being chased. Then another buzz. Same number.
Don’t go any further.
This time, my breath catches. It feels different and urgent, final. A line drawn in sand.
I look up at the boarding gate, my ticket trembling in my hand. The agent is smiling, calling for final passengers. The line is thinning. It’s now or never.
My thoughts blur, years of searching, graves dug up, lies untangled, a daughter’s face, a wife’s ghost. Every moment has led to this gate, this flight, this chance.
I don’t even realize I’m standing until I feel the ticket pressed between my fingers, the phone still buzzing in my other hand. Don’t go any further. Maybe they’re right. Maybe this is where I should stop.
But if I do,  if I turn back now I’ll never know whether she’s out there, living free, breathing the air she begged for.
I take a single step toward the boarding gate, heart pounding so hard it hurts. Another step. The phone buzzes again in my palm. I don’t look this time.
I just stand there, one step from the tunnel, one heartbeat from the truth caught between the life I ruined and the one I might still save and for a long, fragile moment, I can’t decide which one I belong to.
New Zealand smells like rain and distance. The air here is different and cleaner as if even the wind is too honest to lie. When I step out of the airport, it hits me that this is the farthest I’ve ever been from everything that made me who I was.
The message still burns in my head, Don’t go any further. I went anyway.
The rational part of me knows I should’ve listened. She built a life away from all this; I’m intruding on it. But the part of me that still hears her laugh in every quiet room refuses to turn back.
It takes two days and a string of dead ends to find her. She goes by a different name now,  Elena Moreau a quiet artist living on the coast, in a small town where nobody asks questions. 
Her address isn’t listed anywhere, but a woman at a local café points me to a bluff overlooking the ocean. “She paints the cliffs at sunrise,” she says. “Sweet woman. Keeps to herself.”