Chapter 134 The Residual Truth
The iron gates of the Winslow estate didn’t sound like security anymore. As the SUV rolled over the gravel, the heavy clink of the locks behind us sounded like a prison door. My head throbbed in time with the tires. Beside me, Rhys was a statue of suppressed agony. He sat rigid, his breath coming in shallow, rhythmic hitches that made my own chest ache in sympathy.
"We're home," Arthur said softly from the driver's seat. "Dale is at the hospital under heavy guard. Between the attempted murder, the probation violations, the trespassing, and the restraining order... he won't be seeing the sun from outside a cell for a long, long time."
The house was ablaze with light. Every window was a bright, accusing eye. As Jace and Grant helped me out of the car, I saw the silhouettes of the others through the glass. The front door swung open before we even reached the porch.
"Don't even think about the stairs," Mom said, her face pale, eyes red-rimmed. She didn't give me a chance to protest. "We’ve moved everything. You and Rhys are in the Great Room."
Two oversized, plush sleeper sofas positioned side-by-side, had been pulled out and pushed together in the center of the room, facing the fireplace. I was eased onto the right sofa, allowing my broken right arm to be propped up on a mountain of pillows. Rhys was lowered onto the sofa to my left. The process of him sitting down took nearly three minutes; I watched his face turn a ghostly shade of grey, his fingers digging into the upholstery until the knuckles went white.
The room was crowded, yet suffocatingly quiet. Naomi was in the corner, folding blankets while Chloe and Simone were hovering by the kitchenette, whispering over a pot of tea. Helena moved toward Rhys the moment he was settled. She didn't hug him—she knew better than to touch those ribs—but she placed a hand on his cheek.
"The kids are upstairs?" Rhys rasped, his voice like sandpaper.
"Asleep. Or pretending to be," Helena whispered. "Aaron and Elias are patrolling the perimeter with the guards. They won't settle until sunrise."
"Everyone go up," I said suddenly, the weight of their collective pity feeling heavier than the cast. "Please. We’re okay. We just need to stop moving."
Arthur looked like he wanted to argue, but Mom placed a hand on his arm. One by one, they retreated. Jace lingered the longest, his hand resting on the doorframe, looking at the two of us with a guilt that mirrored Rhys's. "I'm right upstairs, El," Jace said. "The alarm is set. The gate is guarded. You’re safe."
Safe. It was a strange word for a house where the study door, just thirty feet away, was likely still stained with the evidence of what Dale had done.
When the room finally emptied, the silence was deafening. The only sound was the crackle of the dying fire and the labored, whistling breath from the sofa across from mine. I reached out my left hand, and Rhys met me halfway, his fingers lacing through mine. The contact was the only thing keeping me grounded.
"Rhys?" I whispered.
He turned his head slowly. The firelight caught the bruising along his jawline. "I should have been faster, Ellie."
"Stop," I said, my voice trembling. "He had a gun, Rhys. You aren't a superhero."
"I was supposed to be," he replied, his voice breaking. He looked around the ornate room—at the Winslow wealth and the Vance loyalty that had all failed to stop a single moment of madness. "We're stuck down here now. In the middle of it all."
"At least we're stuck together," I said.
"I shouldn't have been so late getting back from the city office," Rhys whispered, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I promised I'd be back before the fireworks. If I hadn't let Sterling keep me there for that final briefing, I would have been here before Dale even reached the porch."
"You were saving the company, Rhys. You had to go," I squeezed his hand, ignoring the dull throb in my shoulder. "Tell me what happened. Did the twenty-eight percent hold up? Did they see the metadata?"
Rhys took a ragged breath, his chest hitching. "It did more than hold up. Sterling was ready to fold—he thought Caleb Finch’s 'leak' was the end of us. But when I showed the board the fragments you shadowed, specifically the telemetry from the Monaco Grand Prix, the room went dead silent. You were right about the access points, El. The metadata headers proved the files were injected from a terminal Kian Hayes was using back in May."
He let out a weak, bitter laugh that turned into a wince. "The look on the FIA representative’s face when he saw the 'digital fingerprint' of the simulation... it changed everything. They realized the entire cache was a sophisticated forgery designed to trigger a directory purge. Because you caught those sectors before the server went dark, we have the only proof in existence that the data was 'baked' in a virtual environment."
"So Kian... it's official?" I asked, the memory of him flirting over drinks in Monaco feeling like a physical poison.
“It’s official. The board has moved for Sterling's immediate removal for his lack of oversight, and the FIA is turning the investigation on Kian and Finch. We proved the discrepancy. We proved that the 'guilty' purge was actually an external hit. Vance Racing is safe because you shadowed those files while the house was literally falling down around us."
I closed my eyes, a small sense of relief washing over the terror of the night. "So the legacy is safe."
"Because of you," Rhys said softly, his grip on my hand tightening as much as his strength allowed. "You found the Monaco ghost, Ellie. You found the crack in the armor I didn't even know existed. But the cost... God, the cost was too high. While I was proving Kian’s betrayal to a room full of lawyers, you were here facing a different kind of traitor."
"We couldn't have predicted Dale's timing," I reminded him. "He didn't care about racing or boards. He just wanted to hurt me. But at least now, the legal system won't be able to look the other way. Trespassing with a weapon, the assault... it's over for him."
Rhys turned his head to look at me, the firelight reflecting in his dark eyes. "I’m never leaving you alone again. I don't care if the FIA calls, or the Queen. If you aren't in my sight, I’m not going."
"You're going to be a very annoying shadow," I teased weakly, though tears were prickling at my eyes.
"The most annoying," he promised. "But for tonight, we just breathe. We just stay right here."
I pulled his hand closer to my chest, lacing our fingers tighter. The fire crackled, casting long, dancing shadows across the Great Room. Outside, the guards were pacing the perimeter, and upstairs, our families were keeping watch, but in the small space between our two beds, it was just the two of us, battered and broken, but finally, undeniably, together.