Chapter 243 Tatooed Sleeve

Chapter 243 Tatooed Sleeve
♡Leila POV♡
“Mia, we have thirty minutes!”

The voice came from outside the makeup room, sharp and impatient.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror and barely recognized the girl staring back. Short hair. Dark contacts. Makeup heavier than anything I used to wear. A different person.

“Yes,” I muttered under my breath. “That’s what I’m called now.”

I had stripped myself of my identity just to investigate my mother’s disappearance.

Yes. You heard me.

I still hadn’t found her.

After the police searched my childhood home and came up empty, I stood there holding that old photograph like it was the only thing keeping me upright. My mother, young and smiling, standing next to two little boys I now knew were Cain and Tobias. That image changed everything. It meant my mother wasn’t just a random woman who wandered off. She had history with them. Real history.

I thought about going to Lia’s parents. They had been kind to me. They might have helped. But the moment the idea formed, fear followed it. Involving them meant dragging them into something I didn’t fully understand — something that had already taken my mother and nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t do that to them.

The only person powerful enough, dangerous enough, who might actually know something was Cain.

But I didn’t even know if he was alive.

I considered going to the police with my theory — that my mother had been taken, not lost. The problem was evidence. All I had was a faded photograph. It proved a connection, nothing more. And if I started talking, questions would come. Why had I been in Manhattan? Why had I shot a man? What if that man was dead? Then I wouldn’t just be a girl looking for her mother. I would be a murderer.

The thoughts kept spiraling.

Had Tobias really approached me by chance? Or did he already know who I was? Did he know my mother? Was June somehow tied to this without even realizing it?

I had no answers.

So I made a decision.

I cut my hair. I put in contacts. I packed light and used the black card Hermes had given me to disappear into Manhattan under a new face. If Cain was alive, I needed to get close enough to find out what he knew. If he was dead… then I needed to know that too.

Finding Mia was the first real break I got. She was already working at this private club, keeping her head down, trying to survive after everything that happened. When she saw me, she almost didn’t recognize me. Once she did, she told me the truth:

Cain was alive.

That single piece of information was enough to keep me here.

Now I was in a makeup room, wearing someone else’s name, about to walk onto a floor full of men who could destroy me if they looked too closely.

Thirty minutes.

I stared at my reflection one last time.

I wasn’t Leila Samuels tonight.

I was Mia.

I finished the last of the makeup and stepped out of the room, adjusting the short robe around my frame. The hallway was dim, filled with the low hum of music and distant voices.

Then I saw him.

A few steps ahead, a tall figure stood frozen, staring at someone further down the hall. Even from behind, I knew that posture. The broad shoulders. The way he held himself like the world was something he could break if he wanted to. And the tattooed sleeve — dark ink wrapping around his arm, unmistakable even in the low light.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

Cain.

He was alive.

Mia had been right.

For a second I couldn’t move. I just stood there, staring at his back, the reality of it sinking in too fast. He survived. He was here. In a place like this.

Of course he was.

While I had been drowning — searching for my mother, cutting off my hair, erasing my name, sleeping with fear coiled in my chest every night — he was here. In a private club. Getting a lap dance. Or worse.

The bitterness rose so sharply it almost choked me.

I had shot him. I had left. I had spent weeks not knowing if he was dead or alive. And this was where he was.

My fingers curled tightly into the fabric of the robe.

Further down the hall, the girl he was staring at — the real Mia — stood with her back partially turned. After everything collapsed, she had gone into hiding and started using my name as an alias. When I found her, she told me it was safer that way. No one would look twice at another “Leila” in this world. So I took her real name instead. Now she was Leila, and I was Mia. A simple swap. A necessary one.

And somehow, that swap had just put me standing behind the one man I wasn’t ready to face.

He was so close.

And I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do now.
I turned and hurried back into the makeup room, shutting the door behind me harder than I meant to. My heart was still racing, slamming so hard against my ribs it almost hurt.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel.

Grateful that he hadn’t died? 
Or angry that he was clearly living just fine?

He hadn’t even looked for me.

The thought cut deeper than I expected. Hot tears spilled over before I could stop them, sliding down my cheeks and threatening to ruin the makeup I had just finished. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to breathe.

I regretted everything.

Meeting Tobias. 
Getting pregnant. 
Meeting Cain.

All of it.

My life had been simpler before them — quieter, safer — when it was just me, June, and Kayla. No blood. No fear. No men who could destroy everything with a single decision.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Mia.

I snatched it up and answered before the second ring.

“I know,” I said immediately, voice tight. “I saw him.”

There was a short silence on the other end.

“Don’t tell him about me yet,” I continued before she could speak. “I’ll handle it myself.”