Chapter 44 Her Price

Chapter 44 Her Price
"Mama," she whispered. The word felt like a jagged piece of glass in her throat.

She reached down, her palm pressing against her stomach. It was flat. Empty. The small, fluttery warmth she had started to recognize—the tiny life that had been her only reason to keep breathing—was gone. It had been replaced by a heavy, cold ache that radiated through her entire body.

The door clicked open. Silas stepped in. He didn't bring flowers. He didn't bring get-well wishes. He brought a tablet and a stack of legal documents. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed, the metal legs screeching against the tile floor.

Lyara didn't look at him. "Is she really gone?"

"She is at the morgue, Lyara," Silas said. "The paperwork for her transport to the Roosevelt family plot is already signed. Mikael is being generous. He is giving her a burial she could never afford."

Lyara’s hand tightened on the hospital sheet. "Generous? He’s the reason she’s dead. He’s the reason my baby is dead."

Silas leaned forward, his shadow looming over her like a shroud. He didn't show sympathy. Instead, his eyes narrowed, filled with a cold, simmering resentment.

"No, Lyara. Let’s be very clear about who is responsible for this mess," Silas hissed. "You are. You chose to run. You knew your mother was fragile. You knew your pregnancy was high-risk."

Lyara finally turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt. "I wanted to be free."

"Freedom has a price, and you just paid it," Silas snapped. "If you had stayed in the mansion, your mother would have had the best cardiologists in the world on standby. If you had stayed, you would have been under twenty-four-hour medical supervision. That child died because you were selfish. You were so busy trying to 'find yourself' that you let your family rot."

The words hit Lyara like physical blows. She felt a sob build in her chest, but it came out as a dry, hacking cough. "I loved them..."

"Love doesn't pay for oxygen tanks, Lyara. Love doesn't stop a hemorrhage," Silas continued, his voice relentless. "You dragged your mother into a war she wasn't built for. You took a Roosevelt heir and threw it into the mud of a coastal cliff. You killed them both just as surely as if you had pulled the trigger yourself."
Lyara began to shake. It started in her hands and spread to her shoulders. She felt the edges of her sanity fraying. Silas was right. That was the most painful part. She had been the one who insisted on the escape. She had been the one who brought them to the "Dead Zone."

"I'm a murderer," she whispered.

"You're a failure," Silas corrected. "And now, Mikael has to clean up after you. Do you have any idea what he’s doing right now? He’s burying the scandal. He’s paying off the coroner. He’s making sure the world thinks your mother died of natural causes at the estate. He’s protecting you from the consequences of your own stupidity."

Silas stood up and tossed the tablet onto her lap. It showed a live feed of the Roosevelt Group's stock price. It was rising.

"Mikael is out," Silas said. "The witness against him—your little friend—is currently being sedated in a psychiatric ward. He’s raving about shadows and guns. No one believes him. And you... you’re going back to the mansion. You’re going to be the grieving fiancée. You’re going to play the part perfectly, or I will make sure the last thing people remember about Elena McKinley is that she died because her daughter was a runaway."

Lyara grabbed the tablet and threw it at the wall. It shattered, the screen shattered into thousand pieces. She started to scream—a raw, animalistic sound that tore through the quiet of the ward.

"Get out! Get out!" she wailed, pulling at her hair.

Silas didn't move. He watched her with a disgusted curiosity. "Go ahead. Scream. Break things. It won't bring them back. It won't put the baby back inside you. You are empty, Lyara. You are a hollow shell, and the only thing that can fill you up again is the man you hate."

Lyara scrambled to the edge of the bed, her legs weak. She fell to the floor, her gown riding up, revealing the bandages across her midsection. She crawled toward the corner of the room, her fingernails scratching at the floor.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, her forehead pressed against the cold wall. "I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry, Mama."
She looked crazy. Her hair was matted with sweat, her eyes were wide and vacant, and she was rocking back and forth. The trauma had snapped the last thread of her composure. She wasn't the strong girl who had survived Mikael’s basement anymore.

The door opened again, and a nurse rushed in, alerted by the monitor’s frantic beeping. She saw Lyara on the floor and gasped.

"Sir, you need to leave," the nurse said to Silas. "She’s having a breakdown."

"She’s fine," Silas said, stepping over Lyara as if she were a piece of trash. "She’s just realizing the truth. Let me know when the sedation wears off. We have a car waiting."

Silas walked out.

The nurse knelt beside Lyara, trying to lift her. "Honey, come back to bed. You’re going to hurt yourself."
Lyara didn't feel the nurse’s hands. She only felt the silence of the room. She looked at the blood on her fingernails—dried, dark crust from the cottage—and she started to laugh. It was a low, bubbling sound that turned into a hysterical cackle.

"He’s coming," Lyara whispered to the nurse. "The king is coming back to his tomb."

"Who’s coming, dear?"

"He’s going to fix me. He’s going to put me back together so he can break me again. Don't you see? It’s a cycle. The price of fame is blood, and I’m all out of it."

The nurse signaled for help. Two orderlies entered the room. They lifted Lyara, who didn't fight them. She was a ragdoll. They placed her back on the bed and strapped her wrists down to prevent her from ripping out the new IV lines.

"I need five of Versed!" the doctor shouted as he entered.

Lyara watched the needle approach. She didn't flinch. She welcomed it. She wanted the darkness. She wanted to go back to the coma, back to the nothingness where there were no Roosevelts.

As the drug entered her system, her vision began to blur. The white room started to melt.

But even as she drifted off, she heard a voice. Not the nurse’s voice. Not the doctor’s.

It was Mikael.

He wasn't in the room, but he was in her head.

"Rest now, my love," the voice whispered. "The world is a cruel place for someone as soft as you. But don't worry. I’ve built a cage where the world can't touch you. I’ve built a place where you will never have to choose again."

Lyara’s heart rate slowed. Her breathing became shallow. She fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep, but her face remained twisted in a mask of grief.

In her dreams, she was back at her house. The sun was shining, and the air smelled like lilies. Her mother was laughing, and Jacob was handing her a bouquet of sunflowers. But when she reached out to take them, the flowers turned into snakes, and the sun turned into a cold, black moon.

She woke up hours later to a dark room.