Chapter 98

Chapter 98

Luca also avoided Lena's gaze, dropping his eyes, not daring to look at her directly.

Lucas stared at her coldly. After a long moment, he seemed to finally push down his anger and shifted to an even colder tone: "Fine. Since you've said what you wanted to say, you don't need to go to the Carrow family banquet tonight either."

Lena froze and looked up at him.

"You represent the Davis family, not yourself," Lucas said. "The way you are right now, you'd only make us a laughingstock."

"Grandpa—"

"And Ethan." Lucas cut her off again. "You'd better tell him to stay far away on your own. Otherwise, the Davis family will handle it personally. Whether he lives or dies after that depends on whether he's lucky enough to survive."

That last line drained the color from Lena's face, like a bucket of cold water thrown over her head.

She stared at Lucas for two seconds, then turned and walked away without another word, without the slightest hesitation.

She was afraid that if she stayed, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from saying everything out loud. But what good would that do? The Davis family might fear her, but they would never change who they were because of her. They would only move faster, push harder against Ethan.

She walked down the stairs and out through the front door. The light outside was bright enough to make her squint.

She stood there for a while before the tightness in her chest finally eased a little, and she could breathe again.

Right then, a gray-white car pulled up smoothly in front of her, the engine rumbling low.

The window rolled down.

Ethan was in the driver's seat. He looked up at her, his voice quiet: "Get in."

Lena went still.

She hadn't expected to walk out of the building and find him there — not now, not like this. The sunlight hit the car and caught that clean, sharp shine, and Ethan's face was so completely calm that it pulled at everything she had been holding back upstairs. A stinging rose in her nose.

She didn't move. Instead she asked: "What are you doing here?"

"Picking you up," Ethan said, matter-of-fact.

"Weren't you supposed to be buying a car?"

"Already done." He held out a second set of keys, easy and direct.

Lena looked down at them, slow to register what she was seeing.

"It's yours," Ethan said. "Don't drive your old one anymore."

Her fingertips trembled slightly as she reached out and took the keys. The cold metal pressed into her palm, but instead of clearing her head, it made the ache inside her heavier, almost spilling over.

"Where did you get the money?" She looked at him, exhaustion still sitting in her eyes.

"Saved up," Ethan said, without missing a beat. "Enough for this, and enough to cover whatever else comes next."

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not." His voice was steady. His eyes didn't waver.

Lena looked at him and couldn't find anything to say. Something was caught in her throat.

She had just come downstairs, treated like a chip on the table by the people closest to her. And then she walked outside and someone had driven a car to her door, telling her simply — that one's done, here's a new one.

The gap between those two moments was too wide. It hit somewhere in her chest, like ice and fire arriving at the same time.

Ethan noticed something was off. His eyes stayed on her face, and a faint crease appeared between his brows: "Did he hit you?"

Lena instinctively turned her face away and kept her voice light: "It's nothing."

Ethan didn't say anything. He just looked at the faint mark on the side of her face that hadn't fully faded, and his expression went quiet and dark, a controlled anger underneath.

"Lena."

"What?"

"The Davis family banquet tonight — are you still going?"

Lena held the keys and was quiet for a moment, then shook her head: "No."

Ethan looked at her and didn't ask why right away.

Because he already had a pretty good idea. For her to come downstairs and just throw the whole thing away — there was only one explanation. The Davis family had said something worse up there than last night. Something that had cut deeper.

"Okay," Ethan said. "Then we're not going."

Lena paused at that: "You're not going to ask why?"

"If you don't want to talk about it, I won't ask." He looked at her, his eyes steady and easy. "Whatever they said, you don't have to walk back in there tonight and take any more of it."

She looked at him. The feeling she had been holding down finally shifted — like a string pulled too tight for too long, letting go just a little.

"Ethan."

"I'm here."

"Do you think a person only deserves to be treated well when they're useful?" Her voice was soft, half a question to him, half to herself. "Like the moment someone realizes you have value, they suddenly forget how they used to treat you — and then turn around and act like they always cared."

Ethan listened until she was done, then said: "For them, yes."

"What about for you?"

"Not for me." He said it without hesitation, without any room for doubt.

It was a small thing to say. But it made Lena's eyes sting, a familiar ache rising in her throat.

She turned her head away, not wanting him to see how close she was to losing it, and said quietly: "Let's go. We need to pick up the kids."

"Yeah."

The car pulled out, and neither of them brought up the Davis family again. It was as if that whole heavy conversation had been left behind with every turn of the wheels.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the Carrow estate had already come alive.

Cars were lined up outside, and a crowd had gathered near the entrance — guests who had come early to offer their congratulations. But something was off. Carroll hadn't shown his face, and Carol was nowhere near the front either. Everyone kept the conversation going on the surface, but underneath, people were starting to wonder.

"What's going on? Isn't today Carroll's birthday banquet?"

"That's what I thought. Where is the host?"

"You think it's true, what people have been saying — that Carroll's health is failing?"

"Watch what you say. That's not something to just throw around."

"But if nothing was wrong, why isn't anyone in charge out here?"

The whispers kept coming, layered on top of each other. Nobody knew that out in the back courtyard, the air was far more tense than anything up front — wound so tight it could snap.

Carroll sat in a rattan chair, his face paler than usual, his breathing heavier, a fragility to him that wasn't easy to look at. Across from him sat an older man who had just lifted his fingers from Carroll's wrist. His expression gave nothing away — not worried, not relieved — unreadable.

Carol stood to the side, her nails nearly pressing into her palm, eyes fixed on the man without blinking, barely breathing, as if the smallest sound might disturb something.

Then the old man spoke.

"This is complicated."

Carol's heart dropped: "How serious is it?"

Carroll just smiled faintly, like he had already made his peace with it: "I know my own body. Making it this far is already more than I expected."

"Grandpa." Carol's voice shook. "Don't say that."

Carroll waved her off and kept his eyes on the old man: "Just say it straight. I can handle it."

The old man looked at him for a moment, then smiled slightly: "When I said complicated, I didn't say it was untreatable."

Carol's head came up, a small light coming back into her eyes.

Carroll blinked: "There's a way?"

"There is," the old man said. "But it's not something I can offer."

"Then who can?"

The old man was quiet for a beat, then said the name slowly: "The Preacher."

The room shifted the moment those words landed. Something moved behind Carroll's eyes — complicated, hard to name.

He knew what that name meant. This wasn't some gifted doctor, or someone who got by on a few sharp skills. This was a figure who had become something close to legend over the past few years — spoken about everywhere, but almost never actually seen.

The story was that if he chose to get involved, even the most hopeless cases had a chance.

The trouble was, he never showed himself in public.