Page 211 of Fractured Loyalties
I can’t stand it. I move past her toward the side corridor. The staff move around me, purposeful, trying not to stare, but I can feel it anyway. Like the air is stitched with whispers I can’t hear.
So I cut left, push open the stairwell door, and slip inside, let the door close behind me, and press my back to the wall. The metal is cold through my shirt, grounding me for a moment. My chest still won’t slow.
I want to believe it’s over for now. That Caleb’s retreat means I can go home, lock the door, and drown in my own silence. But I know better. He’ll circle back. He always does.
And worse—Elias will know.
I can feel it in my bones, the way some people feel storms coming. He’ll hear, or Lydia will tell him, or maybe he already knows. He’ll come for me, not with questions but with decisions already made.
And some parts of me twist in two. I don’t know if I want him to or not.
The stairwell feels too tight, too stale. I shove the crash bar on the exit door, and it swings outward, spilling me into daylight.
The street is calm. Too calm. A delivery truck idles at the corner, and the sun glints off the windshield of a parked Civic across the road. Nothing unusual. Nothing threatening.
Except my gut won’t let it go. I scan the sidewalks, the windows above, the stillness that feels staged. I don’t see him. Not yet.
But the weight of his presence is already there, threaded through the air I pull into my lungs.
Caleb is the threat I can name; Elias is the storm I keep walking into anyway.
Chapter 36 – Elias - The Return
The phone buzzes against the desk, dragging me out of a page I haven’t really been reading. The numbers, the names, the contracts—all of it is stacked neat in front of me, and none of it has landed. My mind refuses precision, the way it usually cuts clean through problems. It keeps circling back, not to the work, but to the weak link I should never have let form.
Her.
I should be tightening lines, closing deals, fixing what clients pay me to fix. Instead, I’m caught on the fact that Mara walked out and I didn’t stop her. Not because I respected her choice—but because I thought distance might discipline me. It hasn’t. It’s made me restless. Unmoored.
The phone won’t stop buzzing. Lydia.
I drag it across the desk and answer. “What?”
Her voice slides through, edged with mockery. “You’re welcome. I just saw your woman saved from being cornered in broad daylight.”
The chair creaks under me as I straighten. Every muscle locks. “What happened?”
“She was at the clinic, head down in her papers. Caleb strolled in, tried to play nice. Didn’t last long. He showed his teeth. She showed hers. Pepper spray to the face. Dropped him cold in front of staff and security.”
For a moment, heat flares under my ribs—not anger, not yet. Satisfaction. She fought. She didn’t fold. But it doesn’t erase the fact that he was close enough to try.
“Where is he?”
“Escorted out. He’ll crawl off, plot his next entrance. You know this isn’t finished.”
My hand curls against the desk until the wood protests. Caleb’s persistence doesn’t surprise me. What sticks, sharp as glass, is the thought of Mara standing there—alone, cornered, forced to defend herself while I was sitting here pretending I could focus on balance sheets.
“Keep your eyes on him,” I say. “I’m going to her.”
“You don’t even want the rest?” Lydia needles.
“There’s nothing else I need to hear.”
I hang up before she can savor the last word.
The file slips from the desk as I stand, ignored. The only thing that matters now is Mara.
And if she thinks I’m leaving her in reach of Caleb again, she’s mistaken.
