Chapter 15: The Ghost at the Feast
The fragile, dangerous truce of the bedroom shattered with the rising sun. Silas was gone when I woke, the sheets on his side cold. The only evidence of the night was the lingering ache between my legs and the profound, unsettling emptiness in the space beside me. It was as if it had been a dream, a fevered illusion conjured by loneliness and hormones.
But the change was immediate. A new guard was posted outside my door—not to keep me in, but to keep others out. Clara's schedule became slightly less rigid, her demeanor holding a new, grudging respect. The household staff looked at me differently. I was no longer just the vessel; I was the woman who spent the night in the master's bed. My status had been irrevocably altered.
Silas himself was more present, his attention a tangible, heavy weight. He began taking his meals with me, the conversations a strange blend of corporate strategy and pointed inquiries about the baby's movements. It was a bizarre domesticity, a twisted parody of a happy expecting couple. We were playing house atop a powder keg.
The peace, such as it was, lasted for two weeks.
I was in the library, attempting to lose myself in a novel, my hand absently stroking my stomach where the baby was performing its evening gymnastics, when I heard the commotion from the main hall.
It was a man's voice, raised in anger, slurred and familiar in a way that sent a jolt of pure, undiluted terror through me.
"Where is he? Where's my fucking father?"
Kaelen.
My book slipped from my numb fingers, thudding to the carpet. He wasn't in Switzerland. He was here. The ghost had returned to the feast.
I crept to the library door, peering through the crack. He stood in the grand foyer, leaning heavily against the marble banister. He looked terrible. Thinner than I remembered, his handsome face gaunt and pale, his eyes burning with a feverish, unstable light. He was back, but he was not healed. He was broken, and that made him infinitely more dangerous.
Levi was trying to calm him, his voice a low, placating murmur. "Mr. Kaelen, please. Your father is not at home. Let me get you some tea, you're not well—"
"I'm perfectly well!" Kaelen roared, shoving the butler away with a surprising force that sent the older man stumbling. "I've been cured! Locked away and pumped full of shit until I was a good little boy! Well, I'm back. And I want to see my father. And I want to see her."
The way he said "her" turned my blood to ice.
"Her?" Levi asked, feigning ignorance.
"The doctor!" Kaelen spat, his voice dripping with venom. "The pretty little doctor who couldn't keep her hands to herself. The one who's shacked up in my house, living my life."
So he knew. Silas's perfectly controlled narrative had ruptured. Kaelen knew I was here.
Before I could retreat, his wild, bloodshot eyes scanned the hallway and landed on me through the cracked door. His expression contorted from anger into something truly monstrous—a grotesque mask of betrayal, hatred, and a dawning, horrific comprehension.
"You," he breathed, the word a poison arrow.
He staggered toward the library. Levi tried to intercept him, but Kaelen shoved him aside again, his strength fueled by a manic rage.
He threw the door open, and there we were. Face to face for the first time since the basement. Since the fire. Since my death.
The air left my lungs. I was frozen, trapped in the gaze of my murderer. The memory of the flames licked at my skin.
His eyes dropped to my stomach, to the obvious, undeniable swell of my pregnancy. The confusion on his face was brief, replaced by a slow, sickening realization. He did the math. The night of his birthday. My presence here. My pregnant state.
He thought the child was his.
A raw, broken sound escaped him, something between a laugh and a sob. "You… you lying bitch." He took a stumbling step closer, the smell of stale alcohol and sweat washing over me. "You did this. You trapped me. You told Liana it was nothing, that you were just helping… and all along you were planning this."
His logic was twisted, paranoid, and utterly predictable. He was rewriting history to fit his victim narrative.
"Kaelen, it's not what you think—" I started, my voice a terrified whisper.
"Don't!" he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. "Don't you dare lie to me! You saw your chance, didn't you? A vulnerable Sullivan. A way to claw your way out of the gutter and into our money. You're no better than Liana. You're worse!"
He lunged for me then, his hands clawing for my shoulders. I stumbled backward, my heart seizing, my arms instinctively wrapping around my stomach to protect the baby.
My babies. Lysander. Lyra. He's going to kill them again.
The primal, maternal terror was absolute. It overrode everything.
"Get away from me!" I shrieked, scrambling behind an armchair.
"You ruined everything!" he raged, circling the chair like a rabid animal. "You came between me and Liana! You drove her away with your… your scheming! This is your fault! All of it!"
His words were a chaotic jumble, but they struck with the precision of a scalpel. He was unraveling, and his madness was a vortex threatening to pull me under.
"Kaelen. Stop."
The voice was not loud, but it cut through the chaos like a whip. Silas stood in the library doorway, his expression a glacial mask of fury. He must have come home. He must have heard the shouting.
Kaelen whirled around, pointing a shaking finger at me. "Father! She's here! The doctor! She's pregnant! She's trying to say it's mine! She's trying to steal from us!"
Silas's eyes flicked to me, ensuring I was unharmed, before returning to his son. His gaze was pitiless. "The child is not yours, Kaelen."
The blunt, cold statement seemed to baffle Kaelen more than any denial. "What? But… the timing… she was in my room…"
"The child is mine," Silas stated, his voice flat and final.
The silence that followed was deafening. Kaelen stared at his father, his mouth agape, as the new, horrific truth dawned on him. His father. And the woman he despised. Together. His inheritance, his place, his very identity, was being systematically erased and rewritten before his eyes.
The anger drained from his face, replaced by a look of utter, devastated betrayal. He looked from Silas to me, his eyes wide with a child's incomprehensible pain.
"Yours?" he whispered, the word breaking. "You… and her?"
He took a staggering step back, shaking his head as if to clear it. The fight had gone out of him, leaving only a hollow shell.
"I see," he said, his voice suddenly quiet, eerily calm. "I see how it is."
He looked at me one last time, and the hatred in his eyes was so pure, so absolute, it was a physical blow.
Then he turned and walked out of the library, his shoulders slumped, a broken king leaving his throne room.
Silas watched him go, his face unreadable. He didn't go after him. He turned to me.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his tone clinical.
I couldn't speak. I could only nod, my body trembling uncontrollably.
The confrontation was over. Silas had asserted his dominance, defended his claim. But as I stood there, shaking in the aftermath, I knew with a sickening certainty that this wasn't over.
I had seen the look in Kaelen's eyes. This hadn't broken him. It had forged him in a new, more terrible way. He had a focus for his hatred now. A true enemy.
Me. And the child I carried.
The ghost was no longer just a ghost. He was a specter of vengeance, and he was now haunting the halls of his own home, waiting for his moment to strike. The game had just become a three-player match. And the most unstable player had nothing left to lose.