The night she ran, the storm followed.
Wind clawed at the trees, rain slashed across the windows, and somewhere in the distance a car engine screamed into the dark.
By the time dawn broke, the Hale mansion stood in eerie silence.
The servants whispered among themselves. No one dared to ask where Mrs. Hale had gone. No one dared to mention the broken vase near the doorway, or the trail of wet footprints leading out into the rain.
They had all learned one thing over the years:
You don't speak when Damien Hale is listening.
He stood in the foyer, his shirt sleeves rolled up, hair disheveled not from worry, but from fury restrained to elegance.
The vase shards glittered near his shoes like fallen stars.
"She left," he said quietly.
His aide, Cole, shifted uneasily by the stairs. "We… found her car abandoned near the highway, sir. No sign of her after that. Should I..."
"No." Damien's voice was soft. Too soft. "She'll come back."
He stepped over the broken glass and picked up one of her scarves a pale blue silk one she always wore when she was nervous. He ran it between his fingers, a small smile curving his lips.
"She always does."
But the words didn't sound like conviction. They sounded like memory.
And for the first time, that memory bit back.
In her absence, the mansion felt wrong.
The curtains hung still, the air cold and hollow. Even the sunlight that filtered in seemed reluctant, as if afraid to touch what remained of her presence.
He sat in her favorite chair, the one near the piano, and stared at the untouched keys.
For hours.
Ayla's perfume lingered faintly jasmine and something warmer, something human and it irritated him, because it meant she had existed here. Truly existed.
His knuckles whitened. "Ungrateful woman," he muttered. "After everything…"
He stood abruptly, pacing. "She thinks she can disappear? Just like that?"
The mask cracked.
His hand lashed out, sending a framed photograph crashing to the floor. The glass splintered across Ayla's smiling face the one taken on their wedding day, when she still believed the lie.
For a moment, Damien's expression twisted pain, rage, something darker. Then, just as quickly, it was gone. The perfect calm returned.
He took a slow breath. Straightened his cuffs. Smiled at his reflection in the fractured glass.
"Run as far as you can, Ayla," he whispered.
"I'll still find you."
Outside, thunder rolled across the sky.
And somewhere miles away in a cheap motel off a forgotten road Ayla sat curled on a bed, clutching her mother's letter, trembling not from the cold, but from the knowledge that the storm she'd escaped…
wasn't done chasing her.