Something is wrong.
Liam feels it the moment he steps into the penthouse kitchen at 6 AM. The coffee is made—Isla's been here. But she's not here now. And the air feels wrong. Charged. Like before a storm.
He finds her in her room.
Door open. Lights on. She's sitting on the floor, back against the bed, knees pulled to her chest. Fully dressed from last night. Eyes red-rimmed and empty.
She didn't sleep.
" Isla."
She doesn't respond. Doesn't move. Just stares at the wall like he's not there.
He crosses the room. Lowers himself to the floor beside her. Not touching. Just present.
"Isla. Talk to me."
Her lips part. Close. Part again.
"Forty-eight hours."
"What?"
She turns. Looks at him. And for the first time since he met her, there's no wall. No defense. Just raw, bleeding terror.
"I have forty-eight hours to tell you something. Or he does."
Ice slides down his spine. "Kaelen."
She nods. Once.
Liam's jaw tightens. "Tell me."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can."
"No." Her voice breaks. "You don't understand. If I tell you—if you know—you'll look at me differently. You'll—" She stops. Swallows. "You'll leave."
He should say something reassuring. Something safe. But Liam Blackwood doesn't make promises he can't keep.
"I don't know what I'll do," he says quietly. "Because I don't know what it is. But I know that whatever he's holding over you—it's worse if I hear it from him."
She stares at him. Tears spill over. She doesn't wipe them.
"Eight years ago," she whispers. "I was seventeen."
He waits.
"My father... he had a business partner. A man named Mercer. Kaelen's father." She stops. Breathes. "They moved money. I didn't understand what kind. I just knew that calls came in and I answered them and said whatever they told me to say."
Liam's stomach turns.
"I sat in an office. Took messages. Lied to people who called asking where their money was." Her voice is flat now. Dead. "Kaelen was there. Every day. He gave me candy. Called me 'little one.' Told me I was helping. And I believed him. Because I was seventeen and stupid and my father needed this job and if I was good, everything would be okay."
The room is silent.
"One day, a man called. Different from the others. Scared. Desperate. He said he was going to lose everything—his house, his family, his son." She closes her eyes. "I put him on hold. Asked Kaelen what to say. He told me to say Mr. Mercer wasn't available. To take a message and forget the call."
Liam can't breathe.
"That man called three more times. I took three more messages. And then he stopped calling." She opens her eyes. Looks at him. "Years later, I found out who he was. Found out he killed himself six months after those calls. Found out his son spent the next decade rebuilding from nothing."
She reaches into her pocket. Pulls out a folded letter.
"This was in my father's things. Unsent. Addressed to a man I never met."
She holds it out.
Liam takes it. Reads.
I'm sorry. I didn't know what they would do. I didn't know it would cost you everything. If I could take it back—
The letter stops there.
His hands are shaking. He doesn't remember the last time his hands shook.
"That man's name," Isla whispers, "was Alexander Blackwood."
The name hits him like a physical blow.
His father.
His father.
"You." His voice doesn't sound like his own. "You answered the phones. You took the messages. You—"
"I didn't know." She's crying now. Hard. "I didn't know what they were doing. I didn't know he would—I was a child, Liam, I was a child and I didn't—"
"You were there." He stands. Steps back. Away from her. "You were there. You heard him. You heard my father beg for help and you put him on hold and you—"
"I didn't know!"
"That makes it better?" His voice rises. Cracks. "He called four times. Four times, Isla. And no one helped him. No one. He came home that night and he looked at me and I was twelve years old and I didn't know it was the last time I'd ever see him sober."
She's on her feet now. Reaching for him.
He steps back again.
"Liam, please—"
"Don't." His voice is ice. "Don't touch me. Don't—" He stops. Breathes. "You have forty-eight hours. You used twelve."
"What?"
"Thirty-six hours left." He moves to the door. "Use them however you want. But I can't—I can't look at you right now."
He leaves.
The door doesn't slam. It closes quietly. Which is worse.
Isla stands alone in the center of her room, hands hanging empty at her sides, knowing she just lost the only good thing that's happened to her in eight years.
She was right.
He left.
---
Liam doesn't go far.
He stands in the hallway, back against the wall, eyes closed. His heart is pounding. His hands are still shaking. His father's voice echoes in his head—not the drunk version, not the broken version, but the version from before. The version that tucked him in and promised everything would be okay.
Liam, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to fix everything.
He didn't fix anything.
He died.
And the girl who answered the phones—the woman he married, the woman he was starting to—she was there. She heard him. She put him on hold.
His phone buzzes.
Harry.
He answers. Doesn't speak.
"Liam? You there?"
"Yeah."
"You sound like shit. What happened?"
Liam opens his eyes. Stares at the ceiling.
"I married a woman who watched my father die."
Silence. Then Harry's voice, careful: "Tell me everything."
So he does. All of it. The balcony. The restaurant. Kaelen. The letter. The calls.
When he finishes, Harry is quiet for a long moment.
"You know what I'm going to say."
"Don't."
"She was seventeen, Liam."
"I know how old she was."
"Do you? Because it sounds like you're blaming a child for what adults did."
Liam's jaw tightens. "She answered the phones."
"She answered phones. She didn't move money. She didn't ruin anyone. She was a kid who trusted the wrong people." Harry pauses. "I'm not saying you have to forgive her today. I'm not saying it doesn't hurt. But if you walk away from this—from her—without thinking, you're going to regret it."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to remember that your mother hid gambling debts from me for two years. And I stayed. Not because it didn't hurt. Because I needed her more than I needed to be right."
The line goes quiet.
Liam stares at Isla's closed door.
Thirty-six hours left.
He doesn't know what he's going to do.
---
Across the city, Kaelen Mercer watches the sun rise over Manhattan. His phone buzzes.
She told him.
He smiles.
"Good girl," he murmurs. "Now the real game begins."
He types a reply:
Send the files. Every call. Every message. I want Blackwood to hear his father's voice begging.
And then I want him to hear hers, telling him no one was available.
He sets down the phone.
Thirty-six hours.
Plenty of time to destroy them both.