Guarding the Virgin

Chapter 22

Lyra’s POV

I didn't remember walking back to my dorm.

One moment I was leaving Ashton standing in the equipment room surrounded by scattered photographs. The next I was sitting on my bed staring at the wall, hands still trembling. Time had folded in on itself, swallowing the minutes between there and here.

The folder from Donovan sat beside me. Evidence of betrayal I couldn't unsee. Photographs and documents that had rewritten my entire existence in the span of one morning.

My father was a criminal. A mafia boss who'd built an empire on blood and violence.

My mother was murdered. Not a car accident. Not fate. Someone had killed her, and my father had been lying about it for fifteen years.

The man I was carrying a child for had been working with the enemy. Meeting with them in parking garages. Selling my secrets. Using me as a weapon against my own family.

Everything I thought I knew about my life had been ripped apart and rearranged into something unrecognizable. I was a stranger in my own story.

Angel found me like that an hour later—frozen, pale, tear tracks dried on my cheeks.

"Lyra?" She dropped her bag by the door, concern flooding her face. "What happened? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I opened my mouth to explain and realized I couldn't.

How do you tell your best friend that your absent father runs a mafia empire? That your mother didn't die in a car accident but was executed by rivals? That you just destroyed the man you might love based on evidence you're no longer sure you believe?

"Ashton and I are done," I said instead. The words felt hollow. Inadequate. "It's over."

Angel sat beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. "What did he do? Did he hurt you? I swear to God, if he—"

"He didn't hurt me. Not physically." My hand drifted to my stomach. "I just found out some things. About him. About my family. And I can't..." I trailed off, unable to finish.

Angel didn't push. She just held me while I stared at nothing and tried to remember how to breathe.

My phone buzzed. Then again. Then again.

I looked at the screen and saw Ashton's name. Message after message piling up.

Please let me explain.

Donovan is lying to you.

You're in danger, Lyra. Please.

I deleted them one by one without responding. Each swipe felt like cutting off a piece of myself, but I kept going until the screen was empty.

I couldn't afford to waver. I'd made my choice.

In the late afternoon, Angel left to get us food. I drifted to the window, watching the parking lot below without really seeing it. Students walked past in groups, laughing about things that seemed impossibly trivial. The world kept moving like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

Until movement caught my eye.

Security guards flanking a familiar figure. Ashton, carrying a small box, walking toward his truck. Even from this distance I could see the tension in his shoulders. The defeat in his posture. He moved like a man carrying a weight far heavier than that box. Everything about him looked broken.

This was my doing. I'd signed the paper that made this happen.

He opened the driver's door and paused.

Looked up at the buildings like he was searching for something.

For me.

Our eyes met. I didn't know how—the distance was too far, the angle was wrong—but somehow I knew he saw me. His face was devastated. Pleading. He raised one hand, not quite a wave. More like a reach. Like he was trying to touch me across the impossible space between us.

My heart clenched so hard I couldn't breathe.

I forced myself to step back from the window.

To look away.

To remember the photographs, the documents, the evidence of his betrayal.

When I looked again, his truck was pulling out of the lot and disappearing down the street.

Gone. Just like that. The man who'd promised to protect me, who'd said he loved me, who'd put his hands on my stomach and sworn he wasn't going anywhere—gone because I'd signed a piece of paper.

I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and let the tears come.

That night, I lay in bed unable to sleep.

Angel was snoring softly in the other bed, blissfully unaware of the storm raging inside my chest. I placed both hands on my stomach, feeling the slight swell that was barely visible yet, and whispered to the life growing inside me.

"I did the right thing. I protected us." My voice was barely audible. "He was lying, and I caught him before he could hurt us worse."

The words sounded hollow in the darkness.

I kept hearing Ashton's voice in the equipment room: If you walk out that door, if you let them separate us, you're doing exactly what the enemy wants.

What if I'd made a terrible mistake?

What if Donovan was the liar and I'd just handed him exactly what he wanted—Ashton removed, myself unprotected, our child vulnerable?

I thought of the way Ashton looked at me when he said he loved me. The raw desperation in his voice. The man who'd beaten Nate half to death to protect me, who'd stopped when I asked him to, who'd given me the choice to stay instead of forcing me to safety.

Would a traitor do those things?

Would a man selling her secrets look at her like she was the only thing in the world worth protecting?

I thought about Donovan's warm smile. His fatherly concern. The way he'd given me answers when everyone else gave me silence.

But I also thought about how convenient it all was. How perfectly the evidence arrived just as I was starting to trust Ashton completely. How Donovan had been positioning himself for months—the helpful benefactor, the concerned mentor, always there when I needed someone to turn to.

He'd known exactly what to say. Exactly what to show me. Exactly how to break me.

Ask him who he really reports to.

The anonymous note. I'd assumed it was about Ashton. But what if it wasn't? What if it was about someone else entirely?

And the text message after I left the equipment room. Smart girl. Stay away from him. I'll be in touch. Who sent that? How did they know so quickly what I'd done?

Too many questions. Too few answers. And now the one person who might have given me the truth was driving away from campus, banned from ever coming back.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall, doubt crawling through my chest like poison.

I wanted to call him. Wanted to hear his voice tell me one more time that it was all a lie, that Donovan had manipulated me, that I could still fix this. Wanted to feel his arms around me, solid and warm and safe.

But I'd deleted his messages. Signed that complaint. And now he was gone.

Tomorrow I'd wake up alone. A baby growing inside me. A father I didn't know. An enemy I couldn't see. And no one left to protect me except a man I was only just beginning to suspect might be the real threat.

I closed my eyes and prayed I'd made the right choice.

But sleep, when it finally came, brought no peace. Only dreams of Ashton's face as I walked away.

And the terrible fear that I'd just destroyed the only person who truly wanted to keep me safe.