I Left the Masquerade Pregnant

Chapter 28

The gun catches moonlight like a promise nobody asked for.

Rhys steps into the living room with the casual grace of a man who has been waiting for this moment his entire life, that familiar half-smile playing at his lips while my heart tries to claw its way out of my chest.

"Cozy little reunion you're having here."

Rhys gestures with the weapon toward the laptop still displaying his shell company records.

"I see you've been doing your homework, firefly. I'm almost impressed, though I have to say, the part where you thought you could expose me without consequences was charmingly naive."

"Put the gun down, Rhys." Caspian's voice comes out steady, but I can see his hands shaking at his sides. "Whatever you think you're going to accomplish here, it's not worth destroying what's left of your life."

"What's left of my life?" Rhys laughs, and the sound scrapes against my nerves like broken glass. "That's rich, coming from you. You have no idea what my life has been, cousin. You've been too busy inheriting everything to notice the wreckage you left behind."

"Then tell me. We're here, we're listening, so explain it to me, Rhys. Make me understand."

The request seems to catch Rhys off guard. His smile falters for just a moment before hardening into something more dangerous.

"You want to understand? Fine. Let's start with the part where your father shipped me off to Switzerland because I asked too many questions about my mother."

"I didn't know about that until years later. My father never told me the details of why you left."

"Because it was easier not to know. It's always been easier for you, hasn't it? The golden heir, groomed from birth to take over the empire while the rest of us scrambled for scraps."

Rhys moves closer, and I press my back against the wall, searching for an exit that doesn't exist.

"Do you know what I did while you were learning to run board meetings? I sat in a hotel room in Zurich and watched my mother's funeral on a six-inch screen because nobody in this family would authorize a flight home."

"I'm sorry about your mother. I truly am. But destroying my company, framing me for embezzlement, seducing my wife—none of that brings her back."

"This was never about bringing her back." Rhys's voice drops to something raw and wounded. "This was about making you feel what I felt. The experience of watching everything you love slip through your fingers while the people who were supposed to protect you stand by and do nothing."

"So you decided to take Elara as revenge? She's a person, Rhys, not a chess piece in whatever game you've been playing."

"She was supposed to be mine."

The words land in the room like a grenade, and suddenly Rhys is looking at me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.

"I saw her first, Caspian. At a company gala, before you ever noticed she existed. She was laughing at something a friend said, and I was going to introduce myself that night, work up the courage to ask for her number, maybe actually pursue something real for once in my miserable life."

"Rhys, don't—" I start, but he cuts me off.

"But you got there first. You always got there first. The company, the inheritance, the approval I spent my whole childhood chasing. And then the one woman I actually wanted, and you swooped in like you had every right to everything beautiful in this world."

His grip on the gun tightens.

"I didn't just want to take what was yours, Caspian. I wanted to burn it all down. The way this family burned my life when they exiled me."

"You could have come to me. You could have told me what you were feeling instead of spending years plotting my destruction. We're blood, Rhys. That used to mean something."

"Blood means nothing to the Voss family. Ask my mother. Oh wait, you can't, because she died alone while her own brother refused to acknowledge she existed."

Caspian moves without warning.

He crosses the space between them in two strides, his hand closing around Rhys's wrist, twisting the gun away from center mass.

The weapon discharges into the ceiling, plaster raining down like snow, and then they're grappling—two men who share blood and bone structure and nothing else, fighting over a gun that could end everything.

The gun clatters to the hardwood floor. Both men dive for it. Rhys's fingers close around the grip just as Caspian's fist connects with his jaw.

"Stop," Caspian commands, breathing hard, but Rhys is already rising, already lifting the weapon.

My body moves before my brain can catch up.

The sound of the gunshot is so much louder than I expected—a thunderclap that tears through the room and lodges somewhere in my chest, except it's not just sound, it's sensation, it's fire spreading through my ribcage as I crumple to the floor between them.

"No. No, no, no—" Rhys's voice comes from very far away, horrified and broken. "I didn't mean—she wasn't supposed to—"

I hear footsteps. The door slamming. Rhys running from what he's done.

Then Caspian's face appears above me, his ice-blue eyes swimming with terror, his hands pressing against my chest where the warmth is spreading too fast.

"Elara, stay with me. Stay with me, do you hear me? You're going to be fine, I'm calling for help, just keep your eyes open."

"Milo." The word comes out wet and wrong. "Promise me you'll take care of Milo. If I don't—"

"You're going to be fine. I'm calling for help right now, just keep looking at me."

His phone is pressed to his ear, and I hear fragments of words—ambulance, gunshot, hurry—but everything is going soft around the edges, like someone's slowly turning down the volume on the world.

"Promise me." I grab his wrist with fingers that don't want to cooperate. "Caspian, promise me. He needs his father. He needs you to be there for him the way you couldn't be there for me."

"I promise. I promise I'll take care of him, I'll be there every single day, but you're going to be there too. You're going to watch him grow up, Elara. You're going to see his first steps and his first words and every milestone in between."

"I'm sorry." The words bubble up from somewhere deep. "I'm sorry I believed him. I'm sorry I ran instead of fighting for us."

"Don't apologize to me. You have nothing to apologize for." His voice breaks, tears streaming down his face. "You just took a bullet for me, Elara. You threw yourself in front of a gun, and you want to apologize?"

"I needed you to know." Breathing is getting harder. The fire in my chest is fading into something cold and distant. "Before. In case I don't make it—"

"You're going to make it. The ambulance is coming, I can hear the sirens already, just stay with me a little longer. Please, Elara. I can't lose you. Not now, not after everything we've been through."

The sirens grow louder, cutting through the fog in my head. Red and blue lights paint the walls through the windows, and Caspian's hand finds mine, squeezing so tight it almost hurts.

"I love you," he says, and his voice sounds like it's coming from underwater. "I love you, I've always loved you, even when I was too broken to show it. Please don't leave me. Please don't—"

The words fade into static.

The last thing I hear before the darkness takes me is the ambulance doors, somewhere close, somewhere that might as well be a thousand miles away.

Then the world goes quiet, and I let it take me.