2025-06-16 22:22:21Why, you are asking me why? Well!" Diana shrieked, her voice sharp and laced with an icy fury that sliced through Caleb's drunken haze, and when she realised nothing happened he was just a drunk man she scolded. "Get out! Disappear before my brother gets here! He'll completely misunderstand this!"
Caleb blinked, his vision blurring. "What's happening? What happened? Why did you slap me?Where am I?Why disappear?" His words slurred, thick with alcohol and confusion. He tried to push himself up, his body protesting with a fresh wave of aches.
Despite her anger, the sight of his battered state seemed to override her fury, the raw, bleeding gash on his palm, and the swelling rapidly blooming on his face from the bouncer's beating. Her doctor's instincts kicked in, momentarily overriding her panic. She knelt beside him, her brow furrowed with professional concern.
---
"Hold still"" she muttered, pulling a small first-aid kit from a drawer. She dabbed at the blood on his palm, her touch surprisingly gentle. "Nothing happened, alright? I think You were just… you came into the wrong room. And I lashed out. I'm sorry." She sighed, her gaze softening slightly as she met his bewildered eyes. "You clearly need a hospital, but you can't be found here. Not like this."
She worked quickly, cleaning the cut on his hand and applying a bandage, then gently inspecting his bruised face. "Here," she said, finishing. "I've gotten you patched up for now. Take this and leave. Here's my contact information, just in case you want to get it properly checked at the hospital later." She pressed a sleek business card into his uninjured hand.
Caleb clutched the card, still disoriented, and speechless
Diana froze, her eyes darting to the door fear gnawed at her. Her brother, Michael, had been relentlessly watching her, hoping to catch her in any misstep that would justify his own agenda with their father. If he walked in now, her life would be over.
She looked at Caleb’s dazed eyes. "Listen to me again, you need to snap out of it, nothing happened between us, I fixed you up because I couldn't ignore you so don't misunderstand" . "
"But... why, Who? Why ?" The incomplete questions tumbled out, he was lost in the situation, he didn't even know what to say, everything was moving so fast he couldn't make sense of it.
Diana Reed had to think fast. "No question, get out now, hurry!" she urged, her voice low and urgent. She placed her hands on his shoulders, physically pushing him towards the door. "Hurry and get out before my brother or father sees you!"
Still shirtless and dazed, Caleb stumbled into the brightly lit hallway, fumbling with his belt. He clutched his own work jacket in one hand, and in the other, without realizing it, Diana's silk robe, mistaking it for his own shirt. The corridor was long, lined with expensive art. He just needed to get to the service exit.
As he shuffled away, a new set of footsteps approached. Michael, Diana’s brother, rounded the corner, a smirk already forming on his face. Behind him, Mr. Reed, their father, walked with a measured, imposing stride.
"Look, Father! There's a man coming out of Diana's room!" Michael gesture wildly, snapping a photo of Caleb’s retreating, back with his phone. He turned to show his father, but in that brief moment, Caleb, still moving sluggishly, had managed to slip into a service stairwell and disappear.
"Hurry!" Michael ordered his private guards, already pulling up the photo of Caleb he'd just taken. "Look for the man wearing this! Find him!" The guards, well-trained and efficient, fanned out immediately.
Caleb successfully escaped the Drip complex, his drunken state ironically aiding his clumsy evasion. He still didn't remember exactly what had happened. He just knew he had to get home.
On his way, still astride his bike, he spotted a familiar figure in the pre-dawn light: Mr. Reyson, his boss from Drip club, standing by the roadside, looking impatient.
"I was about to go look for you," Reyson grumbled, holding out a white envelope. "Here. This is your payment for the few hours you worked. Don't show your face around here again. You're fired."
Caleb stared at the envelope, then at Reyson’s disgusted face. The words "fired" hit him harder than the blow from the bouncer. Something clicked. He looked down at himself, confirming he was shirtless beneath his open work jacket. He wasn't wearing his shirt; he was clutching a soft, silky fabric that definitely wasn't his. Part of the memory started to return: the tequila, the fall, the blurry faces, the beating. He clutched Diana's card in his hand, a strange mix of confusion and a faint recognition of his predicament beginning to dawn. He remembered being fired, but the events in the room were still a gaping hole.
---
Meanwhile, back in the hotel suite, Mr. Reed turned to Diana, his face stern.
"Who was that young man that just walked out of your suite?" He questioned
"Who?, father are you sure you are not mistaken?" Diana tried to write it off but her brother
Michael eagerly showed his father the blurry side-profile picture of Caleb on his phone.
"He looked so poor, Father," Michael sneered, "and so dirty, I told you but you didn't believe, she sleeps around with different men."
Diana’s gaze hardened. She knew this was Michael’s play to force her hand regarding the arranged marriage. She also knew her father's rules.
"Fine," Diana said, her voice surprisingly steady, considering the tremors in her hands. "You caught me. He is my lover." She met her father's eyes directly. "And I don't want to marry the person you've set me up with. In fact, I don't want to get married at all right now."
Mr. Reed's eyes narrowed. "Find the mysterious man, Michael," he instructed his son, his voice low and dangerous. "If he turns out to be exactly what you thought—give him money, and make him disappear from her life." He turned back to Diana, his expression unyielding. "This is the last warning from me, Diana. By the end of next month, I want you to present the man you intend to marry. Otherwise, you will marry the one we've planned for you."
He delivered the ultimatum, knowing full well that he had just instructed Michael to ensure Caleb would never
be seen near Diana again, thereby forcing her into the pre-arranged marriage.
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Latest Chapter
221
The night had folded softly over Varadele; a silver calm stretched across the city where the Callahan–Fiona Foundation stood, steady and luminous in the dark.Inside, most of the lights were dimmed; only the top floors still glowed faintly, like the last embers of a long day refusing to die out.Aimee sat alone in her office; the documents on her desk looked untouched, though she had been staring at them for hours. The room smelled faintly of coffee and rain. Beyond the glass wall, the city pulsed in quiet rhythm; headlights streaked the wet roads below, dissolving into the night.Her fingers toyed with the edge of a pen, but her mind was somewhere else—on Kasper’s voice, steady and low, echoing from earlier that evening.Welcome aboard, he had said, and something in the way he said it had unsettled her calm. It wasn’t his tone; it was the warmth beneath it, the sincerity he didn’t try to hide.She hadn’t realized how long she’d been staring at nothing until the door clicked open behi
220
The archives of the Callahan–Fiona Foundation were a study in organized chaos, a labyrinth of white files and black binders housed deep beneath the main corporate tower. Aimee sat at a large mahogany table, the only light source a small, focused lamp casting a yellow pool over the documents. She was officially reviewing the pre-merger humanitarian expenditures, a task she had volunteered for to better understand the groundwork of the organization. However, her true search was for echoes of the past, for any mention of the woman whose presence in her life had always been a ghost, the worst part of it is even the woman whom she thought was her mother that she was working for turns out to be her mother's friend pretending to her mother so she thought it's best to find more details of what her mother did in the past in order not to make any mistake Aimee turned the page of an annual report from nearly two decades ago, her fingers brushing the brittle paper. The early sections detailed th
219
The morning sun poured through the tall windows of Varadele University, tinting the lecture hall in a soft golden hue. The air buzzed with anticipation. Students, journalists, and scholars filled every seat, some standing at the back, holding cameras or notepads.At the center of the stage stood Dr. Diana Callahan, her silver-streaked hair neatly tied back, her white suit immaculate. She looked poised, but her heart was pounding in a rhythm that echoed both nostalgia and fulfillment.Today marked the end of an era — her final lecture before retirement. The announcement that she would be awarded dual honorary doctorates in Medicine and Ethics had spread across the world. She was now the first woman in Varadele’s history to hold both honors simultaneously.Caleb sat quietly in the front row, a familiar figure among the audience. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes followed every move she made. Time had left gentle marks on his face — faint lines at the corners of his eyes, silver at h
218
Months later A car rolled up the long driveway, its headlights cutting through the mist. Diana, who had been standing by the large bay window of the living room, froze when she recognized the way the door opened lslow, deliberate, cautious.And then, there he was.KJ.He stood under the drizzle, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, his coat soaked, his expression unreadable. The boy who had once run from the shadows now looked like he had walked through them and come out on the other side — older, leaner, and quiet in a way that only pain could teach.For a moment, Diana didn’t move. Then she stepped outside, the rain touching her hair and shoulders.He looked up and met her eyes.“You’re late,” she said softly, trying to hide the quiver in her voice.He smiled faintly. “Traffic was bad,” he murmured and it was such an ordinary answer that Diana couldn’t help it; she let out a small, shaky laugh.They stood there for a long while before she whispered, “He’s inside.”KJ nodded. “I k
217
Diana stood slowly. For the first time in the conversation, she spoke without an edge of control. “Does Aimee know any of this? Does she know who you are?”Cathy’s throat closed. She exhaled with a sound that was closer to grief than to breath. “yes She does . but I could not bring myself to tell her. I thought it kinder to step away. That was the second cowardice. She doesn’t know the real me.”Caleb’s hand, when he reached for the small paper cup, trembled. He had the impression that Cathy’s confession was a wall being dismantled brick by brick that each brick had the grain of a life’s worth of choices. He also felt the precise, simple fact that a human life had been kept from his family’s knowledge.“You should have told us,” Kasper said, voice low. “We could have done something.”“You could have been destroyed,” Cathy whispered. “I could not risk that. I thought silence was shelter.” She laughed a short, humorless laugh. “Shelter for me. Not for you.”For a long while there was on
216
. At night it had been a place of hushed machines and the faint scent of disinfectant. In the morning it was a place where the light came through the high windows and showed dust on the sills, where the cleaners’ carts crept quietly down the hall and the staff moved with rehearsed efficiency. The quiet was less menacing by day; it felt practical and ordinary.Cathy sat in the visitor chair by the small table in the hospital room. The IV drip beside her made a soft, methodical sound. She had declined the offered hospital gown and instead had a plain sweater pulled close to her throat. The skin at her temples was thin; she kept her hands folded in her lap. She had the posture of someone who had learned to make herself small in public. The bruise marks at the line of her wrist from the hospital band were almost faded now.Caleb was awake. He had insisted on seeing her again before she left. He watched her without speaking. Diana hovered near the doorway, her face unreadable. The twins ha
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