Chapter Twenty-Three: The Confession That Killed
The anger didn't last.
It flared hot and bright for a moment, a defiant spark born from humiliation and grief—but it had nothing to feed on. Rowan's absence was a vacuum, and fire cannot survive in a void. The anger suffocated, leaving behind something far worse: a desperate, gnawing need for answers.
I couldn't live like this. I couldn't keep replaying memories and conversations, dissecting every smile and silence, wondering which moment I had ruined everything. I needed to know. Even if the truth destroyed me, at least it would end the uncertainty.
So I called him.
Once.
No answer.
Again.
Still nothing.
A third time. A fourth. Each unanswered ring scraped my nerves raw, each second stretching unbearably long. My hands were shaking so badly I had to grip the edge of my desk to steady myself.
On the fifth try, he picked up.
There was no greeting. No sigh. No indication that he was surprised or annoyed.
Just the sound of his breathing—slow, heavy, controlled. As if he'd been expecting this. As if he'd already prepared himself for what he was about to do.
"Why?" The word tore out of me before I could stop it, a broken sound, half sob, half plea. "Rowan… please. Just tell me why. What did I do?"
"You didn't do anything."
His voice was flat. Empty. It wasn't the voice that had murmured my name in the dark or laughed softly at my clumsiness. This voice belonged to a stranger. To a judge reading a sentence that had already been decided.
"If I didn't," I whispered, my throat burning, "then why are you doing this? Why are you treating me like I'm nothing? Like I'm… like I'm some disgusting mistake you're trying to erase?"
The silence that followed was unbearable.
It stretched on and on, thick and suffocating. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding violently in my ears, each thud louder than the last. My chest hurt. My lungs felt too small.
Finally, he spoke.
"It was never about you, Aira."
The words should have brought relief. They should have softened the blow.
They didn't.
"Then what was it about?" I cried, desperation flooding my voice. "Tell me! I deserve that much, Rowan. I deserve the truth!"
Another pause. Then something in his tone shifted.
It didn't grow warmer.
It sharpened.
"You want the truth?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," I breathed. "Please."
"You were a lesson."
The world tilted.
"A… a what?" My fingers dug into the desk so hard my nails ached.
"A lesson in consequences," he said, each word deliberate, measured, merciless. "My sister, Lyanna… she loved a man who didn't exist. She believed in lies dressed up as devotion. She trusted him completely."
My chest tightened painfully.
"She gave him her heart," Rowan continued, voice darkening, "and he used it to destroy her. The betrayal hollowed her out. By the time she realized what she'd lost… there was nothing left inside her worth saving."
My breath stuttered. "Rowan… I'm so sorry," I whispered. "But what does that have to do with us?"
"Us?" He let out a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh. There was no humor in it. Only bitterness. "There was no 'us.' There was an experiment."
The word slammed into me like a physical blow.
"I wanted to understand," he went on coldly. "I wanted to feel what she felt. To see if someone like you—innocent, trusting, so painfully desperate for love—could be led to the same edge."
I felt dizzy. The room seemed to spin, the walls blurring. I clutched the desk harder, terrified my legs would give out.
"You… pretended?" My voice was barely audible. "All of it? The flowers… the gifts… Lyanna's flowers…"
The realization made me nauseous.
"You were using her memory to hurt me?"
"I was using you to understand her pain," he corrected, clinical and precise. "To recreate it. The devotion. The blind trust. And then the withdrawal. The distance. The coldness. The moment when you realize the love you built your world around was never real."
A sharp ringing filled my ears. My vision tunneled. I wanted to drop the phone, to scream, to crawl out of my own skin.
"So this was revenge?" I shouted, hysteria breaking loose. "On me? For something I never did? I didn't know her! I didn't hurt her! What was my crime?"
"Your last name," he said calmly.
The simplicity of it was terrifying.
"My… what?"
"Grace," he replied. "You are a Grace. Your father. Your brother. Their hands are not clean in what happened to my family. To Lyanna."
I stopped breathing.
"You were the perfect vessel," Rowan continued. "A Grace finally experiencing what it's like to be used. To be discarded. Poetic justice."
The logic was monstrous. Twisted. And yet horrifyingly complete.
I wasn't a person to him. I was a symbol. A punishment delivered to a bloodline. Collateral damage in a war I hadn't even known existed.
"No," I sobbed. "No, Rowan, please. Don't do this. We can fix this. I don't care about the past. I don't care who my family is. I love you."
My voice broke entirely. I hated myself for begging, but I couldn't stop. I was unraveling.
"I love you," I repeated, as if saying it enough times could resurrect what we'd had. "Please. Don't leave me like this."
The silence that followed was worse than any scream.
It swallowed me whole.
"You don't love me," he said at last, and for the first time, his voice sounded tired. Empty. "You love the man I created for you. That man doesn't exist."
"He does!" I cried. "I saw him. I felt him. You can't tell me he wasn't real!"
"I can," he said quietly. "Because I built him."
I was shaking violently now, tears blinding me.
"Please," I whispered. "I'll do anything. Just don't end it like this. Don't erase us."
Another pause.
This one felt final.
"Goodbye, Aira."
The line went dead.
The phone slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a dull, hollow sound. I followed it, collapsing onto the cold linoleum, curling into myself like a wounded animal.
The sobs that tore through me were silent. My body convulsed, gasping for air that refused to come. My chest burned. My throat ached.
He hadn't just left me.
He had destroyed the reality I'd lived in.
Every gentle smile. Every protective touch. Every whispered promise under the stars. Every moment I'd believed I was safe—carefully engineered. A performance. A surgeon's precise incision, made not to heal, but to study how deeply he could cut.
My crime was my name.
My sin was my blood.
My punishment was to be used as a living tribute to a dead girl's ghost.
And the worst part—the part that shattered me beyond repair—was the absence of cruelty in his voice at the end.
There was no rage. No hatred.
Only completion.
The experiment was over.
The subject had experienced the required pain.
And the scientist had walked away—without ever looking back.