The heavy leather seats of the luxury sedan didn't offer comfort; they felt like the walls of a moving coffin. The tinted windows completely neutralized the bright afternoon sun, plunging the interior into a dim, amber shadow that made the bustling city outside look like a distant, fading memory.
I kept my back pressed hard against the door, my arms locked around Anna like a vice. She let out a tiny, soft sigh against my collarbone, her small cheek warm through the fabric of my shirt. Every shallow breath she took was a ticking clock in my head. "Stay asleep, baby. Please, just stay asleep." Across from me, Charlie didn't move. He had taken off his sunglasses, and his dark eyes were fixed on my face with a terrifying, unblinking intensity. He looked like a man who had pulled a ghost out of the ground and was waiting for it to dissolve back into dust.
"Seven years," Charlie whispered. His velvety voice cracked slightly, a low, ragged sound that stripped away the polished, untouchable aura of the global idol the world saw on billboards. "I spent two of those years staring at a white wall in a clinic because my mind couldn't accept that you were ashes. Junhoo nearly drank himself to death because of the weight of that warehouse. And all this time... you were breathing."
I kept my expression entirely dead. I didn't let my gaze flicker; I didn't let my hands tremble. I had spent nearly a decade learning how to shrink, how to take up less space, and how to turn my face into a completely unreadable mask. The boy who used to scramble to please everyone, the manager who cried in the stairwells of the agency, had died long before that warehouse ever caught fire.
"The flames weren't fast enough, Charlie," I said, my voice flat, empty, and devoid of the ancient adoration that used to consume me when I listened to his music. "That's all."
A slow, chilling smile crept across Charlie's lips—an expression full of a dark, predatory amusement that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. "You faked your death. You burned your entire existence to the ground just to tear yourself away from us. From me."
He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine with a lethal, obsessive promise. "But you can't outrun your shadow, "my love ". No matter how many times you die, you will always belong to me."
Slowly, his gaze drifted down from my face, landing directly on the sleeping bundle in my arms. The dangerous amusement in his eyes instantly fractured, replaced by a raw, agonizing realization that made his breathing hitch.
He knew exactly who she was.
"Anna," Charlie murmured, his voice trembling as he reached out a long, elegant hand. His fingers hovered just millimeters away from her tiny, curled fist. "You took her. The baby the agency said didn't survive the facility transfer... you smuggled her out. You've been raising our daughter in the dark."
Before his fingers could brush against her skin, I shifted my weight, burying Anna deeper into my chest and using my shoulder as an impenetrable wall between them. My knuckles turned deathly pale against her small jacket.
"She is my daughter," I whispered, the words carrying a lethal, quiet finality. "She doesn't know this city. She doesn't know your name. And she is never going to."
Charlie's hand remained suspended in the air for a fraction of a second before he slowly pulled it back, clenching his fist. The vulnerability that had flashed across his features vanished, replaced by the cold, unyielding calculation of a man used to getting exactly what he wanted.
"You're in no position to dictate terms, **my love**," Charlie purred, leaning forward until his shadow completely enveloped me. "You are legally dead. If I let you walk out of this car, you don't exist to the law. But if the media gets a single glimpse of your face, the entire foundation of the Venzagrase empire fractures. My family will find out. The matriarch will find out."
He leaned in closer, his breath a cold chill against my ear.
"And we both know that if my mother realizes the boy she ordered to be incinerated is still breathing—and holding the child she wanted gone—she won't hesitate to finish the script she wrote seven years ago. If you want Anna to keep breathing, you do exactly what I say."
The mention of the matriarch struck me like a physical blow, the phantom scent of smoke and the memory of locked warehouse doors rushing back to suffocate me. He was right. I was trapped in a cage of my own survival.
The car suddenly slowed down, the tires crunching over heavy gravel. I looked out the tinted window as the vehicle passed through a pair of massive, imposing iron gates. The security guards bowed deeply as the sedan rolled into a secluded, heavily guarded private estate on the outskirts of the capital.
The heavy gates groaned shut behind us, locking out the city, locking out the sun, and sealing Anna and me back inside the lions' den.
Charlie slid his sunglasses back over his eyes, the flawless, untouchable mask of the idol sliding perfectly back into place.
"Welcome home, "my love "," he whispered, his voice a dark, velvet caress that turned the air in my lungs to ash. "Let's go inside."