Chapter 34: Loud Silence
Inside the study, the heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight, blocking out the morning sun and leaving the room drowning in thick, shadowy gray light.
Kian sat behind his massive mahogany desk.
He didn’t look like a successful businessman. He didn’t look like the polished husband who gave calm press conferences.
His black tie was yanked loose, hanging limply around his unbuttoned collar. The sleeves of his crisp white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the faint, pale scars running along his forearms.
A thick crystal glass rested near his right hand, half-filled with amber whiskey, completely untouched.
The ice inside had melted moments ago, leaving the liquid pale and thin. Between his index and middle fingers, a single cigarette burned down, a long line of dark gray ash hovering right over the edge of an glass tray.
He didn’t move. He didn’t drink. He just sat there, staring blankly at the dark screen of his turned-off laptop.
He was quiet. Unnaturally quiet.
When Aaron’s men had hit the estate, Kian hadn’t panicked. When he arrived to find his guards beaten and the guest house empty, he hadn’t screamed or thrown things. He had simply walked into his office, closed the heavy oak door, and sat down.
His mind was working with a cold, flat focus. He was breaking down every single second of the morning, turning the events over in his head like a puzzle that refused to line up right.
He had miscalculated Aaron Kazarov. He had expected money, political pressure, or legal threats.
He hadn’t expected a direct, crude assault on his own property. He had let his guard down because he thought Aaron was a businessman who played by the rules of high society.
That was a mistake. A simple, stupid mistake.
He tapped his finger against the wood, a tiny bit of gray ash falling onto the desk.
Then, his thoughts drifted. They didn’t go to the money, or the Kingston board members who would undoubtedly call him within the hour, or the press currently surrounding his front gates.
They went to Isabella.
He remembered her face when she stood beside Aaron. When she tossed that useless ring to him.
’I’m divorcing you.’
She hadn’t yelled. She hadn’t cried or begged him to explain why he had lied to her. She had just looked at him with those useless, cloudy green eyes and spoken with a flat, terrifying finality.
And then she had walked away with Aaron. She had let another man wrap a coat around her shoulders. She had let another man touch her face, and she hadn’t pulled away. She had leaned into him.
Kian’s jaw tightened slightly, a sharp knot forming in his chest.
It didn’t make sense.
Isabella loved him. She had loved him for six years. She was timid, weak, and completely dependent on him.
She was supposed to stay in that house, waiting for him to give her a crumb of attention, forgiving him every single time he pushed her aside because she had nowhere else to go.
She wasn’t supposed to look at another man. She wasn’t supposed to hold onto someone else’s arm like he was her sanctuary.
He brought the cigarette to his lips, taking a long, slow drag, his dark eyes narrowing into the shadows of the room.
Why was he thinking about this?
It was stupid. It was completely useless.
Isabella was gone. That was the point of all this, wasn’t it? He had her father’s empire. He had the shares, the land, the banks, the power.
He had spent years setting up the board, taking over her father’s assets piece by piece until Lance Kingston was dead and Isabella was left with nothing but a blind eye and a lonely bed.
She was a burden. A rich, spoiled girl he had been forced to babysit and pretend to love.
Now she was out of his house, out of his life, and he didn’t have to put on the act anymore. He was free to live his life without pretending to care if her tea was warm enough or if her eyes hurt from the light.
He should be happy. He should be pouring himself another glass and celebrating.
So why did the room feel so quiet? Why did the air in the house feel cold, like someone had dragged all the life out of the walls and left behind an empty shell?
Kian crushed the glowing butt of the cigarette into the glass tray, grinding it down until the paper tore and the ash went completely black.
He didn’t like the feeling. He hated it. Feelings were messy. They made people slow, stupid, and vulnerable.
He leaned back in his leather chair, staring up at the dark ceiling, letting his mind drift back to the beginning. Back to the time before he was a husband, before he was a CEO, back when his life was simple.
Eight years ago, Kian didn’t have a name. He had a number and a set of instructions.
He had grown up in a cold, grey orphanage on the outskirts of the city, a place where children were head-counted every morning and forgotten by nightfall.
A quiet man with gray hair had bought him out of the system when he was twelve, taking him to a secluded compound in the mountains.
There, Kian learned how to hold his breath for two minutes, how to fire a handgun without leaving a fingerprint, and how to stop a man’s heart with a short, thin needle.
He didn’t hate the life. He didn’t love it either. It was just work. He killed people because he was ordered to, and he slept fine at night because he didn’t view his targets as human beings. They were just names on a piece of paper.
When he turned twenty-four, he decided he was done. He had saved enough money to buy his way out, but his handler had called him into a dimly lit office for one last talk.
"I have a retirement gift for you," the old man had said, sliding a thick brown folder across the polished wooden desk. "A permanent position. High pay, zero risk, full legal immunity."
Kian hadn’t touched the folder. "I told you I’m out."
"Look at the file first."
Kian opened it. Inside was a picture of a girl.