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William

CHAPTER THIRTY

Weeks Later

UNITED STATES

“We need to talk,” Athanasios says, entering my office at our hospital, with L. J. in tow.

I was already set to leave. I’ve been working myself to exhaustion, but to remain the best at what I do, I need rest too. My plan is to come back in a few hours, though—there’s so much to do, and keeping busy is what keeps me moving forward.

“I’m heading home,” I say, with no desire for conversation.

“No. You have to hear us out—or rather, see something.”

I glance at Athanasios, wondering if this is about Brooklyn Foster? 1 , the patient whose life he saved a few days ago by bringing her out of a coma. As pleased as I am by my friends’ achievements, I’m not in any frame of mind to celebrate. For over a year now, my life has sunk into a deep, dark obsession: finding Taylor.

I see L. J. pull a laptop from his backpack and place it on my desk. Then, after searching through some images, he points to the screen.

At first, I look at a white-haired man in a polo shirt and shorts, walking around a marina, apparently on some Southeast Asian Island. It’s no surprise to see it’s my father. Over a year ago, he filed for divorce from my mother, then vanished off the face of the earth—only calling my grandmother sporadically to check on her health.

My mother, distressed about how New York’s high society would judge her newly single status, has secluded herself in near exile, but I think it’s for the best. She’s been drinking heavily, though, so I do worry a bit.

“Who he’s with is no concern of mine,” I say, dismissing the image after only a few seconds. There’s a woman holding his hand, evidently quite young if you look at her body, clad in a lightweight, strappy white sundress. I can’t see her face—she’s wearing a huge hat, likely to protect her very pale skin from the sun.

“Keep scrolling, William,” Athanasios says, and the tone of his voice—more than the words—puts me on alert.

I tap the laptop’s keyboard, and the second photo shows me a glimpse of the woman’s chin and nose, but it’s in the third shot, when I spot those locks of uniquely red hair—the same that’s haunted my nightmares for over a year without her—that I feel my mind shatter.

I keep going through the pictures until I find one that’s a perfect close-up of her face.

My subconscious blocks everything else out. I focus solely on the evidence that she’s alive. For a few seconds, it mends my broken heart.

Then, brutal reality hits hard.

Taylor is alive, but nothing happened to her.

She wasn’t taken away from me.

She left me.

They were all right, and I was wrong. She ran off with him.

“Say something, for God’s sake,” L. J. says. “You’ve barely been surviving this last year, William. We moved heaven and earth to find her and came up empty. Now that you know where she is, what are you going to do?”

I feel like ice is slicing through me from the inside. “Nothing. She’s alive. My mission is over.” I walk to the window, turning my back on the two of them.

“That’s it? Don’t tell me you’re fine seeing your woman holding hands with your father, for fuck’s sake.”

I spin back around to face them. “She wasn’t my woman. She was an obligation. I felt responsible because I was the last person to see her before she disappeared. Taylor is alive and well—my mission ends here.”

“You’re not even curious how no one found her until now?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I’m going to keep digging,” Athanasios says. “I don’t like unanswered questions.”

“Do as you please. I don’t care anymore,” I say, ending the subject.

They’ve known me too long; sensing I need solitude, they leave without another word.

I grab my phone and call the bastard. He picks up after a few rings. “You left your mother behind, haven’t visited her in over a year for some mistress? You know how much Maryann worried about Taylor. You could’ve at least told her that her companion was all right.”

“Taylor isn’t my mistress. She’s my future wife. And she wants nothing to do with the past. For both of us, only the future matters.”

I hang up and thank God we’re so far apart—otherwise, I might break both their necks with my bare hands.

Then, after a few minutes, a calmer mindset sets in, and I make a decision.

I’m going to get revenge on them both. I’m going to destroy them.

Him, for getting in my way. Her, for being a heartless liar.

1 ? Protagonist of Book 1, The Arrogant’s Surrender