Page 74 of Fallen Empire

If I saw Layla walk in?

I’d know.

She could wear a thousand faces, a million disguises. But I’d recognize her for what she really was—undercover.

She stood out.

But would Koslov?

The elevator dinged. I opened my eyes and stepped out, walking toward the room that held my entire fucking life inside it.

Koslov wouldn’t get to her now.

But he wasn’t trying to.

He was going to cripple us in a way we didn’t see coming.

I just had to figure out which direction he was gunning for—

Before he pulled the trigger.

Chapter 17

Millie

I tried not to react to Savannah’s words. I tried to stay calm, stoic, so she could carry the strength to say them. But inside? I was unraveling.

I felt like a fraud.

My childhood trauma—my father’s drinking, my mother walking out—felt like a scratched record compared to the shattered symphony Savannah had lived through.

She’d lost everyone she ever loved in one single breath. Her father. Her mother. The man who once vowed to love and protect her. And yet somehow, she endured.

No spotlight. No parade. Just quiet, stubborn survival.

And here I was, drowning in a glass of cabernet and a perfectly manicured brand.

If it had been me? I would've tapped out long before now.

There comes a point, doesn’t there? A line where pain outweighs presence. Where the idea of peace becomes more promising than another hour in this living hell. Maybe that’s why people end their lives.

Not because they’re weak.

But because hope becomes the bigger lie.

Still, she kept going. Not because it was easy. But because somewhere in that darkness, she must’ve believed there was something still worth finding.

Some people fight to love others.

She learned to fight to love herself. At any cost.

And maybe that’s the hardest kind of love to hold on to—the belief that you are worth saving. That you deserve to be here. That broken doesn’t mean beyond repair.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

That thought ran through my head like a freight train, barreling toward a truth I didn’t want to look at. My big confession—the thing I’d been carrying like it explained every part of my broken heart—was that my mom walked out, and I had to run a business while my father drowned in a bottle.

That was my truth.