Page 6 of Fallen Empire (The Fallen Trilogy #2)

Millie

The city should’ve felt familiar. Safe. The skyline alone used to calm my nerves—like knowing exactly where I was meant everything was okay.

But today, Manhattan didn’t feel like home. Nothing did.

Ben hadn’t said a word the entire drive, and I hadn’t wanted him to. The silence between us wasn’t comforting. It was thick and heavy, like sitting inside a storm cloud just before it breaks open.

By the time we pulled up to my building, my chest felt like it had been wrapped in steel.

“This is fine,” I said quietly, unbuckling my seatbelt as he eased the car into an open spot and shifted it into park. “Thanks for the ride.”

But as soon as I opened my door, I heard his open too.

I turned slowly, blinking like I hadn’t just watched him step out of the car. “Ben,” I warned.

He shut the door behind him, completely ignoring me.

“You don’t need to come up.”

“I’m not.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to shower. Eat. And let me take you back to the hospital. Just like I said.”

He walked around to the front of the car, sat against the hood, and pulled out his phone. He crossed one leg over the other like he had all the damn time in the world.

Like hell he is.

I let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Are you serious right now?”

He didn’t even flinch. Just kept scrolling through his phone like he didn’t notice I was two seconds away from snatching it out of his hands and hurling it across the parking garage.

“Dead serious.”

“You’re not my babysitter, Ben.”

“No. I’m not. But I’m also not about to stand by and watch you spiral just because you’re too damn stubborn to take care of yourself.”

Rage built.

“You don’t get to lecture me,” I snapped. “Not after the last four days—after the way you’ve been looking at me like I was some kind of mistake.”

His jaw flexed. “You risked your life.”

“And I’d do it again!” My anger flared in defense, voice echoing off the concrete walls. I didn’t want the tears to burn, but they did, waiting for release.

Don’t you dare break, Millie. Not here. Not with him.

He softened, and it didn’t escape me that he realized I was on the verge of defeat. “You weren’t supposed to be there, Millie.”

“You think I don’t know that?” My voice cracked. “You think I haven’t gone over every second of it a thousand times in my head? But I made a call. And I’d make it again if it meant being there for her.”

Silence pressed in between us. Not the cold kind—but the charged, trembling kind that always came before something broke.

“Go home,” I whispered. “I don’t want you here.”

“No.”

My breath caught.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, steady as ever.

“You’re not going back to that hospital until you’ve showered.

Until you’ve eaten something. And you’re damned lucky that I’m not making you sleep.

You’ll be no good to her if she wakes up and you’re passed out in another room because you’ve starved yourself for four fucking days straight. ”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

His words left no room for argument. Just like the day he told Reaper to take me somewhere safe. They were final.

And honestly, how was I supposed to respond to what he just said?

I clenched my jaw and turned away, fists balled tight at my sides.

He wasn’t wrong. But he didn’t get to be right, either.

Not after shutting me out. Not after making decisions for me. Not after pretending I didn’t exist unless it was convenient. He isn’t the only one that had a right to be pissed.

I slammed my door shut and marched toward the building, heels clicking across the pavement like I could somehow outpace the ache in my chest.

But just before I reached the entrance, I spun around.

“You don’t get to act like you care now,” I snapped, voice shaking. “You don’t get to stand there like some damn soldier acting like this is about Savannah.”

His eyes narrowed, jaw tense. “It is about her.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, shoving the words out before I could stop them. “It’s about you needing control. You tell people where to go and how to feel and when to eat because that’s what makes you feel safe.”

His silence burned hotter than words.

I took a step forward despite needing to be inside. To be anywhere but standing in front of him. On the verge of breaking.

“I watched her fall, Ben.” My voice dropped, brittle and broken.

“I watched her hit the ground in a puddle of her own blood, and I’ve had to see that moment every time I close my eyes.” A single tear ran down my cheek, anger and hurt blurred so badly that I couldn’t tell which feeling was breaking the dam.

His face barely moved, but something flickered in his expression. A twitch in the jaw. A tremor in his stance.

Then, without warning, he stepped forward.

“You think this is easy for me?” he said, his voice low, steady but threaded with fire. “Watching you pretend you’re fine, like carrying the weight of everything alone somehow makes you stronger?”

I stiffened, blinking hard. Trying to keep the liquid in my eyes from pouring down.

“I know you, Mills,” he continued, his tone quieter now, but no less intense. “I’ve seen you—every part of you. And not just that night. You let me in once, and then you slammed the door and never gave me a chance to figure out what the hell happened.”

My breath hitched, but he wasn’t finished.

“I stayed,” he said simply. “You never saw it because you didn’t want to. But I didn’t go anywhere. Not then. Not now.”

The words landed heavier than I was ready for.

He took another step, his voice dropping just enough that I could feel it settle deep in my chest.

“You think this is about control? About telling you what to eat or when to sleep?” He shook his head.

“No. This is about knowing you haven’t stopped for days and watching you unravel because you refuse to admit you’re not okay.

I’ve watched you break in silence, Mills.

And I’m done pretending I don’t see it.”

I swallowed hard, but it didn’t go down.

He stopped a breath away, gaze locked on mine. “Whether you like it or not, I’m staying. You don’t have to want me here. You don’t even have to talk to me. But I’m not going anywhere. So figure out how to live with it.”

I hated how unbothered he looked. Like he wasn’t afraid of my anger. Like he knew it wasn’t anger at all. My eyes darted between his—searching for a reason to keep pushing, to keep the wall up, to keep him out.

But it wasn’t there.

Only him. Stubborn. Unmoving. Here.

I let out a long breath, one that felt like it scraped across my ribs on the way out. “Food,” I murmured, voice softer now. “Can you just… order us some food?”

I didn’t wait for an answer.

I turned, walked toward the building, and gave him silent permission to follow.

Because if I knew anything about Benjamin Ford, this was a battle I wasn’t going to win.

I stepped into the shower and let the warm water wash my emotions away.

It wasn’t just about getting clean. It was about silence. About pretending the heat sliding down my skin could somehow soothe the fire inside my chest. Like maybe, just maybe, if I stood still long enough, I could keep everything from spilling over.

Ben may have seen me, but I couldn’t see myself half the time.

I felt it. The latch on the box I kept buried deep in my mind… it twitched. A hairline fracture in the vault I swore I’d never open. The one that I’d packed all my fears and memories and regrets into.

And that one tear? That single godforsaken tear that slipped down my cheek?

It almost made the whole fucking dam burst.

God, and when it did…

I get it now.

I’m not a mother. But I’d once wanted to be.

Before fate taught me that the things you love most can be taken in an instant.

And that kind of love—a mother’s love for her child—wasn’t a shattered feeling I was willing to risk. Never again.

Still, I’d seen it. Felt the weight of it in the voices of women sitting two tables over at brunch. Heard it in quiet conversations on park benches or shared between sips of wine at rooftop parties. Women who carried the world on their backs with a smile that said I’m fine, even when they weren’t.

They did it all—day after day—until one moment broke them.

And the terrifying part?

It was never the loud, dramatic snap that did it.

It was the silence. The stillness. The one second they allowed themselves to feel human. And everything they’d held inside came flooding out.

That’s what I felt like.

Like everything I’d been holding together with duct tape and willpower was slipping.

My best friend—my soulmate in every way that mattered—was fighting for her life. And all I could do was stand still and unravel.

Because I couldn’t fix it.

I couldn’t save her.

And for someone like me, that kind of helplessness was lethal.

The water had turned cold.

At some point, the steam had vanished from the mirror, and warmth slid down the drain like everything else I’d been holding in. Still, I didn’t move.

My fingers had pruned. My skin had numbed. But the ache in my chest? That was still there—alive and relentless.

Ben’s voice echoed through my mind. “ You slammed the door and never gave me a chance to figure out what the hell happened .”

I didn’t want those words to stick. But they did.

He hadn’t said it with blame. He said it like a man still standing in the doorway I’d locked him out of, waiting to be let back in.

And that part of me—the one that wanted to open it again? It was louder than it had been in years.

Not because I needed rescuing. But because I was exhausted. Tired of pretending that I hadn’t already built my entire identity around surviving.

I’d spent so long holding things together, I didn’t even know what it would feel like to let someone hold me.

My early teenage life was a textbook mess no one ever got to read.

My mother didn’t leave quietly. She detonated mine and my father’s lives and walked away without flinching. She’d cheated, burned him to the ground, and didn’t look back.

He started drinking the day she left and never really stopped. Night after night, I watched the man who used to carry me on his shoulders drown in bourbon and shame. He was a powerhouse in the boardroom by day, and a ghost of himself by night.

And me?

I didn’t get to unravel. I didn’t get to fall apart.

I became the shield. The face. The fixer.

I stepped in and made sure no one ever knew how broken we were behind closed doors. Every contract saved, every whisper silenced, every PR headline spun with a smile—that was me.

Millicent Pierman, the woman who could handle anything.

But no one ever asked who handled me.

That was the legacy I built. Not just for my father's company, but for myself. And now, I was beginning to question if that legacy had cost me more than I ever admitted.

Because that vault where I stored all the pain—my mother’s betrayal, my father’s downfall, the man I once loved who died before I could say goodbye—it wasn’t sealed as tightly as it used to be. It was bleeding at the edges.

Savannah—my mirror, my anchor, the one person who never asked me to be anything but exactly who I was—was fighting for her life.

And I was supposed to be strong.

But I didn’t feel strong.

I felt like a fraud.

A hollow, lonely fraud wearing heels and war paint and hoping no one noticed the cracks underneath.

God, I wanted to tell her everything. Every part of me I’d buried so deep I forgot it was still alive. She deserved that. We both did.

We said we’d always be honest. Always share the hard parts.

But I’d spent years hiding mine, and now I didn’t even know where to begin.

Still... if I told anyone, it would be her.

And maybe—just maybe—after that, I could find the courage to tell Ben.

Because something was blooming in me. Something fragile. Something terrifying.

It wasn’t just about Savannah. It wasn’t even about me.

It was about this pull in my chest every time he looked at me like I wasn’t broken.

And I didn’t want to be this version of me anymore.

Cold, unreachable, buried behind armor made of old pain.

I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the tile.

It didn’t fix anything.

But it was a start.