Chapter 4: Embers and Ultimatums

CALEB'S POV

Her smell lingered on the loft. Rain, vanilla and something fucking hopeful. I woke up wrapped in a sheet smeared with charcoal-dust, the phantom contours of her body still burns against mine. Shit. The sketchpad was still open on the floor where I'd tossed it the previous night. Pages of her. Her hands. The stubborn contours of her jaw. The manner in which her top outlined her back as she was bending over my drafting board. Obsession. Pathetic.

I slouched from the couch, boots crunching on dried paint flake. Sunlight filtering through the grimy windows painted the mess brighter – spray cans, half-finished canvases in red and black screaming, skeleton of a bike I'd dismantled and never rebuilt again. My kingdom of disarray. And there it was. Folded over the leg of my workbench, hidden under a pile of curled plywood. A pale, ivory scarf.

Hers.

I didn't want to touch it. To touch it would be to acknowledge that she'd been there, that the scent of the almost-kiss wasn't some fume-based illusion of turpentine and solitude. But my Betrayer Hand reached out anyway. The scarf was silky-smooth. I laid it on my cheek. Vanilla. City. Air. Her. The scent took the wind from me, and I was fighting to breathe. I could still feel the heat of her skin against my palm when I'd held her pressed into the wall. See the fire in her eyes, not fear, but. challenge. Waiting. Inches from her lips. Her lips parting...

Christ. I clenched my fist over the scarf, the scent remaining like accusation. Tying her up like that was a mistake. A grenade without the pin. Dad would skin me alive if he knew. Marcus, with his infuriatingly keen eyes that would see through the ugliness of my rubbish. And Victoria? That snake had the vulture in her, scenting blood in the water. Ava was a skeleton. I was poison. She didn't need to be here in this hellhole I'd constructed.

Guilt biting all too close, roiled in my belly. Had I scared her? Hurried her too hard? Worse. had she wanted it? The way she'd looked at me. not distaste. Excitement. Remembering seared fresh through me, low and evil. I could almost feel her – sunshine and defiance on my tongue. What might have happened if that accursed phone hadn't screamed?

I kicked over an empty paint can. It rang off the concrete, bouncing in the sharp, strangling hush. Idiot. Fool to think something was going to stick to me. I was poison. Sterling poison. Look what it did to my mother. Look what my father suffered. Ava was ambition and clean lines. I was rough past and broken edges. She was destined for crystal spires, not this shattered shell.

My gaze snagged on the sketchpad again. Open to the page I’d been working on just before she walked in. Her profile against the dirty window, the light catching the curve of her neck. I’d captured the vulnerability beneath the strength, the way she held herself like she was bracing for impact but refused to duck. Honest. That’s what she’d called my broken pier drawing. More honest than the polished lie. Had she seen the same broken reality in me gazing back at her? The thought was appalling. Thrilling.

A shiver of dread coursed down my spine. Victoria. Her message still burned in my eyeballs, a brand on my already messed-up head. I pulled out my phone from the back pocket of my jeans, the broken screen where I'd punched it last night. The message staring back, harsh white on black:

Victoria: Tell Ava the truth about her mother, or I’ll bury Julian with the waterfront scandal. Tonight. Your choice.

Something true about her mother? What fucking truth? Isabelle I guess, was a fluttery status-mad moth who was drawn to the flame of Marcus. What did Isabelle's secret hold that Victoria might be able to use against her? My head slammed, hitting walls. Nothing. But the waterfront scandal? I knew. Oh, I fucking knew. Short cuts my father took. Poisonous chemicals. Under-the-table bribes. If that came out? Sterling Architecture would not fail; it'd collapse. My father would be destroyed. The empire he worked so hard to build, ash and lawsuits. And Ava? Dead in the fucking midst of all of it. Her career, her reputation, ashes. Victoria would not even flinch. She'd burn Ava to the ground.

My rage was incandescent, burning, seething on the surface of me. FUCK! I punched the nearest piece of art work – a red- and black-painted snarling wolf. The frame split. Canvas tore. Red paint oozed like an open sore onto the ground. I grabbed another drawing – a rundown factory I'd sketched months ago – and tore it in half. The tearing was harsh, satisfying. Rot. All fucking rubbish! My father's sacred empire. My feeble attempts at beautiness. This foul game that Victoria was indulging in. Tell her or destroy him. Either way, I lost. Either way, Ava will get hurt.

My lungs had been gasping shreds, taste of dust and concrete on my tongue. Warn Julian? He'd wonder why. He'd see the fear in my face for Ava, and he'd use it. Warn Ava? Warn her. what? That her mum was hiding something? That Victoria was coming for her? She would be shocked. She would flee. Or worse… into Marcus's arms for protection. The pain hurt.

I braced against the workbench, the tattered shreds of canvas in my hand. The scarf on the floor beside me, snow-white evidence of the filth. Vanilla. I shut my eyes, but her face was all I could think about, last night. Not fear. Flame. "See what you do to me?" I'd snarled it like a warning. But it was a confession.

The phone screen still lit in my hand, Victoria's threat a death penalty. The city outside the grimy window, lights blinding like a million unfeeling coals. Dawn was starting in the skyline, tinting towers bruise colors. I moved closer to the window, wind screaming around the broken frame, nipping at my face. Below, the streets were waking up, oblivious. Tiny lives moving in tiny patterns.

I gripped the pock-marked windowsill, my knuckles bleaching. Tell her a falsehood that I did not know and watch her world disintegrate? Say nothing and allow Victoria destroy all of the work Julian had accomplished – all of the work Ava was so urgently trying to accomplish? Each choice meant devastation. Each choice meant losing her.

The city lights dissolved into the distance below. I was a rasping scratch to the wind. "I have to decide… but I don't know what side she'll be when it all falls apart."