Page 132 of The Tower

As the door closes behind her, I let her words sink in. Strong. It’s not how I feel right now.

Now, I’m more in the broken, betrayed, and lost zone. Still, maybe she’s right. I survived my father’s manipulation. I’ll survive Liam’s betrayal, too.

I move to the window, then look out at the city spread below me. It takes a moment, but then I realize that my skin isn’t crawling. My stomach isn’t twisting, and vertigo isn’t threatening to send me tumbling through this window and out into the cold, dark void.

For now, at least, I’m not scared.

Forty

Waiting Game

I feel just as empty when I wake the next morning. Time and sleep have not taken the rough edges from the wounds, and my soul still feels empty.

More, I still want the man who wounded me.

Part of me wants to believe that all of it—my escape with Liam, the revelation of my father’s manipulations, the blissful weeks in Connecticut—was just another elaborate fantasy, an Elysium-like escape from reality.

But the ache in my chest is too real, the betrayal too raw. It happened. Every wonderful, painful moment. And now it’s all gone.

With a sigh, I go through the motions of the day, showering and dressing mechanically, choosing clothes from the vast closet that now seems like a museum of my former life filled with designer pieces I never selected, but that hang here only because my father deemed them appropriate for his living is porcelain doll.

I settle on simple black pants and a white blouse—neutral, forgettable, nothing that would catch a photographer’s eye.

When I enter the sitting room, my heart nearly stops.

Liam Grimm sits in one of the armchairs, looking simultaneously out of place and perfectly at ease. He’s disheveled in a way I’ve never seen before—hair uncombed, stubble darkening his jaw, clothes wrinkled as if he’s been wearing them for too long.

“How did you get in here?” I demand, my voice surprisingly steady.

His eyes meet mine, bloodshot and exhausted. “The same way I get anywhere I want to be.”

“By hacking in. By invading. By watching without permission.” Each accusation comes out sharper than the last.

He doesn’t flinch. “Yes.”

The simple admission, devoid of excuses or justifications, fuels my anger. “Get out.”

“Sasha—”

“Get. Out.” I point toward the door, my arm trembling with suppressed rage.

“I will,” he says, standing slowly as if his body aches. “After you hear what I have to say.”

“I’m not interested in explanations or excuses.”

“Good, because I have neither.” He takes a step toward me, stopping when I instinctively back away. “What I did was wrong. Inexcusable. I knew that even as I was doing it.”

The admission catches me off guard. I expected denials, minimizations, clever rationalizations that would make me question my own outrage.

“Then why?” I ask, the question escaping before I can stop it.

He runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. “It started as research. Know your enemy. I needed to know if you were complicit in your father’s actions, if you were just another Reed scheming against my family.”

“And Prince Killiam?” The name tastes like ash on my tongue. “Was that research too?”

A shadow crosses his face. “No. That was … something else.”

“What? A game? A joke? Let’s see how far he can push the poor, delusional Reed girl? Make her think it’s just AI spinning a man for her.”