Page 66 of The Hollywood Switch-up

Which direction?

Lilliana:

North toward your villa. Ten minutes ago. If you find her, don’t let her do anything stupid. And get her to that dock.

Hostia. Ten minutes was enough time to get to his villa and back if she’d actually gone there.

He started running. The path to the villas had turned to a river, mud sucking at his shoes with every stride. He ran anyway, heart hammering with something that felt too much like fear.

Mierda. He ran faster, and then he saw the golf cart, dead on the path, fifty yards from his villa, headlights dark.

She was hunched in the driver’s seat, arms wrapped around something pressed to her chest. Her sketchbook. She looked small and frozen, alone.

Relief hit him first. She was here, she was safe.

“Erika.” He closed the distance between them, raising his voice over the wind. “ The ferry’s leaving in⁠—”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look up.

He stopped beside the cart. Her honey-blonde hair hung in dark wet ropes around her jaw. And she was clutching that ruined sketchbook.

He leaned his shoulder against hers, trying to shield her from the wind. For a single, heavy heartbeat, she didn’t move away. She actually caved, her head falling against his shoulder. Her breath hitched. The dampness of her hair pressed against his neck, and he held his breath.

“We’ll dry them out,” he said, looking down at the ink-stained pages. “We can save them.”

He reached for her arm to lead her out of the storm⁠—

She flinched back like he’d burned her.

His hand hung in the air between them. Everything in her face had closed—the warmth from this morning, the almost-laugh, the way she’d looked at him. Gone.

“Erika, what happened?”

“Leave me alone!” Her voice cracked over the thunder. “Just go away, Stefan! I don’t want you here!”

She tried to push him away, her hands clumsy and weak, but her voice was a knife. He didn’t move. He just took the verbal hit and waited. Ten seconds later, the fire went out. She slumped.

She looked at him, and the hollow fury in her eyes made his stomach drop. “I heard you. Under the tarp. You and Isabelle, figuring out what to do with the Morgan situation.”

She threw his own words back at him. She’d been there. She’d heard fragments.

“Whatever you heard wasn’t about you.”

“I know what I heard.” She was shaking harder now. “‘The Morgan situation.’ ‘Keep her safe.’ Like I’m a problem to be contained.” Her voice cracked. “Was any of it real? Or have you been managing me this whole time?”

She stared at him like he’d just confirmed everything Martin had planted in her head.

“Isabelle doesn’t know about you and Anneliese. I haven’t told anyone. That conversation was about someone else entirely.”

“And ‘the Morgan situation’? That was about someone else too?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. The truth was trapped behind eight years of someone else’s silence, and he couldn’t break it open without destroying what Isabelle had built. But Erika was standing in front of him looking at him like he was just another man who’d used her, and he had to choose.

“There’s another woman.” The words came out before he could stop them. “Someone Martin hurt. Years ago. That’s who we were talking about.”

Erika went still.

“I can’t tell you her name. I can’t tell you the details, it’s not my story to tell.” He took a step closer. “But Isabelle’s been building a case against him. That’s what you heard. Keeping her safe until the lawyers are ready.”