Chapter 127

Chapter 127:

Eliza squeezed the hand tighter, her eyes half-closed, still lost in the haze of concussion and medication. “I love you,” she whispered. The words were weak but perfectly clear. “I love you so much. Don’t leave me p>

She was talking to the man who had saved her. She was talking to her husband.

But Dallas — exhausted, hypothermic, and emotionally stripped bare — didn’t know that.

The words hit him like a physical blow, tearing through the armor he had just barely rebuilt. He stood frozen in the doorway, water dripping from his cuffs onto the linoleum floor.

𝖱о𝗆а𝗻𝖼e ո𝘰𝘃𝘦ls 𝗈𝗻 ѕ.c𝗼𝘮

She loves Anson. Even after I saved her. Even after I nearly died for her — she wakes up, sees him, and tells him she loves him.

Anson looked up. He saw Dallas standing in the doorway. He saw the devastation in his eyes — a look of total, absolute defeat.

Dallas’s expression went blank. The light behind his eyes died. He turned without a sound and walked away.

The door clicked shut.

Eliza blinked, fighting the blur. Her vision cleared slightly. She focused on the face in front of her.

It wasn’t Dallas.

“Anson?” she asked, confusion flooding her voice.

She pulled her hand away as if she had been burned. She looked around the empty room.

“Where is Dallas?” she asked, panic rising in her chest.

Anson looked at the closed door. He saw the opportunity. It was cruel. It was petty. He was desperate.

“He left, Eliza,” Anson said.

“Left? But — I told him —” She was confused. Hadn’t he been here?

“He was here. Just for a moment,” Anson lied smoothly. “He saw us. And he left p>

Eliza’s heart sank like a stone. He left? Did he hear me? Does he not care?

“Why?” she whispered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“He said the debt is paid,” Anson said, twisting the knife. “He said the contract is fulfilled p>

Eliza closed her eyes. The sharp pain in her ribs was nothing compared to the hollow ache opening up inside her.

He saved me to pay a debt. Not because he loves me.

The silence in the room was heavy and suffocating.

Dallas walked into their apartment on the Upper West Side still soaking wet. His clothes clung to his skin, freezing and heavy, but he felt nothing. He left a trail of water across the marble floor.

He walked straight to the bar.

He grabbed a bottle of Macallan 50 — a collector’s item, worth more than most cars. He didn’t bother with a glass. He uncorked it and drank straight from the bottle.

The liquid fire burned his throat, searing the back of his mouth. It was a welcome sensation. The only thing that felt real.

I love you.

Her voice echoed in his head, over and over. A loop of torture. I love you. Don’t leave me. Spoken to Anson Hyde.

Dallas roared. He hurled the bottle across the room. It smashed into a Ming vase, shattering both. Amber liquid and porcelain shards exploded outward.

He grabbed a heavy crystal lamp and drove it into the mirror above the fireplace. Glass rained down.