Chapter 159

_Author’s POV_

When they all saw there was nothing left at the mansion in Coast Island, Celeste suggested they all head back to the hotel, not before setting her new plan in motion.

They arrived late in the evening and the moment Alaric got down from the car, he rushed over to see Rowena.

Being away from her for so long had made him miss her more than necessary.

He didn’t stop by his own room first as he was supposed to. He needed a shower and a change of clothes, but he chose to see her first.

He didn’t even debrief anyone. Didn’t review the files Celeste’s team had spent hours pulling from the island. All Of that could wait, It had been waiting this long already.

He knocked twice and pushed the door open after he heard her voice.

Rowena was sitting up in bed with her phone in one hand and documents spread across the duvet beside her. She looked up when he walked in, and for a moment neither of them said anything. Alaric just stood there staring at her and she at him.

She looked better than in the morning. Although she looked pale, still moving slowly, her eyes were still as sharp and present as it always was when her mind was working hard on something.

“You’re back,” she said softly.

“I’m back,” he said, and pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down.

She waited, watching him the way she did. She allowed him speak since she was an awkward person.

She stared at him like she was reading something written between the lines of his expression.

“They were gone,” she said, it wasn’t a question.

“By about thirty minutes,” he sighed. “Reid warned them in time.”

She nodded slowly. She already knew most of it, Kasper had kept her updated through the day, but hearing it from Alaric directly was different. She could see the details he wasn’t saying by the way he held himself. The tension that hadn’t fully left his shoulders yet. The stillness of someone who has spent a long day being very controlled about something that genuinely affected him.

She knew he was greatly affected by Reid.

“We found a monitoring room,” he finally said after a while of silence. “In the east wing of the mansion.” He paused. “There were pictures of you, months worth. They had been watching you long before they took you.”

Rowena’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes changed just briefly. “How far back?”

“Far enough that this wasn’t impulsive,” he said. “It was planned from the beginning.”

She absorbed that information without flinging.

She wasn’t surprised.

At least they found something useful.

Then she asked the question he hadn’t expected.

“How are you doing with Reid?”

He looked at her intently and she knew the answer without him saying a word. “Not the operational side,” she said. “The other side, Alaric.”

He almost deflected. The words were right there, the usual ‘ I’m fine, it doesn’t matter, there’s work to do’ all the standard answers he kept ready for exactly this kind of question. But she was looking at him with that expression that made the standard answers feel inadequate, and he was tired. Rowena had already seen enough of him today that pretending felt like more effort than it was worth.

“It’s strange,” he said finally. “Knowing someone for that long and realizing the version of them you knew wasn’t entirely real.” He leaned back in the chair. “You account for enemies. You prepare for people who are openly against you. You don’t prepare for it coming from someone sitting in the same room, every day, for years.”

Rowena was quiet for a moment. “No,” she shook her head. “You don’t.”

Something in the way she said it made him look at her more carefully. “Kaelen,” he said. “what about his?”.

She gave a small nod. She didn’t look pained, more like reasoning the entire thing. “Three years of a marriage that was mostly just me filling a space he needed filled. You tell yourself you’re being realistic. That you see it clearly.” She paused. “You don’t always see it as clearly as you think.”

He understood that more than he wanted to say out loud.

They sat with it for a moment.

“It gets easier,” she shrugged. “Not immediately. But it definitely does.”

He nodded and believed her, which was different from just hearing it.

They talked for a while after that. Nothing strategic, nothing about Virella or the island or the case building in Celeste’s careful hands. Just conversation, drifting from one thing to the next the way it did when neither person was pushing it anywhere deliberately.

It was the second time they’d done this, just talking without agenda, and it felt, again, like something he didn’t have a precise word for. Comfortable wasn’t quite right word for it. Rowena was a bit difficult, but he loved her this way.

Her closed off behavior was perfect.

But then he thought about something. He wanted to know the full details of the gym. Every single thing. Yes, he’d seen it, the marks on her, but he wanted to know how the pain was inflicted.

“I’m getting a good idea to handle Virella.” Phillip said.

Alaric supported.

He had been carrying it all day, moving it to the back of his mind while there was work to do, and now the work was done and it was still there.

He looked at her.

“Rowena,” he said, and his voice came out quieter than he intended. “The gym.” He held her gaze. “I need you to tell me what happened there. Not the version where you tell me enough to stop me from asking. The actual version.”

She looked at him for a long moment.

She contemplated it for a while and realized she needed to trust him. He loved her and wouldn’t hurt her.

So, she decided and nodded. “Alright,”

And then she slowly told him about what Virella and those men did to her.