Chapter 7
The next evening, the silence was back, but it was a different kind of quiet. It was heavy, weighted with the things left unsaid. Dinner was once again a sterile affair, the expensive food tasting like ash in Lily's mouth. The argument she had overheard still echoed in her mind. The ghost he had so coldly dismissed was the same ghost she was tied to.
When she finished eating, she stood up, pushing her chair back with a soft scrape. Alexander looked up from his plate, his gaze meeting hers for the first time all evening.
"I need to talk to you," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.
He sighed, placing his napkin down on the table. "I'm working. This can wait."
"No," she insisted, walking around the vast table until she was standing a few feet from him. "It can't."
He finally gave her his full attention, a flicker of irritation in his gray eyes. "Fine. What is it?"
"I heard you on the phone yesterday," she started, her heart pounding. "You were talking about a project, and about not being like your father. About a ghost."
The wall of ice came back up instantly. His face became a perfect, unreadable mask. "You have no right to eavesdrop on my conversations."
"I wasn't eavesdropping," she retorted, her frustration bubbling over. "I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water. It's a big apartment, but the sound carries. And you're right. It's none of my business. But you made it my business when you told me why I'm here."
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "Explain."
"You said I'm a debt of honor, a promise your father made to my grandfather," she said, her voice rising slightly. "You're paying that debt with a place to live and a scholarship. But yesterday, you dismissed a promise. You let a deal die because the numbers didn't make sense. So tell me, Alexander, what's the difference? Why am I worth the trouble, but this other man—this 'ghost'—isn't?"
The question hung in the air between them, sharp and demanding. He was no longer a CEO talking to an underling, but a man confronted by a girl who saw through his carefully constructed defenses.
He stood up, towering over her. "That is not for you to understand. My business is my business. Your job is to finish school and get on with your life."
"My job?" she asked, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "I'm a person, not a job. And I'm tied to a man who lives in a glass tower and is afraid of his own past. That's what this is about, isn't it? You're not paying a debt to my grandfather. You're paying a debt to the boy who drew houses, the boy who's been buried under all this." She gestured around the cold, sterile room.
His face was a storm of conflicting emotions—anger, pain, and a fleeting moment of something that looked like fear. "Get out," he said, his voice a low growl. "Go to your room. Now."
But Lily didn't move. She stood her ground, looking up at him, her gaze defiant. "Just tell me," she whispered, "what did you lose?"
He didn't answer. He simply turned away from her, walking toward the large window, his back to her, looking out at the city he had built. It was a silent, powerful dismissal. But this time, Lily knew it wasn't because he saw her as an inconvenience. It was because she had hit a nerve, a raw, exposed wound he had no intention of letting her, or anyone else, see.