CHAPTER 81: A PAST THAT HAUNTS

Ethan frowned as he saw Lillian’s pale face through the mirror. He knew who the caller was, but what it was about? He had no idea.

Aria, on the other hand, turned to her friend and mouthed ’Who’s on the phone?’

Lillian gave no reply, but there was the undeniable trembling of her hand that held the phone to her ear.

She was sure she had left all this behind, sure that they’d never find her here in Atlanta but the voice on the other end of the phone proved otherwise.

Her eyes briefly locked with Ethan’s on the rear view mirror and that helped her compose herself a lot more than she thought.

"Why are you calling me?" She asked, a bit of her composure returning to her.

"Oh come on Lilly," the person on the other end said, "you sound so cold right now, don’t tell me you’re still salty about the past."

The sound of that voice scraped against old scars she thought had healed. Lillian’s grip on the phone tightened, her nails biting into her palm.

Her past, their faces resurfaced in her memories. A man with the perfect salesman’s smile, a woman whose every word dripped with false sweetness, they were her ’friends’ from university.

She had trusted them, poured her ideas, her strategy, her instincts into their little "venture." She had believed them when they said she was family.... Who could blame her?

She was just a little girl with big dreams, one that thought the world was made of rainbows, one that was just excited that her ideas were being appreciated.

And then—one day—it was all gone. The company she had helped build, the brand she had cultivated, even the connections she had painstakingly nurtured. They had stripped her name from everything, rewritten the narrative, and when it came time for the law to intervene... all she remembered were camera’s being pointed at her.

Their carefully staged evidence left her painted as the manipulative fraud, the greedy little girl who wanted more than she deserved.

The betrayal burned more than the humiliation. To be used so thoroughly, so expertly, and then discarded. It was why she hated attention, why the click of a camera made it difficult for her to even breathe.

She had learned the world could twist an image in a heartbeat, leaving you powerless to defend yourself.

This was the real reason why she was so introverted, the reason why people scared her, why she couldn’t breathe when face with the cameras.

"I don’t know what you want, Vanessa" Lillian said, her voice sharper now though her hands still shook. "But you won’t get it from me, not again."

’End the call,’ Aria mouthed again but Lillian refused to. She wasn’t about to run, not again.

This time, she’d face them.

"Come on," Vanessa said, Lillian could practically hear her foxy grin over the phone, "can’t we just decide to visit a good friend who has been ghosting us for years now?"

The ’we’ confirmed one thing, Damian was also with her which caused her face to become even paler. Vanessa was one thing, but Damian?

He was the real fox.

As if confirming her words, Damian’s laughter suddenly came faintly through the receiver.

"Hello, Lilly," Damian’s voice oozed charm, the same charm that had once convinced her he could sell ice to the Eskimos. "I see you haven’t forgotten about us, that’s good."

Lillian swallowed, her voice wavering but still remained defiant. "I don’t want to hear you. Either of you. You’ve done enough."

Vanessa’s mocking chuckle cut through. "Done enough? Oh, sweetheart, we gave you everything. Without us, you’d still be some naïve little girl scribbling business ideas in a notebook."

"Yo—" she was cut off by Damian before she could complete her words.

"You see, Lilly," Damian’s voice slid like oil through the line, "a little birdie told us that you’re now a CEO. Quite the surprise, really. After all the trouble you got into, we didn’t think you had it in you."

Lillian froze. Her heart hammering against her ribs.

"We didn’t come to pick a fight," Vanessa chimed in, her tone deceptively sweet. "We just thought... maybe it’s time to bury the hatchet. You’ve always been the brain, Lilly. Damian and I—well—let’s just say the business world hasn’t been kind without you."

Her nails dug deeper into her palm. There it was.

But before she could respond, Aria snatched the phone from her, placed it on her ear and spoke, "listen, I don’t know who you are or what the f*ck you want with my friend, but if you ever call her again, I swear I’ll make sure you regret it."

The other end went quiet for a moment, then Damian’s laugh came through the receiver again, smooth and unbothered.

"Oh? Who’s this? Lilly’s little guard dog? Cute. Very cute."

Aria’s grip on the phone tightened. "Try me, jackass." She didn’t wait for a response—she ended the call with a sharp tap and tossed the phone back onto Lillian’s lap.

The silence in the car was thick, only broken by Lillian’s shallow breathing. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the phone.

Ethan watched her through the mirror as he drove, according to Athena the two on the phone were the same two ’kidnapped’ by Dmitri and they definitely were from her past.

A past he hadn’t dug into out of respect for her but it seems it was back to hunt her and she didn’t seem ready for it yet.

In a way, he blamed himself for her facing it this early. Yes she might’ve also face it in the previous timeline but that was as Midas, that was when she could completely wear a mask without letting any emotion leak out.

But right now, she was still learning.

Though, he wasn’t going to stop whatever test was coming her way, just make sure it was something she could handle and that was by pulling certain variables out of the equation.

Ethan’s jaw flexed as he switched lanes, his grip on the wheel steady though his mind was anything but.

In the other life, when she was Midas, he was she had already been fire-tempered steel by the time Damian and Vanessa slithered back into her orbit.

His eyes locked with hers on the mirror again and he could clearly see the Lillian he had met in that best buy resurface, he could see all her hard work going back into a certain corner of her mind and he didn’t like it, not one bit.

The drive back was filled with a tense silence, with Aria holding Lillian’s hand. She knew her friend’s past so she suspected that the call was related to it.

She turned to Ethan was driving before exchanging a silent plead with her eyes. She had seen how much her friend had changed and she didn’t want her to go back to how she previously was.

And Aria suspected that Ethan had a way to deal with this.

Ethan just gave a small nod before focusing back on the road. The soon got to Aria’s and Lillian’s apartment and the three got down.

Aria decided to pull her’s and Lillian’s luggages from the trunk, leaving Ethan with a silent Lillian.

"Are you okay?" He asked, although the answer was pretty obvious.

"Ye–" she wanted to nod, tell him that she was okay but she stopped herself, "no."

"I’m not okay, Ethan," she said before turning to him, "but this is something I need to handle myself."

There was a moment of silence between them before Ethan sighed and said, "fine."

"If that’s what you want," he said softly, "I won’t stand in your way."

The way he said it was a bit suspicious but she was to exhausted to catch that so she just nodded, "than you."

Aria returned then, dragging the last suitcase up the curb, her eyes switching between them.

She opened her mouth, ready to protest, ready to argue that Lillian couldn’t handle this alone, but the look Ethan gave her silenced her.

A look that promised he understood, that he had it covered, even if he wasn’t going to say it aloud.

Lillian clutched her phone tighter, forcing herself to straighten her back.

"Thank you for the ride," she murmured, her voice stiff, formal.

Ethan only gave a short nod. "Get some rest."

It was all he said before getting back into the car. The drive back to his apartment was a short one.

Walking up the stairs with thoughts in his mind, he opened the door only to be faced with Isabela standing a few steps away from the door, a displeased smile on her face.

’I see she found out already,’ Ethan mentally said before saying out loud, "hello Isabela."

His voice sounded as if he didn’t even notice her expression.

Her frown got deeper as she knew that he knew exactly why she was like this, but she calmed herself a bit before asking with a paper that contained a symbol in hand, "What the hell is this?"

Well, maybe she wasn’t so calm.