Air felt too thin on the rooftop, like someone had siphoned the oxygen out and left only a biting metallic aftertaste. Luna couldn't pull a full breath; each inhale scraped as if it had to squeeze through a rusted pipe. The letters on the page swam, then snapped back, each line a sharp little fist under her ribs. Her hands trembled so badly the paper almost slipped free.
"Sienna is your sister," she mouthed, tasting the words like something foreign in her mouth. "Your sister."
Ethan didn't say a word. His silence landed heavier than any outright denial.
Marcus leaned forward, steady but urgent. "Luna, there's more. You have to finish it."
She wanted, with a kind of animal panic, to hurl the pages into the night and pretend that would erase the confession. Her fingers, traitors that they were, kept moving—gathering the sheets. Tears smeared the ink. The world narrowed until the hollow inside her chest seemed to contain everything.
Fifteen years earlier the Park family had run a textile empire—old money with that faint scent of starch and mothballs that clung to everything. Ethan had been a kid then, barely twelve; Sienna was almost an adult. Their father, David Park, had trusted Luna's father, promising partnership, expansion, and a sort of safety that seemed guaranteed.
And her father had undone them.
He stole designs. Undercut prices. Bribed clients. Piece by piece he picked the company clean until Park Textiles simply buckled under the slow, methodical weight of betrayal. Within months David Park lost his firm, his standing—and three months after the fall, his life.
Luna could still see her father's easy smile shifting into something she couldn't look at without flinching.
The letter unfolded like a blade: slow, remorseless, carrying fifteen years of resentment and half-made apologies—the ache you think will fade and never does. When Ethan learned what had happened, the note said, he swore revenge. He erased his past, rebuilt himself from nothing, and waited.
She realized, with a sick lurch, that she had been what he waited for.
Every kind word, every extravagant gesture—all of it read suddenly like calculated moves on a chessboard, designed to topple the life her father had built. To break someone the way David Park had been broken.
"I'm sorry," the letter read. "I couldn't protect you. And I'm sorry you'll pay for my sins. I love you. Always."
Luna lowered the paper as if it might splinter. Numbness crept up her arms until the hollow inside her swallowed the rest.
"Say something," she demanded, staring straight at Ethan.
He tightened his jaw. "What do you want me to say?"
"Tell me it's false," she begged. "Tell me my father didn't write this. Tell me you didn't marry me for revenge."
Ethan's eyes were raw—storm-dark and contained. "I can't," he said, low.
Something inside her cracked then.
"So it's true," she breathed. "You married me to destroy my family."
"Luna—"
"Don't." Her hand shot up between them. "Don't touch me. Don't explain. Don't say my name." Her voice split—part plea, part command.
Marcus reached across the table. "You deserved to know," he said, quietly. "I never wanted to hurt you."
"Then why now?" Luna shot back. "Why wait until everything's ruined?"
"Because I didn't know who Ethan really was until last week," Marcus said. "He hid himself. It took months to peel it apart."
"Not hidden enough," Ethan said, cold as ice.
They sat there, the air between them coiled like a live wire.
"I have to go." Luna stood so fast the chair screeched.
"Luna, wait." Ethan reached out.
"Don't touch me!" she snapped. Heads turned in the bar; she didn't care who watched.
She ran.
The elevator doors hissed closed as tears finally broke free. She barely had the space between floors when a hand caught her arm.
Kay.
"Mrs. Cole," Kay said, quietly.
"Don't call me that," Luna sobbed. "It was all a lie."
"I know." Kay's voice had an edge of certainty that made Luna flinch.
"You knew?" Luna wrenched free. "All of you knew and kept it from me?"
Kay didn't sidestep the question. She folded Luna into an embrace, and Luna collapsed, grief wracking her like a physical thing.
"You're still in danger," Kay murmured into her hair. "This may have started as revenge, but it's bigger. Whoever wants those files will use the chaos to strike when you're weakest."
"I don't care," Luna whispered.
"You should," Kay said, firmer. "You're leverage."
They slipped out through a private exit into an SUV that wasn't Ethan's. City lights smeared past—neon blurs—and Luna watched her life unspool in the rear window: towers she'd once coveted now looked thin and brittle, like stage props.
Kay left her at a small, anonymous apartment—safe, bland, temporary—far from marble lobbies and penthouse views. Luna barely slept. Her phone vibrated with calls she ignored. Instead, she scrolled old photos of her father, looking for meaning in a smile that suddenly felt haunted.
Just after midnight the phone rang. Sienna Park.
"My brother is a liar," Sienna said. Her voice was flat, razor-edged. "Even to himself. He didn't marry you for revenge. He married you because he fell in love with you." The line clicked dead before Luna could answer.
A handful of heartbeats later, Kay burst in, pale as a sheet. "They've found us."
Gunfire tore the night apart. They ran—down stairwells, through a tangle of service corridors—into the parking garage, where headlights cut through the dark and masked men spilled from SUVs.
Ethan reappeared as if carved from the chaos, stepping between Luna and the shooters while bullets chewed into concrete. "Get her out!" he shouted.
Chaos swallowed them. Shots ricocheted. For a second Luna lay on the cold floor, staring up at the bare ceiling, with an odd, fleeting thought that maybe this was it. Then a single shot dropped the man standing over her.
Marcus, gun still warm, stood there.
They tore toward the river, chased through Bangkok's black canals, lungs burning with fear and ozone, neon washing away behind them.
On the speedboat, Ethan finally stopped with the polished lines and rehearsed apologies. He spoke bluntly, like a man naming things at last: about the hatred, the revenge, and how everything had shifted the moment he met her.
"I'd die for you," he said.
Her phone buzzed again. An image loaded like a knife: her uncle, aunt, and cousin—bound, bruised, eyes wide with terror. A message overlaid the photo: You have twelve hours. Come alone. Or they die.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
"They have my family," she said.
Ethan's face hardened. "It's a trap."
"I know," she said.
"You could die."
"Then I die choosing what's right."
She met his eyes and didn't look away.
"Turn the boat around," she said.
The engine eased. The river ahead darkened.
Cliffhanger: As they pivoted back toward the city, a cold clarity settled over Luna. This wasn't the end of anything; it was the moment everything might catch fire. She was walking into the enemy's hands—and the next choice she made would decide who lived, who died, and whether love, if it survived at all, could stand the flames.