𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞

34 | Jade - Aurora

✧.* Jade ✧.*

Without a specific individual in my life, everything looked empty to me.

Christian told me to go back to the hotel after I left Liam's company because he no longer trusted me around Liam.

Nor was he incorrect. I would have punched him again if I had seen him after he returned and first aid had been applied to the wounds I had made to his face.

Christian took care to ensure that neither he nor his attorney spoke during a medical procedure. Not that they would say anything anyhow, since the lawyer would inherit a fortune that would last a lifetime, and Liam wouldn't want the business his father, who loved him dearly, established to collapse into smoke and flames.

But all I could think about was hearing Aurora's voice and seeing her again, here I was seated in the hotel suit. My patience to spend time with her was wearing thin.

Trying to decide whether to text her, call her, or just put the phone back in my pocket, my thumb lingers over her number on the cell phone I've been holding for the past fifteen minutes.

Calling or texting her feels inappropriate because I left her in the hospital and didn't visit her before coming here; she deserves an apology and a personal explanation. But in order to carry out my plan for Liam, I needed to remain calm, and I'm positive that if we had met before I came here, she would have noticed my actions and demanded that I tell her everything. She would have also stopped me from coming here and would have given me a lesson about rationality.

'Too much for your therapist.'

Christian's voice taunts me in my head, and a chuckle leaves my lips.

She also deserves an apology for me looking into her journal without asking her. Even if her mother had agreed for me to look into it, even if Aurora herself wouldn't mind me looking into her past, she still deserves an apology from me, and I will make it up to her no matter what it takes.

With a heavy breath out of my mouth, I switch off my phone and place it on the bed. I slump back and land on my back on the bed, staring up at the wall above my head and getting lost in thoughts of Aurora.

From the corner of my vision, I see Christian entering the room as the door opens..

"What are you doing in my suite?" He sits on the couch next to the bed, and I ask, still staring at the ceiling.

"You are leaving in an hour." When he answers, I look at him confused. "Jade, head back home. Here, I'll handle the remaining."

Rising to my feet and taking a seat on the bed, I look at him questioning eyes. "You can't just stay here; you have a business to manage, therefore you also need to go. You leave; I'm free to stay."

"You're not staying." He answers. "A Liam Martell with limbs missing is not what I desire, or even dead. When you get back home, Adrian will come here, and I'll be coming home then as he takes care of everything." He adds. "We still have one more thing to do; Adrian can handle it well."

He was correct. I had a strategy to destroy his business and his future, but I also wanted to kill his dignity, and that would take time.

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"Yes." He smiles. "I know you are desperate to go home." He adds with a smirk.

I scoff. "Stop being a brat, Chris. I also have so many things to tease you about."

"Like what?" He muses.

"Like how you drooled over the married lady when we first shifted to The Empyrean, or how you got rejected by your high school crush in front of the whole class." Now it was my time to smile as Christian choked on his own saliva.