The door flung open and Levi barged in, coming to a dead halt when Babydoll’s hand shifted ever so slightly so that it was pointed directly at Lyse.
"What have you done?" Levi bellowed at Brandon.
Brandon didn’t answer.
Levi looked from Brandon to Babydoll.
He recognized her imdiately.
"The escort," Levi said coldly.
A faint, almost mocking smile touched Babydoll’s lips.
"Not this ti."
Levi’s attention switched to Lyse.
Her face was pale but her chin lifted slightly.
"Levi."
He didn’t smile back.
"I leave you alone for just a few minutes..."
The tension in the room thickened.
Levi’s presence changed everything.
This was no longer a test.
This was a standoff.
A very dangerous one.
Lyse’s eyes darted between them all.
She could feel the control slipping away.
"I guess you are here to save ," she said quietly.
Levi’s expression eased for a mont then hardened.
"It’s the least I can do since I did not protect you well enought." He said through gritted teeth and glanced at Brandon and Babydoll.
"What do you and your friend want, Brandon." Levi asked calmly.
Brandon looked around all the faces in the room.
"I want the woman I love back." He said at last.
Levi slipped his hands into his pockets.
"No sudden movents!" Babydoll exclaid, pointing the gun threateningly at Lyse. "Or she gets it."
Levi looked from Babydoll’s gun hand to Brandon’s face.
"So, you know Lyse does not love you," Brandon continued easily. "So you ca with your henchwoman to threaten her?"
"Lyse loved only ." Brandon’s voice broke. "Until you ca and manipulated her!"
Levi let out a long, slow breath and moved away from the doorfra.
He was closer to Lyse now.
Closer to Babydoll.
Closer to the heart of the confrontation.
"You’re not as smart as you think you are, Brandon," he said softly.
His eyes swept past the gun.
Settled on Brandon.
"You think this is about love?"
He gave a short, bitter laugh.
"This is about control."
Babydoll’s eyes flickered at the word.
Levi took another step.
"Don’t take a step closer,"Babydoll yelled. "In fact, back up."
Levi reluctantly took a couple of tiny steps back, his eyes calculating all that while.
"You ca here to take her from ," Levi said. "But you forgot one thing."
Levi’s gaze shifted to Lyse.
She was watching him now, her expression unreadable.
"Lyse always makes the right choice."
Brandon’s jaw tightened.
"You forced her to be with you"
"Did I?"
Levi tilted his head.
"Or did she finally realize who really has her back?"
The screaming alarm felt distant now.
The world inside the hospital room had shrunk to four people, two guns, and unspoken history.
Brandon’s mind raced, then he turned to Lyse.
"Don’t let this old man co between us, Lyse." Brandon begged. "I have always loved you, you know that. I’m your first love."
"Does this look like love to you?" Lyse demanded with a frustrated groan.
"You let your mother humiliate right on the altar on our wedding day."
Brandon’s face fell for a second then he looked up at Lyse with madness in his eyes.
"And that is why I made her pay." The venom in his words were scalding.
Lyse frowned in confusion but Levi’s mind was already racing.
He rembered the encounter he had had with the paparazzo, what had he said again?
"It’s in the wine."
When the man had blurted out that string of sentences , Levi had thought those were just the deranged words of scum, now however, he wondered...
"That is why you killed your mother?" Levi asked, shocking the room into a pin drop silence. "Because she had exposed your affair with Brooke at the altar?"
Lyse’s eyes widened in disbelief.
"What?"
Brandon’s composure finally fractured.
His expression twisted with a mixture of fury and sothing else, panic.
"Shut up," he snarled at Levi.
But Levi pressed forward, seeing the crack in the armor.
"It wasn’t about protecting her," Levi continued, his voice dangerously low. "It was about pride. Your mother took that from you, didn’t she? Made you look like a fool in front of everyone. So you silenced her. Permanently."
Lyse looked at Brandon, her face a mask of horror.
"What is he saying?" she whispered fearfully, her gaze locked on Brandon.
Brandon shook his head, a desperate motion.
"Lyse, no, that’s not..."
But the truth was already spreading through her, cold and absolute.
"The wine," Levi confird, his gaze sharp as broken glass. "Because what you put in was a sleeping dicine, the police did not understand the significance, so they skipped over it."
"You poured your mother so wine and mixed in so sleeping pills so that when you attacked her she would be unable to fight back. Isn’t that right, Brandon?"
Lyse staggered back a step, her hand flying to her mouth.
She had co to realize that Brandon was not the sa person she had thought she had known, but she never thought that he had gone so bad.
"Lyse, don’t believe a word he is saying." Brandon cried out. "He’s lying."
"So, am I lying about how you killed Bret too?" Levi said, throwing another shot in the dark. "With the sa wine and sleeping pills cocktail."
Brandon flinched.
Just a small, barely perceptible movent.
But enough.
Babydoll’s head snapped toward him.
The gun wavered in her hand.
Her gaze flickered between Brandon and Levi.
The plan had shifted.
The script had been torn to shreds.
And she was no longer sure which character she was supposed to be playing.
Infact, she just wanted out and she internally scolded herself for getting involved in this ss.
Lyse’s breath hitched.
A choked sob escaped her lips.
Bret’s death had been ruled a homicide and they even tried to pin it on Levi.
Everyone believed it.
Until now.
"You killed Bret?" Her voice was barely audible.
Tears stread down her cheeks, blurring the room into red and shadow.
Brandon’s face was a battlefield of conflicting emotions.
Desperation.
Rage.
And, most terrifying of all, a flicker of resignation.
He had been found out.
He had lost.
"Lyse, I..."
He reached a hand out toward her.
"Don’t touch !" she shrieked, stumbling back against the wall while she protectively held her stomach. "You killed him? You killed Your own father?"
The raw agony in her voice cut through the screaming alarm like a knife.
Brandon dropped his hand.
His shoulders slumped.
The fight went out of him, replaced by a hollow emptiness.
He looked at Lyse, and for a mont, she saw the man she had once loved long ti ago.
Babydoll’s gaze dropped briefly to Lyse’s protective stance.
Her hand rested over her stomach.
"Wait, are you pregnant?" she asked abruptly.
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