A brief silence settled between them—just long enough to register—before they both burst into laughter.
"Now that makes feel better," Kathrine admitted, appreciating his goofiness for easing the anger knotted in her chest. She reached for her coffee and took a slow sip, letting the warmth calm her.
"But still," she said, her expression tightening, "I can’t understand how my sister ever managed to tolerate her for that long. She’s a bully."
The word carried open disdain, and Ethan caught it imdiately. His brow furrowed, amusent fading into curiosity.
"A bully?" he repeated. "I thought they were best friends."
All he knew was the version everyone else did—Anna and Fiona inseparable back in their school days. But watching Anna now, distant and guarded, and Fiona’s desperate attempts to undermine her, it was obvious sothing had gone terribly wrong.
Kathrine arched a brow. "Don’t tell you seriously don’t know."
She studied his face, expecting recognition—but found only genuine confusion.
With a quiet sigh, she set her cup down.
"Yeah," she murmured, shaking her head. "That figures."
The one thing Kathrine regretted more than anything was not being there for her sister when she needed it most. She had missed the signs, ignored the quiet suffering—until Anna simply stopped talking about it altogether.
The guilt still lingered, heavy and persistent. But seeing Anna now—no longer ek, no longer easy to corner, fully capable of handling people like Fiona—made that guilt shrink, if only a little.
"She was never a real friend," Kathrine said quietly. "Just a fox in sheep’s clothing. She befriended Anna, earned her trust, and then used her kindness against her the mont things didn’t go her way."
Her fingers tightened around her cup. "Every bullying incident Anna went through—every single one—was orchestrated by Fiona."
Kathrine swallowed as a mory surfaced, uninvited and sharp.
She rembered the day Anna ca ho after the school’s annual function—silent, eyes hollow, shoulders slumped as if sothing inside her had shattered. She hadn’t argued. Hadn’t complained. She’d simply locked herself in her room and stayed there for days, refusing to see anyone—not Kathrine, not even Roseline.
Kathrine would never forget how helpless she had felt.
If it weren’t for a friend who studied at the sa school, she would have never known the truth. Would have never known how Fiona had humiliated Anna in front of her classmates—forcing her to lick her shoes while others looked on.
Anna had endured it alone. And that realization was what still haunted her the most.
If only I hadn’t been so self-centered, she whispered inwardly, drawing in a steady breath.
"But really—how could you not know?" Kathrine said aloud, tilting her head as she studied Ethan’s face. "After all, this whole thing started because of you."
Ethan frowned, clearly thrown off. "?" he asked, pointing at himself.
Kathrine took a slow sip of her coffee, enjoying the mont far too much, and nodded. "Mm-hmm. You. Anna had a crush on you. And Fiona liked you too."
She said it casually, like she’d just revealed the weather forecast.
Behind her calm expression, Kathrine could already picture Anna shooting absolute death glares her way later. I’ll apologize to her, she decided. Eventually.
Ethan stared at her. Silent. Frozen.
"And judging by that face," Kathrine added with a light chuckle, "I can safely say you were completely clueless."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Kathrine laughed softly. If she hadn’t once co across the letter Anna had written for him—carefully hidden, never sent—she would have never guessed her sister had ever harbored a crush on her schoolmate.
So secrets, it seed, had a funny way of surfacing after all.
Ethan truly had no idea that Anna had ever harbored a crush on him. To him, she had been nothing more than a schoolmate he had once helped when she was cornered by a group of bullies.
In fact, he had always found her a little strange. Every ti she spotted him in the corridors, she would turn and disappear as if he were a ghost she desperately needed to avoid.
The realization made him laugh quietly to himself. It was all in the past now, and honestly, he was glad she had never confessed. If Anna had truly liked him back then, the man who now claid the right to eliminate anyone who even looked at his wife the wrong way would have made Ethan’s life a living hell.
He chuckled under his breath, unaware of the eyes that had been watching him all along.
Maybe he regrets not knowing sooner, Kathrine wondered, studying him carefully. She wasn’t entirely sure what expression she expected to see on his face.
But when he continued smiling to himself, completely oblivious to her presence, she frowned.
"Are you losing your mind?" she asked dryly. "Because smiling like that makes it seem like you are."
Ethan froze.
Only then did he realize he was, in fact, smiling to himself.
"Good. Now that’s more like you," Kathrine said once she saw his smile finally fade.
Ethan glanced at her, unsure what he was supposed to make of everything. He had never been the type to overanalyze himself around anyone. Yet sohow, this woman managed to make him oddly aware of his own quirks and reactions.
He cleared his throat, shifting slightly in his seat.
"By the way," he said, eting her gaze, "why did you want to et ?"
Ethan was supposed to be on set that morning, but he had altered his route the mont Kathrine asked him to et her. The urgency in her voice hadn’t left room for excuses.
Now, sitting across from her, he watched as Kathrine hesitated. Her fingers tightened around her cup, her lashes fluttering as she steadied herself.
"Kira is dead," she said quietly.
The words struck him cold, knocking the breath from his lungs.
"Dead?" Ethan repeated, disbelief edging his voice.
Kathrine let out a slow sigh, her mind drifting back to the officer’s words from earlier that morning. "That’s what they told ."
She shook her head faintly. "I don’t know how she died. They found her in a warehouse. It looks like... suicide."
"Looks like?" Ethan leaned forward. "Are they saying she killed herself?"
After the night he had spent with Kathrine at the hospital, Ethan had been keeping close track of every developnt in the case. He knew the culprit was a woman. More shocking still, she had been the maid who had once worked in Daniel’s house.
And now, after being missing for days, she was suddenly dead.
Just like that.
"For now, let’s assu she did," Kathrine said, her voice strained with unease. "But there’s more to it. The police are still digging, trying to piece things together."
Ethan watched her from across the table, his expression darkening as his thoughts drifted back. To the day the car had nearly hit her. That hadn’t been an accident. Soone had wanted her hurt. Then there was the man lurking around Anna’s room on set. And now Anna’s mother being attacked.
Every thread led back to the sa place.
Their enemy was one and the sa.
"Kathrine," Ethan said quietly, drawing her attention back to him. "Can I ask you sothing?"
She nodded.
"That day in the park," he continued, his gaze sharpening, "were you there to et soone?"
Kathrine’s fingers stilled around her cup. For a mont, she didn’t answer. Her gaze drifted to the window, to the slow movent of people outside, as if she could find the right words sowhere beyond the glass.
"Yes," she said finally, her voice quieter than before.
Ethan’s posture shifted at once, alert.
"I was supposed to et soone," Kathrine admitted. "I didn’t think it was dangerous. I didn’t think anything would happen."
She let out a slow breath, regret threading through her tone. "I was wrong."
The silence that followed was heavy, charged with everything she hadn’t said but no longer could deny.
Kathrine realized then that Ethan was no longer masking his suspicion. He wasn’t circling the issue anymore. He was confronting it head-on.
No doubt Anna suspected too, she thought quietly.
Ethan might seem easygoing, even oblivious at tis, but when it ca to observation, he was sharp. Uncomfortably so. Sothing Kathrine hadn’t expected from him, though in hindsight it made sense. Being an actor required noticing what others missed.
She lifted her gaze to him, steady but guarded.
"I know what you want to hear," she said softly, after a pause. "But I don’t think I can tell you that."
"And I’m not forcing you," Ethan said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes carefully reading the caution she tried to mask behind a stern expression.
"But I have to warn you," he continued, his voice steady yet openly concerned. "The threat isn’t just against you or your mother. Your entire family is at risk." It was the sa worry he had already voiced to Daniel.
Kathrine frowned. "Family... as in Dad?"
She paused mid-sentence as the realization hit her with chilling force. "Anna?"
Ethan didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
The look in his eyes said everything.
And that alone was enough to send fear curling tightly around her heart.
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