Chapter 10: Six years.
LAWRENCE.
It has been six years since Theresa disappeared from our lives.
Six years of unanswered questions. Six years of searching shadows, chasing fragnts of a past that refused to return. Not a single day passed without the weight of her absence pressing down on , heavy and unrelenting.
The night before she vanished... I had asked to et her. I rember it clearly—every detail, every second replaying in my mind like a mory that refused to fade. I had stood there, waiting, my thoughts restless, my chest tight with sothing I couldn’t quite na at the ti.
But deep down, I knew the truth.
She loved Leonard the most.
It was obvious in the way she looked at him, the way her voice softened around him, the way her presence seed to orbit his without her even realizing it.
I saw it.
I felt it.
And I knew I couldn’t compete with that.
Still... I tried.
I thought that if I told her first, if I laid my feelings bare before anyone else, maybe, just maybe, it would change sothing. Maybe it would shift her attention, even slightly, in my direction.
It was foolish.
But it was the only chance I believed I had.
We had fought two days earlier. Words had been said, sharp, careless words that left a distance between us. Because of that, I convinced myself she wouldn’t co. That she would ignore my request, just as she had ignored
before.
Yet I waited.
Minutes stretched into hours, and my patience slowly began to unravel. What started as quiet anticipation turned into frustration, then into anger. My jaw tightened, my hands clenched, and still... I stayed.
Until I saw it.
Her Crest moon pin.
It struck the wooden fra with sharp precision, the sound cutting through the silence like a blade. I froze, my eyes locking onto it as it dropped and stilled.
My heart skipped.
Sothing wasn’t right.
Theresa never parted with it.
I looked around imdiately, my gaze sweeping the area, searching for her, for any sign of her presence but she wasn’t there, not behind , not ahead, not anywhere.
That was when it hit .
Sothing was terribly wrong.
After that night, everything beca a blur of urgency and desperation. My brothers and I searched endlessly, refusing to stop, refusing to accept that she could simply vanish without a trace.
Days turned into months.
Months into years.
And still, we didn’t find her.
Until now.
After six long years, we finally tracked her down, but what we found... wasn’t what we expected.
She had a new identity.
A different na. A different life. A version of herself that no longer belonged to us. And that was sothing we were not willing to accept.
But worst of all...She was married.
My brothers’ voices echoed in my head, uninvited, loud and relentless, as though the past refused to stay buried.
"How dare he think of getting married to her?" Leonard had thundered the mont the report reached us, his voice filled with a fury I had rarely seen, his control snapping in an instant.
"The audacity," Lurgard added, his tone colder, sharper, as he looked away from the system, his jaw tightening. "We are going to make life miserable for him if he refuses to release her."
I rembered standing there, silent, my fists clenching tightly at my sides as their words settled heavily in the room. The tension had been suffocating, thick enough to choke on.
I thought she loved us.
Or at least... I thought she loved Leonard.
The mory stung.
Then why would she agree to marry soone else? Why would she take another man’s na so easily, as though everything she had shared with us ant nothing?
The questions had burned through my mind, unanswered, leaving behind only bitterness and disbelief.
"We need to go get her back."
The decision had been made just like that, final, unquestioned and yet... beneath all the anger, all the certainty, there had been sothing else.
Sothing I hadn’t voiced.
Fear.
A quiet, gnawing fear that settled deep in my chest.
What if she refused to co back?
What if, after everything, she had truly chosen soone else over us?
But when we arrived... what I saw shattered every expectation I had.
"How dare he try to hurt her?"
The anger had returned instantly, sharper than before, cutting through every doubt. There had been no hesitation after that.
The mont we saw her, fragile and barely standing, everything else beca irrelevant. We had rushed forward without thinking, grabbing her before she could fall, taking her away from the danger without a second thought.
At the hospital, we stayed, without leaving her side for a single mont, as we kept waiting and watching.
Ready to protect her, to make Alex pay for whatever he had done, whatever he had tried to do. But nothing prepared
for what happened next.
When she woke up... she didn’t recognize us. She looked at us like strangers. Spoke to us like strangers. Denied everything, her na, her past, us.
"I’m not Theresa."
The words had replayed in my mind over and over again since then, each ti hitting just as hard as the first.
Did she really forget?
Or...
Was she pretending?
Was this her way of cutting ties completely, of erasing us from her life the sa way she had taken another man’s na?
The thought unsettled
more than I cared to admit. I sat at the table now, silent, composed on the outside, but my thoughts were anything but steady. My gaze drifted toward her again, almost involuntarily.
She sat there quietly, cautious, withdrawn, as though every movent she made had to be asured. There was no recognition in her eyes. No warmth. No trace of the woman I rembered.
And yet...I couldn’t stop looking.
No matter how many tis I tried to focus on anything else, my attention always returned to her. It was frustrating, how easily she drew it, how effortlessly she held it without even trying.
But one thing was certain, this situation could not continue. The divorce papers had to be sent to Alex as soon as possible, there was no other option.
Theresa could not remain tied to him.
She belonged with us.
No...
She belonged to .
I thought, tightening my fingers around the spoon in my hands.
"Lawrence, are you okay?"
Bella’s voice broke through my thoughts, soft but concerned. I turned slightly as she raised her hand toward my forehead, her brows drawn together.
"Co on, Bella. I’m fine," I said quickly, forcing a small smile onto my face.
She studied
for a mont longer before lowering her hand.
But even as I reassured her, my focus unconsciously slipped again.
Back to Theresa.
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