The television studio was under siege. By the time Caspian’s car screeched to a halt near the entrance, a frantic circus of paparazzi and news vans had already descended, their camera flashes strobing like a lightning storm in the night.
The news of a Hawthorne heir had traveled fast.
He shoved his way out of the car, his face a thunderous mask. The crowd surged toward him, microphones and lenses thrust in his face.
“Caspian, is it true?”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
“Are you the father, Mr. Hawthorne?”
Their questions were barbs, each one twisting the knife of his shame. He was the villain of the story, the cheating husband arriving at the scene of the crime.
He pushed through the bodies, his raw fury fueling the media frenzy, until a line of studio security blocked his path.
“Sir, you can’t come through here.”
Blocked. Trapped on the outside. He pulled out his phone, his thumb jabbing Zara Ali’s name. It rang twice before she answered.
“What do you want, Caspian?” Her voice was ice.
“Let me speak to her,” he demanded, his tone still laced with the arrogance of a man used to getting his way. “I need to see her. Now.”
“Absolutely not,” Zara shot back, her voice low and fierce. He could hear the muffled chaos of the backstage area behind her.
“She is in no condition to speak with the man who publicly vilified her. The stress you’re causing could be dangerous for the baby. Have you even considered that?”
Lyra heard Zara’s side of the conversation. She was sitting in a small, sterile office, a bottle of water trembling in her hand.
Every instinct screamed at her to let Zara hang up, to retreat into the safety her friend was so desperately trying to build around her.
But this was different. This wasn’t about him anymore. It was about her.
“Zara,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “Let me have the phone.”
Zara’s eyes were filled with protest. “Lyra, no. You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know,” Lyra said. “This isn’t for him.”
She took the phone, her fingers cool against the plastic. She listened for a moment to Caspian’s impatient breathing on the other end.
“Five minutes,” she said, her voice devoid of its old warmth. It was the voice of a stranger. “There’s an empty green room on the third floor. Security can bring you. No one else.”
She was setting the terms. This was a final transaction, a severing.
Against Zara’s strenuous objections, a tense, temporary truce was established.
Caspian, seething under the glares of the paparazzi he was forced to leave behind, was escorted by two grim-faced guards through a labyrinth of corridors.
They led him to a small, windowless room and left him there, the click of the closing door echoing in the suffocating silence.
He stood alone in the sterile space, the air thick with the anticipation of a reckoning he had never seen coming.
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