Sweet Romance10 min read
I Won’t Run Again — Four Master Won’t Let Me
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I woke up to a hand at my throat and a voice that sounded like winter iron.
"Cry all you want," he said quietly. "It won't help."
I gasped and closed my eyes. The hand was real. The fear was real. The memory that had stolen my last life slammed into me — the face of the man who betrayed me, the blood, the empty bed where my baby should have been.
"Who—" I couldn't finish.
He lifted me as if I weighed nothing and set me down on the bed. His face was close. His eyes were deep wells of night. "Remember one thing," he said, his breath cold against my ear, "if you remember anything, remember me."
"I—" My voice broke. "You are…"
"Van," he said. "Van Mortensen."
He was the man from the dream that used to come after I first married — the man I hated and then loved, the man the city whispered about: Four Master Van. Before, he had been a strange storm in my life. This time, in this morning light, I felt different. Alive, raw, reckoning.
"This is my bed," I said, clumsy, and tried to pull myself together. "This can't be real. I died—"
"Stop saying that." He touched my forehead, an impossible gentleness. "You woke up. Start from here."
"Van—" I whispered. "Why me?"
His lips brushed my ear as if he were answering a private prayer. "Because you belong to me."
I laughed then, a sound that tasted like rust and relief. "You keep saying that. Twice in my other life you said it and it led to so much pain."
He pulled his hand back, serious. "Then this time I will keep you safe. Cry all you want if you need to. But you won't escape me."
I let myself sink against him. I let the warmth that was dangerous and precise fold me. The memory of knives, of betrayal by the man I thought loved me like a god — the man named Jett Russell — burned. Jett had been my first husband in the life I lost. He had smiled with a hand that schemed; he had traded me like a pawn.
"Promise me one thing," I said into his collarbone.
He smiled in a way that was both cruel and tender. "I will not let anyone hurt you."
"Even if—" The words stalled. "Even if he tries to hide his crimes?"
"Publicly," Van said. "If anyone hurts you, I will make them pay in front of the ones who admired them."
That comfort tasted like the beginning of a plan.
We had barely learned our new lives when I walked into a room that wanted to swallow me. A banquet at the home of a family allied to Van's old friends — power pressing into velvet. I had dressed carefully. For once, I wanted to look like myself. Van watched as I adjusted my sleeve.
"Don't play small tonight," he told me. "Be loud. Be bright."
"I was never loud," I said. "I caused trouble."
"Do it again," he said. "But this time, with me."
At the banquet everything slowed and sharpened. The murmur of voices, the clink of glasses, all focused into a single point: me. People turned. Whispers floated like moths.
"Look," someone said. "Who is that?"
"She looks like a model."
"That can't be the girl who left town a few years ago..."
"Doesn't matter. She looks expensive."
I felt someone reach for my hand and found Van's fingers anchor-small, strong.
"You made me wait," he murmured.
"I was buying a gift," I said.
"For whom?"
"For your friend, the host."
"You choose well."
It took only a few moments for the old voices to stir. Tilda Harris appeared like a challenge. Her smile was a blade covered in perfume. She used to be my sister in name; in the old life she had been my poison.
"Avery," she said with the public warmth of a snake. "So good to see you out."
"Hello, Tilda," I replied, deliberately calm. "Did you know about the chess set?"
She stiffened. "What chess set?"
"The one I sent for the grandfather." I held up the small carved bead I had bought, the token that mattered more than any chest of jewels. "He counted your devotion by whose hands held the game pieces. I hope he likes white beads."
Tilda's smile thinned. People nearby leaned in.
"Is this true?" Tilda's friend asked, loud enough for half the room. "Did she—"
"Does it matter?" I said, and then, because the old self refused to be cowed, I looked at Van and took a breath. "I came here to honor the man who is a friend of Van Mortensen. If you have a problem with me, say it now."
The room suddenly remembered that I had a husband whose presence bent the air. Van's shadow fell over the servants and the guests. Not because he was loud — he was never loud — but his quiet always pushed.
Tilda's face took a shade I remembered: ambushed. "We— er, we mean only—"
"Enough," Van said. His voice rolled like distant thunder. "Treat my wife with the respect you expect at your own table."
That night the city learned a new lesson. Tilda's attempts to smear me with rumors — that I had been the reckless one, that my past was dirty — hit Van like a boulder. He did what I could not have believed: he defended me—not for the spectacle, but as if he had papered over a wound too long.
"People listen," he said later in the car as we left. "But in the city, sometimes speech is paper. Action is the thing they remember."
I nodded. "I want to be better at action."
"Then learn," he said, and in the wet glove of night his hand found mine.
Days became thorned with old traps. Jett Russell and the other snakes I had trusted in my previous life resurfaced like water on stone. Jett's smile had never suited his face. He had a reputation for being kind, for having the touch that soothed and the head that dissected. The truth he had buried had been uglier. In the life I had lost, he orchestrated betrayals that burned my family, and he had delighted in the slow burn of my pain.
I had waited quietly, remembering details, collecting proof. The ring—my mother’s ring—had been taken in the old life. It was small, carved inside with a mark that had once granted us protection from the shadowy network my mother had kept. I knew it now, hidden in a box in the old house like a key.
I went back to the house. I found the small wooden box, managed the one wild strike of strength that felt like an old instinct, and pried it open. The ring was exactly where I remembered. I wanted to laugh, to cry, to smash everything.
That ring started an engine.
I had help. My brothers — Jacob Crane and Forbes Price — were solid and bitter and wonderfully loyal. We made a plan. We would not whisper. We would not wait for the city to decide justice. We would take what belonged to us: truth.
"You're sure about this?" Jacob asked. "Once we expose them, there is no going back."
"There never was," I said. "But now, Van is with me. We won't be small."
"And he trusts you?" Forbes asked.
"Van trusts me enough to keep me from repeating old mistakes," I said.
The day of exposure was clear as cut glass. We chose the company annual gala — a place where the city's elite gathered and where Jett had scheduled a speech about charity and family. People would be there; cameras would be there. We invited the media just enough to make a triangle.
I walked into the hall in a dress that belonged to a different woman and mounted the stage while Van arranged things on the side. Jett smiled a practiced smile from his table. He had no idea.
"Good evening," I said into the microphone. "Thank you for coming." People applauded politely. Jett's gaze slid to me, curious. I waited. The room fell into a hush under the sudden hush of truth.
"Tonight," I continued, my voice steady, "we celebrate many things. Some of us pretend our hands are clean. Some of us hide what we've done behind gifts and foundations."
Jett's smile tightened.
"I have been patient," I said. "But patience is not weakness. Patience is a record. I have evidence that speaks of greed and lies and a conspiracy that cost children and fathers and houses. I have footage, I have witnesses, I have bank records. All of it links to actions orchestrated by a man who sits up there tonight."
I gestured. Van stepped forward then, perfectly still, and let the room turn to Jett.
"How long do you want me to wait?" Van asked softly. His voice carried.
"Until the world could hear," I said.
We let the evidence unspool. The video showed Jett meeting with men in a sterile room. There were messages, exchanges, transfers. The faces of victims — pale, exhausted — stared like the proof of a lie. The room no longer had polite distance. Someone called for someone to explain. Jett's mouth opened and closed; he tried at first to soothe the sound into denial.
"This is libel," he said, loud, as if the word were a shield. "This woman profits on lies."
"Watch," I said. I had him by then. I played other clips, documents, witnesses. The most brutal detail was the last one: a plane manifest and a recorded call. The city quieted. A dozen phones started filming. Jett's expression unglued into raw fear.
I watched Jett's face change in stages, the way mercury moves: pride to confusion, confusion to denial, denial to anger, anger to collapse. He tried to plead with a stage of half-truth. He tried to blame others. People began to stand back. Cameras circled like vultures.
"Do you have anything to say?" I asked, and my voice had the soft cruelty of a birthday wish.
"I—" He choked. "You liar."
"A liar," I repeated. "Tell that to the widows. Tell that to the father who never saw his son grow up because of your plan."
"That's not true!" Jett shouted. He was loud and small at once. Men whispered. Women stared. The guests took to their phones. The lawyer at his table whispered. Van's face did not move. He watched me, not with hunger but with such steady patience I felt naked and safe.
"Stop lying," I said. "Look them in the eyes."
A woman from the back raised her hand and cried, "That's my husband in those documents. He—" Her voice cracked. Others started telling their stories in the same shaky chorus that grows when a silence is broken. Jett staggered.
It was then that Tilda Harris — who had once slashed my face when she thought she could bury me — made a break for the exit.
"Hold," I said. I had prepared for her cowardice. We had, in private, the footage of her admissions and her recorded boasts about her role. I played it. The words were there: her hunger, her cruelty, her laughter at the disaster she engineered.
The room turned on her. People moved. Someone reached for their phone. Tilda's face was a mask of fury that crumbled. She tried to laugh off the evidence. She tried to cry perfunctory remorse. She begged, she flailed. I watched her decline in the same stages I had watched Jett: arrogance to shock to frantic denial to an ugly plea.
"Do you regret it?" I asked.
"No— I—" Tilda gagged. Her voice came out small. "This is a setup."
"Look at them," I said. "You took their nights. You took their peace. You wrote the damage. Now you will watch as the world reads you right."
Around us, the guests no longer murmured kindly. They recorded. They whispered curses that had been held behind fine teeth. Women who had been silenced nodded. Men who had traded favors clutched their drinks.
Tilda dropped to her knees then, which made the room gasp. She begged, in public, for forgiveness. Jett followed: a fall that fit the old songs. The cameras were ruthless. They filmed everything. People took pictures for themselves and to send to the ones who had lost so much.
I did not enjoy cruelty. I enjoyed truth. I did not dance on wounds. But I wanted them to see themselves the way I had for years: as cruel architects of ruin, not high men of virtue.
They pleaded. Jett's proud mask shattered. Tilda's measured artifice flamed to ash. Both tried to claw at the sympathy in the room, but the witnesses outnumbered them. Men who had once smiled at them turned away. The charity board that had once applauded Jett's speeches stood up, muttering about audits. Sponsors removed their logos. The whispers turned into a small storm.
"Stop filming," Jett hissed to the cameras that were everywhere.
"You're already viral," Van said quietly and let the weight of the word drop.
They ran a gamut of reactions. Some guests clucked in moral superiority. Some cheered the exposure. Some simply turned off their phones, ashamed to watch the cruelty they've tolerated. People who had worshiped Jett shifted their faces. I watched one woman who had once courted him stand and, with trembling lips, apologize to me for not seeing.
Tilda looked at me then, eyes like stone. "You ruined me."
"No," I said. "You ruined others. You ruined yourself."
She sobbed. Over and over she begged, and the room watched, and the world watched. It was not enough to humiliate them privately. The point was public correction: for the daughters left motherless, for the sons whose lives were stolen by greed.
We held nothing back. We had not only videos but also the record of Jett's accounts flowing into shell companies, payments to men who made threats, the purchase records of things meant to silence. The evidence read like a ledger of cruelty.
When we finished, when the microphones were done and the lights dimmed, the guests were stunned into a kind of stunned mercy. The board chair whispered into a lawyer’s ear. Someone in black tie produced documents. Jett tried to fight legally; he would later, but right then his mask was gone. He was small.
The punishment of the night was not a legal sentence — that would come later in courts and journalists' long teeth. The punishment was social and immediate: sponsors withdrew support from his companies; his photo was removed from portraits; his booths were emptied. Tilda's social invitations were canceled. Their partners turned their backs. People took what mattered from them: the worship, the easy respect, the safety that comes from being untouchable.
They cracked under it. Their reaction changed from smirks to fury to pleading to the final thinness of disbelief.
Van stood very still. When it was over, he turned to me and said, quietly, "This was public. They will not forget that they were seen."
"Will they ever apologize?" I asked.
He looked at the men and women folding away their napkins, their faces utterly altered. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. People like them do not easily change. But people who watched will remember the faces behind the stories. And that will matter."
What I learned that night was a truth that had nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with reclamation. I reclaimed my voice in a public place where one cannot pretend ignorance. I reclaimed my name. I reclaimed the right to live without their secrets on my back.
Later, after the crowd thinned and the cameras moved on to the next scandal, Van walked me to the car.
"You did well," he said. "Not like before."
"Not like before," I echoed. I fit my fingers into his. The ring in my pocket — my mother's ring — pressed cold and certain against my palm.
We drove home under a sky that made the city look clean for a while. At the gate, I looked up at Van and said, hard: "I won't run. Not again."
He smiled, touched the place where my collarbone met my throat, and said softly, "Then don't. You're mine in this life. I will pet you until you forget how to fear."
I laughed, ridiculous and real.
We opened the house door together. I knew the road ahead would be thorny. There would be lawyers, and there would be ugly print, and there would be people who called me a liar still. But I had Van's hand, and the knowledge of the second chance that had been unexpected and holy.
The city slept, but I did not. I lay awake thinking of how I had been foolish in my previous life and how, now, every step I took would be sharp with the steel of memory. I pressed the ring for a moment and felt the promise settle in my chest.
"Tomorrow," I said into the dark, "we quiet the little things first."
Van turned so his mouth hovered above my brow. "Tomorrow we begin," he said.
I closed my eyes and let the night claim me.
The End
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