Chapter 11

Months passed. Both men lost twenty pounds. They looked haunted. They couldn't take it anymore—they went public, posting on every platform with a cash bounty in the millions. "Any information leads to her. Whatever price."

The internet, which had learned the full story, came for them.

"She left on her own. If you love her, leave her alone."

"Don't help them find her. You'll be feeding her back into the fire."

"Disgusting. They couldn't even treat her right when they had her. The further she stays from family like that, the better."

Julian tried to correct it. "She was tricked. Celeste convinced us she had a dark aura. We know now."

The internet doubled down. "A psychic says your sister has a dark aura and you believe it? That's how little you cared."

The more he said, the worse it got.

He posted a psychiatric evaluation. "I'm her brother. I'm more worried than any of you. Losing her has caused me serious mental distress. I'm asking for help."

People told him he deserved it.

Richard, skeletal, drinking himself through late-stage stomach cancer, filmed from a hospital bed. "I don't have much time left. I just want to see my daughter once. Please help me. I want to apologize to her with my own voice."

Some people felt sorry for him. Most didn't. "One after another they're getting sick. Karma."

Killian worked every contact, spent every dollar. Wanted her back, wanted to apologize, wanted to explain. Vivienne was a ghost. She had vanished from the world.

The first year, he told himself he would find her. He crossed continents. Nothing.

He began to decay. He moved into her old room at the Ashford estate. It was spotless. Not a single thing of hers left behind. Not a dress. Not a note.

Julian came in one day. Red-eyed. "I put Celeste in her room, and she had to watch that."

Mom, he thought, I lost her. Tell me how to bring her back.

Tears. Killian, quiet: "Shut up. You don't get to say that. None of us do."

The internal surveillance at the estate still had her on tape. Killian watched it on loop. Her giving orders to the staff to take boxes. Her setting the teddies on fire.

Those teddies had been his love for her. She had thrown every piece of it on a pyre.

He had noticed the teddies were gone. He hadn't asked. He had been busy with Celeste's birthday. He could have caught her in time. He hadn't.

A year became two. Both men stopped sleeping.

Why wouldn't she come back. Was she punishing them.

Killian drank himself through every night in Vivienne's old bedroom. One night he half-saw her walk in.

He lurched up. "Vivi—"

She turned and walked out. He lunged. She dissolved. He chased. She stayed one step ahead. And then she was gone.

"Vivi. Don't go. Vivi. Anything you want. Anything. Come back—"

He was crying by the end. He saw her silhouette pause at the terrace railing. He stumbled toward her.

"Don't—"

Her silhouette vanished. And he went over the terrace rail himself.

A maid found him in the hedges at dawn, unconscious, mumbling her name. Both legs shattered.

At Mount Sinai, Catherine Thorne wept at his bedside. Gregory Thorne was past wept. "Killian. She is one woman. Snap out of it."

Killian kept his eyes closed. His father half-laughed, half-choked. "If that terrace hadn't been over topiary, if the gardeners hadn't been up, you'd be dead."

Catherine whispered, "Son. Please. The Ashfords are cursed. Vivienne may have killed herself. Please let her go."

He opened his eyes. "Mom. Vivienne isn't dead. I'll find her. She just doesn't want to see me."

Red eyes, raw voice, an edge of something breaking. Vivi. What do I have to do to see you.

The estate was now, according to the staff, haunted. Julian stalked around Vivienne's old bedroom in the same state. He had started outpatient psychiatric treatment and it wasn't working.

He would murmur, "Vivi. Killian says he saw you. Come see me too. Just once."

Then his face would twist. "Vivi. If you were alive you wouldn't be this cruel to me. You wouldn't—please don't be dead. Please be cruel to me. Just be alive."

He would try Killian's trick of drinking in her room. He'd wake up on the floor without having seen her. He'd tear the room apart screaming.

"Why will you show yourself to him and not to me? Do you hate me that much?"

Staff quit in waves. Only Richard, dying, and Julian, unraveling, were left in the house. Someone filmed it and posted it. Even the comments were cold.

"Karma."

After Killian's terrace fall, the Thornes had him committed for observation. Julian visited.

"Killian. If she were alive, we would have found her. We haven't."

Killian punched him in the face. "Shut up. Do not say that. She is not that fragile. She is alive."

Julian closed his eyes. "I want her to be alive more than you do. But she wouldn't let us suffer like this if she were. It's been a year and a half."

"Killian. Vivi has always been too soft-hearted to do this to us."

He walked out. Tears he didn't bother to hide.

In the hospital room, Killian cried for the first time in months, silently. The hope was going.