Chapter 3Kept in Don’s Shadow

Triumph flashed across Zoya’s face before she hid it against Ronan’s chest.

“Then make her leave. I don’t want a woman like that around you every day.”

Ronan hesitated.

Zoya reached for the steaming cup of ginger tea.

“Ronan! It’s hot!”

Before I could move, she tipped it straight over my chest.

The scalding liquid soaked through my blouse and hit the exact spot where the kiss mark had been.

Blisters rose across my skin. Only a few drops touched her fingers, but Ronan checked her hand before glaring at me.

“Four years beside me, and you still cannot make one cup of tea? Or did you make it too hot because it was for Zoya?”

I did not defend myself. Cameras covered the room. If Ronan wanted the truth, he could find it in seconds.

He called his secretary.

“Cancel Livia’s salary and bonus for this month. Report her failure at next week’s family meeting.”

Then he looked at me.

“I promised Gideon I would protect you, but that does not give you the right to challenge me. Do this again, and I’ll send you back to New York myself. Not even your father will convince me to let you remain in Chicago.”

He studied my face, waiting for the panic that threat once would have caused.

My burns throbbed.

“Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time.”

I caught the secretary’s uneasy expression. He opened his mouth, clearly wanting to say something.

After all, my resignation letter—signed by Ronan himself—was already in the process of being filed.

But before the secretary could speak, Zoya complained again.

Ronan immediately lifted her into his arms, soothing her as if nothing else in the room mattered.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

At the door, he finally noticed my injuries.

“You come too. I don’t want Gideon seeing those burns and thinking the Whitlocks failed you.”

On the way to the Whitlock clinic, Ronan texted me from the front seat.

[I was too harsh, but I lost Zoya once. I cannot lose her again. If you’re angry, I’ll compensate you.]

An apartment for four hidden years. Money for public humiliation. To Ronan, every wound had a price.

I watched him hold Zoya’s hand and blocked his number.

Outside the emergency entrance, a car suddenly careened toward us.

Ronan instinctively shielded Zoya, knocking me into a stone planter. Gravel tore my palms and knees, and the blisters on my chest split open.

The car struck a barrier.

Ronan did not look back. He found a shallow scrape on Zoya’s hand and carried her inside, shouting for a doctor. Over his shoulder, she looked at my bleeding skin and smiled.

An off-duty nurse handed me gauze.

“You need treatment immediately.”

“Thank you.”

Instead of entering the hospital, I hailed a cab.

“O’Hare Airport.”

On the way, HR emailed to confirm that my employment and every affiliated position had ended at six o’clock.

It was 6:03.

I was no longer Ronan’s assistant or the lover waiting in his safe house. For the first time in four years, no Whitlock order determined where I would sleep or where I was expected to stand the next morning.

At the airport, I cleaned my wounds, broke my SIM card, deleted the lake-house pass, and erased every encrypted Whitlock contact.

My father was waiting in the private terminal with Calloway guards. His face hardened when he saw my bandages and bruised cheek.

The men behind him lowered their eyes as I approached. They waited for my father’s order.

My father waited for mine.

“Who did this?”

I did not answer. I would not waste another moment on Ronan.

I took my father’s arm as I had when I first left New York at eighteen.

“Dad, let’s go.”

Gideon brushed the rain-damp hair from my face. “All right. Let’s go home.”

Together, we boarded the private jet.

Meanwhile, Ronan settled Zoya in the emergency room. Her injury was superficial, but as the nurse bandaged her hand, he remembered me climbing from the planter with blood seeping through my gauze.

He stopped a nurse outside. "Another woman arrived with us. Livia Calloway. Burns on her chest, cuts on her hands and knees. Where is she?"

The nurse checked the system. "There is no patient registered under that name."

He bought burn ointment and called me three times. Each attempt returned the same message: the number was no longer in service.

Then an encrypted call came from Gideon.

"Ronan, is this how you keep your promises? Livia is covered in bruises!" The muted thunder of a private jet sounded behind his voice.

Ronan tightened his grip on the ointment. "Livia is with you? Put her on."

Gideon laughed without humor. "She is a Calloway, not a subordinate you can summon back to your estate."

"In two days, she will marry Bennett Mercer. The Whitlocks will receive a formal invitation. As an old ally, you may witness my daughter begin her new life."