His Heir, Her Secret - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

Isla
I didn’t sleep.
Lucien had fallen asleep beside me sometime after two in the morning, one hand resting protectively on my hip, but my eyes stayed open, glued to the shadows dancing across the ceiling. Every creak of the floorboards, every hum of the building settling, had me flinching.
I’d worked so hard to become someone else. Someone new. I’d buried the girl I used to be—the one who was naive enough to mistake manipulation for kindness, threats for attention, and silence for safety. And now, that girl was clawing her way back up to the surface, dragging all her ghosts with her.
By sunrise, my skin felt too tight for my body.
I slipped out of bed carefully, not wanting to wake Lucien. I tiptoed into Leo’s room. He was curled on his side, thumb halfway in his mouth, his lashes resting like little fans on his cheeks. He was safe. He was everything.
I pressed a kiss to his forehead, breathing him in like air, and padded down to the kitchen.
Coffee. Strong. Scalding. Anything to shock my nerves into submission.
The note sat on the counter where Lucien had left it the night before. As if its presence wasn’t already burned into the back of my eyelids. The sentence echoed inside me like a warning bell.
You think he can protect you now?
It wasn’t just a threat. It was a challenge. A reminder that the past I’d tried to outrun hadn’t disappeared—it had only waited.
I poured the coffee, my hands trembling. I didn’t know if it was fear or fury anymore. Maybe both. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to sit still and wait for him—whoever he’d sent, whoever was watching—to make the next move.
Lucien walked in just as I took my first sip.
“You didn’t sleep,” he said softly.
“I couldn’t.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, watching me. “I had Marco pull the building’s surveillance footage from the last twenty-four hours. There’s a window—a fifteen-minute gap when the doorman left the front desk unattended. Someone slipped in through the service entrance. Hoodie, sunglasses, camera angled too high to catch a face.”
I stared at him. “So he knew exactly when to come. What cameras to avoid. What angles were blind.”
Lucien’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “It wasn’t random. Someone planned this.”
“I know who it was,” I whispered. “His name’s Damon.”
Lucien’s eyes snapped to mine.
“That’s who you were afraid of? The one who tried to control you?”
I nodded.
“I never wanted to say his name out loud,” I said. “It felt like… if I said it, I’d bring him back. And now I have.”
Lucien came to stand beside me. “You didn’t bring him back, Isla. He never left. He just waited until you had something to lose.”
“Leo,” I said, my voice cracking.
He pulled me into his arms, and I let him. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t try to be strong. I leaned into the warmth of him and let the ache out in slow, silent breaths.
“Whatever it takes,” Lucien murmured into my hair. “We end this.”
The way he said it, like a vow—like a promise made with blood and bone—made my spine straighten.
“I want to meet with him,” I said.
Lucien pulled back. “No. Absolutely not.”
“I need to know what he wants.”
“He wants to rattle you. Intimidate you. Drag you back into whatever twisted control he had. And you think meeting with him will change that?”
“No,” I admitted. “But maybe it changes me.”
Lucien looked at me with something between admiration and fear.
“I won’t let you walk into that alone,” he said.
“I don’t want to be alone. But I also don’t want to live like a prisoner in my own life.”
“You won’t. Not as long as I’m breathing.”
That morning, I made a call. One I never thought I’d make again.
To the number I still remembered by heart.
The same voice answered. Smooth. Polished. Lethal.
“Hello, Isla,” Damon said. “Took you long enough.”
I didn’t reply.
“I see you’ve upgraded,” he continued, his tone dripping with mockery. “Billionaire fiancé. Penthouse views. Adorable child.”
He was watching us.
A cold chill rolled down my spine.
“What do you want?” I asked.
He laughed. “Straight to business. I always liked that about you. No, what I want is simple, darling. A meeting. In person. I think you owe me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Come now. After everything I did for you? I gave you a life, Isla. You wouldn’t have survived those years without me. And this new life you’ve built? It’s lovely. But it’s built on lies.”
My blood went cold.
“I’ll give you twenty-four hours,” he said. “You know how to find me.”
And then he hung up.
Lucien had listened to the entire call on speaker. He looked ready to burn the world down.
“You’re not going anywhere near him alone.”
“I don’t plan to,” I said. “But I have to go. He’ll keep circling until I confront him.”
Lucien studied me, then nodded once. “Then we do this on our terms. With eyes everywhere. No more shadows.”
For the rest of the day, I stayed close to Leo. I watched him build towers of blocks and laugh at cartoons like nothing in the world had changed.
But everything had.
Because someone was coming for the life I’d finally begun to believe I deserved.
And I wasn’t going to let him take it.