He Trapped Me In Maldives With His Brother

I spun toward the flash.

A man in a faded baseball cap lowered his phone and slipped into the crowd near the currency exchange. Gone in two seconds.

"Did you see that?" I asked.

"I saw it." Caspian's hand closed around my elbow. "Walk."

"Don't touch me."

"Then walk on your own. But walk."

He steered me past the customs booths, through the sliding doors, into a narrow hallway beside a closed coffee kiosk. Nobody else was there. Just a buzzing vending machine and the smell of floor cleaner.

I yanked my arm free.

"That could've been a tourist," I said. "Some guy taking a picture of the arrivals board."

Caspian didn't answer. He just watched me, the way you watch someone stand at the edge of a pool, waiting to see if they'll jump.

"You don't get it," I said. "Five years. He held my hair back when I had food poisoning in Lisbon. He sat in the hospital with my dad for three nights straight. You don't fake that."

"People fake a lot of things."

"Not him." My voice wobbled. I hated that it wobbled. "There's a mistake somewhere. A misunderstanding. Something you're not telling me."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"What do you need, Nora?" he asked. "Tell me what it takes."

I lifted my chin. "Proof. Real proof. Call him. Right now. I want to hear Kael's voice myself."

Something flickered across his face. Almost like pity.

"You're sure?"

"Call him."

He pulled out his phone, found the name, and pressed it. Then he tapped the speaker button and held the phone flat between us.

It rang once. Twice.

On the third ring, it connected.

Nobody said hello.

Just rustling. Sheets, maybe. A soft thump, like a pillow hitting a headboard.

Then a woman's voice. Not words. A low, breathy sound that rose and broke into a giggle.

My fingers curled into my palms.

"Stop wiggling," Kael murmured. Lazy. Amused. The voice he used on Sunday mornings when he didn't want to get out of bed. "Come here."

"Your phone's ringing," the woman whispered.

"Let it ring."

"What if it's her?"

He laughed. Soft and careless. "She's on a plane, baby. Somewhere over the ocean, being a good girl."

The woman sighed something I couldn't make out. Kael's voice dropped lower.

"Nobody's ever made me feel like you do. You know that, right? Nobody."

The floor tilted.

I grabbed the edge of the vending machine. The metal hummed against my palm. My knees went soft, like the bones had turned to water.

*Being a good girl.*

Five years of late-night calls. Five years of *I'll always come home to you.* Five years of him tracing circles on my back until I fell asleep.

Caspian ended the call.

The silence afterward was worse than the sounds.

"Nora."

I didn't look at him. I stared at a dented can of mango soda behind the glass.

"Nora. There's more."

"More," I repeated. A laugh slipped out of me, thin and strange. "Sure. Why not. Give me more."

He swiped through his phone and held it out again. An audio file. Eleven minutes long.

"I recorded this in his office," he said. "Two weeks ago. He didn't know I was in the side room."

He pressed play.

Kael again. But a different voice this time. Clipped. Businesslike. The voice he used on conference calls.

"The shares are already transferred. Her father signed everything in March. That part's locked."

Another man answered, older, gravelly. I didn't recognize him. "And the girl?"

"I'm sending her to the Maldives. Same flight as Caspian. Same villa. I've got a photographer on the ground at the airport and at the resort. All I need is a few shots. Them walking in together. Him carrying her bag. Doesn't matter. Context is whatever I say it is."

"Then what?"

"Then it leaks. *Rourke heir's fiancée caught with his brother weeks before wedding.* I break off the engagement. Public humiliation, breach of contract. Her family pays damages. Generously."

The older man chuckled. "And your brother?"

"My father hates scandal more than he hates losing money." Kael's tone went smooth, almost bored. "Caspian sleeping with my fiancée? He'll be out of the will by Christmas. He'll sign away his inheritance just to make the story go away."

"Two birds."

"One stone," Kael said. "I keep the shares. I lose the girl. I lose the brother. Clean."

Caspian stopped the recording.

I didn't move.

My mind kept snagging on one word. *Clean.*

Like I was a stain. Like five years of my life was something he could scrub out of a carpet.

"He planned it," I said. My voice sounded far away. "All of it. The tickets. The kiss on my forehead. *Go breathe, Nora.*"

"Yes."

"He stood in our kitchen and handed me the tickets and *smiled.*"

"I know."

"Stop saying you know!" It tore out of me, loud enough to echo down the hallway. "You don't know! You didn't sleep next to him for five years! You didn't—"

My throat closed. The tears came hard and fast, hot on my cheeks, and I couldn't stop them. I pressed both hands over my mouth.

Caspian didn't reach for me. He didn't say anything soft. He just stood there and let me fall apart.

Somehow that was better.

When the worst of it passed, I wiped my face with the back of my wrist and pulled out my phone.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Booking a flight." My thumb jabbed at the screen. "There's a return at six. I'll be home by tomorrow night. I'm walking into that penthouse, and I'm playing that recording in his face, and I'm—"

His hand covered my screen.

"Don't."

"Move your hand."

"Think for one second."

"I've had eleven hours to think!" I shoved at his wrist. He didn't budge. "Get out of my way, Caspian."

"You get on that plane, and what happens?" His voice stayed low and even. "His photographer already has you and me walking out of customs together. You fly home alone, crying, a day after landing. What does that look like?"

I stopped.

"It looks like we had a fight," he said. "A lovers' fight. It looks like guilt. He'll spin it before you even land."

"I have the recording."

"*I* have the recording. Illegally made, in a building he owns. His lawyers will bury it in a week."

My hand trembled around the phone. "So what? I just stay here? I sit in that villa and wait for him to finish ruining me?"

"No."

He lowered his hand from my screen. His gray eyes held mine, steady and cold and very, very awake.

"Going back now is exactly what he wants," Caspian said. "He built this whole trap expecting us to panic."

"Then what do you suggest?"

He tilted his head toward the doors, toward the heat and the photographer hiding somewhere in it.

"We're already here," he said. "So let's make a deal."