The Heiress Gambit-Chapter 58- "Please call".

PAIGE

The sun was a brutal, unforgiving spotlight slicing through the gaps in my blinds. I squinted, my head throbbing with a dull, persistent rhythm that felt like a punishment for the thoughts that had haunted my sleep.

When I finally managed to focus on the clock, it read noon. Noon. I’d spent half the day unconscious, hiding from the world. Pathetic.

I dragged myself out of bed, the memory of last night’s gala clinging to me like a bad smell. The headache was a physical anchor to my misery.

I dry-swallowed two painkillers, the bitter chalkiness coating my throat, and reached for my laptop. My sanctuary. My weapon.

The world outside could fall apart, but in here, with spreadsheets and strategic documents, I was in control. My plans weren’t going to work themselves.

The connections I’d made last night—Suzume’s offered introductions, the tentative interest from the Luxembourg fund—were just raw potential.

They needed to be forged into something real, something unbreakable. I buried myself in the work, my fingers flying across the keyboard, composing emails, drafting proposals. It was a frantic, focused energy, a way to outrun the ghost in the room.

I worked for what felt like an eternity, until the throb in my head receded and was replaced by the strain in my shoulders. The sun began to dip, painting my walls in long, orange shadows.

My phone, facedown on the desk, lit up with a soft glow. A notification. Probably a news alert, or Leon checking in.

I picked it up, my movements automatic, my mind still half-occupied with market volatility.

And I froze.

It was a banking alert.

Deposit Received: Daki Tech Holdings.

Amount: $1,750,000.00

The numbers glared back at me, surreal and infuriating. My base salary was a flat $750,000. This... this was a million dollars more. A cool, clean, extra million. No remark. No memo. No "good work" or "I’m sorry." Just a silent, massive transfer of funds from the one person I was trying to erase from my life.

Even now. Even after I’d looked him in the eye and told him we were nothing. Even after I’d walked away. He was still there, in the most intimate parts of my life, controlling the flow of money into my account as if he had a right. As if he could buy his way back in.

A bitter, hollow laugh escaped me. It was so like him. Words were failing him, so he was using the language he understood best: cold, hard cash. A transaction. He was trying to transact his way out of a broken heart.

My hands were trembling as I set the phone down. I stood up, my chair scraping loudly in the silent apartment, and walked to my bedside table. I pulled out a simple, black Moleskine journal. This wasn’t a diary of feelings. It was a ledger of debt.

I flipped it open. The pages were filled with my neat, precise handwriting. Dates. Amounts.

August 12: $500,000. No remark.

August 28:$900,000. No remark.

September 12: $650,000. No remark.

And now, I uncapped my pen, the nib pressing hard into the paper.

September 28: $1,000,000. "Surprise" salary bonus. No remark.

I stared at the growing column of numbers. A small fortune. Blood money for a broken trust. Every dollar was a reminder that he saw me as a problem to be financially managed. An asset to be maintained.

I closed the journal, the soft thud of the cover a promise. One day, when my own plans had borne fruit, when I was standing on my own two feet without a single string attached to him, I would wire every last cent of this money back to him. I would write a single line in the memo: Transaction Complete.

It would be the final word. The last move in a game he started. And the thought of that day, of that absolute, financial severance, was the only thing that cooled the white-hot anger simmering in my veins. He could keep his money. He could keep his empire. But he would not get to keep a single piece of me.

The date, September 28th, hung in the air, its significance shifting from financial to something far more terrifying. The numbers on the bank alert blurred, the million dollars suddenly feeling trivial, meaningless.

A cold, creeping dread started in the pit of my stomach, a slow-moving poison. Something was wrong. Something was... missing.

My mind, always so sharp, so quick to calculate and analyze, felt sluggish with fear. I mentally ran through my routines, my body’s signals. And then it hit me. The familiar, dull ache in my lower back. The slight tenderness. The... nothing else.

No blood.

My heart gave a single, hard thud against my ribs, then seemed to stop altogether.

No. No, no, no.

I fumbled for my phone, my fingers clumsy and cold, pulling up the calendar app. I scrolled back, my breath catching in my throat. There it was. A little red dot, marking the start of my last cycle. August 31st.

I stared at the empty days of September, the white digital squares stretching out, a silent, damning accusation. I was never late. My body was a clockwork machine, predictable and precise. Until now.

Panic, pure and undiluted, began to eat its way through me, icy tendrils wrapping around my lungs, squeezing the air out. My mind, frantic, started scrambling for a reason, any reason. Stress. The insane stress of the last month could do it, right? It had to be that.

But my brain, the traitorous, analytical organ it was, was already running the numbers, cross-referencing dates with a brutal, unforgiving logic.

When? When did I have unprotected sex?

The answer came to me not as a memory, but as a physical echo. A phantom sensation of cool, polished wood against my back. The scent of his cologne and raw desire. The feeling of his hands, possessive and demanding. The power struggle. The night we fucked on his desk, against the wall, on the floor.

The night all the rules, all the careful boundaries, had been incinerated in a blaze of pure, unadulterated need. Caution had been a forgotten language. We’d been speaking in snarls and sweat and desperate, claiming touches.

Oh, God.

With trembling fingers, I counted the days from that night. The timeline was a perfect, horrifying match. It lined up with chilling, absolute accuracy.

A strangled sound, half-gasp, half-sob, escaped my lips.

Fuck.

This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when I had just carved out a sliver of freedom. Not when I was finally building a life that was entirely my own. This... this would tether me to him forever. It would make all my plans, my revenge, my hard-won independence, conditional. It would make me conditional.

I couldn’t breathe. The walls of my apartment felt like they were closing in. I had to know. I had to be sure. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was overthinking. It was probably just the stress.

I all but ran. I didn’t grab a jacket. I didn’t check my hair. I just shoved my feet into the first shoes I saw and fled my apartment, practically stumbling down the stairs and out into the cooling evening air. The walk to the corner drugstore was a blur. My heart was a wild, frantic drum in my ears, drowning out the city sounds.

I pushed through the glass doors, my eyes scanning the brightly lit aisles until I found the section. The words felt like a mockery.

I grabbed a box—the one with two tests, because I needed a confirmation, I needed a jury to decide this—and clutched it in my hand like a live grenade.

At the checkout, the cashier gave me a bland, uninterested smile. I barely registered handing over the money. My entire world had shrunk to the small, white box in my hand, and the terrifying truth it might contain. This wasn’t just a test. It was a verdict on the rest of my life.

– – –

REOMEN

The transfer went through at 9:00 AM sharp. I did it out of habit, a muscle memory drilled into me by a decade of ruthless financial management. The 28th. Payday. But it was more than that. It was a compulsion. A need to provide, to ensure she wanted for nothing. She was mine. And what was mine was to be cared for, protected, provided for.

Even if she hated me. Even if the very sight of my name made her flinch. The money was a silent scream into the void: I’m still here. I still see you. Let me take care of you.

The only response I got was the hollow echo of my own thoughts in the penthouse. The silence was a physical weight, pressing down on me. So I turned to my only companion: a bottle of Macallan M, amber and deceptively smooth.

It was a poor substitute for her, for the fire she brought into this sterile space, but it was all I had. I’d become far too acquainted with it lately, subjecting myself to its burn in a pathetic attempt to feel something—anything—other than this constant, gnawing want for her.

I poured two fingers, not bothering with a glass. The crystal decanter was heavy in my hand. I took one chug, then another, letting the liquor blaze a trail down my throat. It didn’t warm the cold spot she’d left in my chest. It just made the frustration feel hotter, sharper.

My mind was a prison, and she was the only occupant. It replayed last night on a loop. The way she looked in that black dress—a goddess of vengeance and desire, so beautiful it physically hurt. The way she’d looked right through me. And Suzume’s voice, a ghost in my ear.

"She’ll reach out to you soon, you know."

"I’m ninety percent sure she will."

"Just wait and see."

Hope was a dangerous, stupid thing. It felt like a shard of glass in my gut, but I couldn’t stop myself from clutching it. What did Suzume see that I couldn’t? What variable did she know that would force Paige’s hand? The not-knowing was its own special kind of torture.

I stared at my phone, dark and silent on the black slate of my desk. The same phone that had once connected me to her in an instant. Now it was just a brick.

"Please," I whispered the word into the empty, whiskey-scented air. It was a ragged, broken sound, stripped of all my power, all my arrogance. It was the plea of a desperate man. "Please, call."

The room gave me nothing back but silence. The Macallan had numbed my throat, but it couldn’t touch the raw, aching void she’d left behind. I was the king of a crumbling empire, begging for a sign from the one queen who had already abandoned her throne