Chapter 22: The Unheard Confession

Elijah stormed out of the building lobby, his jaw tight, his hands clenched into fists, Luna's words still echoing in his head, a relentless, infuriating refrain. He never imagined the woman Killian once threw everything away for, the woman who had captivated his best friend, would be so damn infuriating, so utterly impossible to reason with. The gall she had to act as if she was the one wronged, the victim in this whole mess—it made his blood boil, fueling his already simmering anger.

He gritted his teeth, shaking his head in disbelief, trying to dispel the lingering frustration. It wasn't worth it, he told himself; it wasn't his fight. Killian had already made his choice, had made his bed, and Elijah had no reason to care what happened between them, no reason to get involved in their tangled web of emotions. He had more important things to do, more pressing matters to attend to, than waste his precious energy on a ghost from the past, a woman who only brought trouble.

But as he reached his sleek, black car, instinctively patting his pocket for his keys, he cursed under his breath, a frustrated sound escaping his lips, a sudden realization dawning on him.

His phone.

He must've left it in Killian's office.

With an irritated sigh, he turned back and re-entered the towering Blackwell Industries building. The security guard at the front desk gave him a brief nod, already familiar with his presence, and Elijah made his way to the executive elevator.

The ride up was smooth, but his mood was anything but. He had no interest in exchanging more words with Luna, and if she was still up there with Killian, he'd grab his phone and leave without another word.

Or so he thought.

As he stepped onto the top floor, the hallway leading to Killian's office was eerily quiet. Something about the stillness made his steps slow as he approached the door, which was left slightly ajar.

Then, he heard it.

Luna's voice—low but filled with emotion.

"…so you're just going to let him think I'm the villain?"

Elijah frowned and hesitated. He should knock, announce himself. But something about her voice, the pain laced in it, rooted him to the spot.

Killian's reply came a second later, calm yet guarded. "I never said that."

"But you didn't say anything to correct him either," Luna shot back, frustration slipping through. "You let Elijah believe I left you for something else, that I walked away when it was you who disappeared, Killian. You left without a word. And you never once tried to fix it."

Elijah's breath caught in his throat.

That…that wasn't the story he knew.

Everything he had believed, everything he had told himself about Luna being a heartless woman who discarded Killian like yesterday's trash—was that not true?

Killian exhaled sharply, but he didn't refute her claim. He didn't deny it. Instead, there was silence, heavy and suffocating.

"You have no idea what I went through," Luna continued, her voice quieter now, more broken. "You disappeared, and I—I had nothing, Killian. I didn't even know if you were alive. And then, after years of silence, you come back and throw a contract at me like none of it mattered?"

Elijah clenched his fists at his sides, his knuckles white, his body rigid with a mixture of confusion and a growing sense of betrayal. His mind raced, trying to fit these new, jarring puzzle pieces into the picture he had always seen so clearly, the narrative he had clung to for years. But the more he heard, the more conflicting information he absorbed, the less sense it made, the more the carefully constructed image of the past began to crumble.

Killian left her? He was the one who vanished, who disappeared without a trace?

Why the hell would he do that? Why would he abandon the woman he clearly loved, the woman he had once been so desperately devoted to? The questions swirled in his mind, a chaotic whirlwind of doubt and disbelief.

"I didn't have a choice, Luna," Killian finally said, his voice tight, strained, controlled, but with an undercurrent of raw emotion that Elijah had rarely heard from him. "You think I wanted to leave you? That I wanted to disappear, to vanish from your life, to cause you pain?"

"You never gave me an explanation, Killian," Luna snapped, her voice laced with bitterness, her eyes flashing with hurt and anger. "Not then, not now. How can you stand there and act like you're protecting me, like you're doing what's best for me, when you never even gave me the truth, when you left me in the dark, wondering what I had done wrong?"

Elijah pressed his back against the cool, smooth wall outside the office door, his head spinning, his thoughts a tangled mess. This wasn't just a misunderstanding, a simple miscommunication—it was a lie, a carefully constructed fabrication, a deception he had been fed for years. A lie that painted Luna as the villain, the heartless betrayer. He had blamed Luna, resented her, even hated her for what he thought she had done to his best friend, for the pain he believed she had inflicted.

But Killian had never corrected him, had never set the record straight. He had allowed him to believe the lie, to harbor resentment towards Luna, to judge her unfairly. And now, the truth was unraveling, exposing the cracks in their carefully constructed reality.

His chest tightened with something dangerously close to betrayal.

Why? Why wouldn't Killian tell him? Why let him carry all this anger toward Luna for something she never did?

Inside the office, the tension was palpable.

Luna let out a bitter laugh. "You know, I could deal with everything else—the coldness, the distance, the way you pretend this is just business. But this?" Her voice cracked. "I can't be the only one carrying the weight of our past, Killian. It's not fair."

More silence.

Then Killian spoke, softer this time. "I know."

Elijah felt something in his gut twist. He couldn't listen anymore. He needed to leave before he did something reckless.

His mind was consumed by one truth: He had been wrong about Luna.

And Killian Blackwell was keeping far too many secrets.