Chapter 5

Olivia could barely get out the words. Alex's gaze was dark as deep water. He said he knew far more than she thought, but he wanted to hear it from her own mouth.

Alex said, "Five years ago, my mother used Nathan to threaten you into leaving me. You chose your brother and staged that fake betrayal for me to see.

"You thought sacrificing yourself would keep him safe? And what did it get you? He still went to prison. His ribs still got broken.

"Olivia, were you out of your mind?" Each word carved into her heart like a blade.

Olivia bit her lip, trembling all over. For five years she had carried everything alone, not daring to speak, cry, or even look back.

At last her voice broke as she said she had no choice, her mother had died early, her father never cared, and Nathan was the brother she had raised herself from childhood.

Alex stared at her tear-streaked face. The next second, he yanked her into his chest and held her so hard it was like he wanted to press her into his bones.

His voice shook above her head. "Why the hell didn't you come to me when you were in trouble? Was I dead to you?"

Buried against him, Olivia cried until her whole body shook. All the hurt, resentment, longing, and exhaustion of those five years dissolved into tears that soaked his shirt.

Alex only tightened his arms around her, his chin resting on her head as the streetlight stretched their shadows across the ground.

After a long while, Alex let her go, brushed away her tears, and told her to get in the car. When she asked where they were going, he opened the passenger door and said they were getting her brother out.

Then he lowered his head and looked at her with a burning gaze. She would repay the five years she owed him, not a single day less.

Soon the car was moving through the night, Olivia in the passenger seat, her eyes still red but her back already straightening.

In the car, Olivia asked when he had learned the truth.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Alex said he'd pulled Nathan's case file three years earlier. She turned to him and asked why, if he had known, he hadn't come to find her then.

Alex was silent for a long time. Only when they stopped at a red light did he finally speak. "Because I was investigating."

"Investigate what?" Olivia asked.

He tapped the steering wheel twice. "Why my mother went after your brother. Nathan had no grudge against that finance director. The whole drunken-assault story was too clean, too perfect, like a script written in advance.

"It took me a year to trace it back to my mother, and another year to learn there was someone else behind her."

When the light turned green, Olivia asked who was behind it. Alex said someone inside the Walker family had orchestrated everything; hurting Nathan had only been bait. From the very beginning, the real target had been him.

Olivia's mind raced. Alex was the Walker family's brightest prospect among the third generation.

His father, Robert Walker, was the current head of the family, but his health was failing, and over the past two years he had been gradually handing over the reins. And Alex's cousins? Not one of them could be taken lightly.

Her voice tightened as she asked whether his mother had forced her away five years ago not merely because she looked down on her.

Alex said his mother had been used. Someone had fed her the idea that Nathan's case could control Olivia, and controlling Olivia would control him. She had tried to strike first to protect her son, only to walk straight into someone else's trap.

Only then did Olivia understand that everyone had been a piece on the same chessboard.

After a long silence, Olivia asked whether his mother knew the truth now.