HEART BOUND

NOT MY DAUGHTER!

(Season 1)

CHAPTER 42

The air in the room went thin.

Liora’s face cracked first. Not into tears — into something sharper, colder. Rage twisted her features until she barely looked like herself. The girl who’d spent her whole life trying to be good enough was gone, replaced by something wild and wounded.

“How could you try to kill your own child, Dad?” The words didn’t just leave her mouth. They ripped. Her voice splintered on the last word, echoing off the walls like glass breaking. “How. Could. You!”

Ruben didn’t flinch. Not at first. Then his expression curdled. The father she knew — the one who taught her to ride a bike, who checked her homework — vanished in a blink. His jaw tightened, eyes going flat and black.

“You are *not* my daughter.”

The sentence landed like a slap. He shouted it, but it was the quiet cruelty in his tone that cut deeper.

Liora blinked. For half a second she thought she’d misheard. Then he kept going.

“Your stupid mother cheated on me.”

The floor dropped out from under her. Liora froze mid-breath, fingers going numb at her sides. “What… what are you even saying?” Her voice came out small, disbelieving. Like if she said it soft enough, it wouldn’t be real.

Ruben’s laugh was ugly. “The only real daughter I have is Jae. That bastard Leon… Hannah betrayed me with *him*.”

The name hit the room like a gunshot.

In the corner, Alex had been silent this whole time. A shadow watching. But at that name his head snapped up. His brow furrowed, confusion bleeding into something darker.

“Leon?” It was barely a whisper. Almost to himself.

Liora didn’t hear him. Or maybe she did and couldn’t process it. Her legs gave out. She stumbled back, and the tears she’d been holding back finally broke loose — hot, fast, uncontrollable. They streamed down her face as her world tilted.

Alex moved without thinking. He caught her before her knees hit the floor, arms locking around her as she crumpled.

“No,” she choked out against his chest, shaking her head over and over. “This can’t be true… You’re my father. The only father I’ll ever have… So don’t say that, Dad. Please.”

Beside them, Kalen didn’t move. His face was blank, the way it always was. No shock. No pity. Just watching. As if this family breaking apart in real time was nothing more than weather.

The room spun, but only for Liora.

For everyone else, time stuck. Thick. Heavy. Like the air itself was waiting to see who would break first.

Alex’s arms were still locked around her, but his grip had changed. It wasn’t just support anymore. It was anchoring. His chest rose and fell too fast, breath catching in his throat like he’d been punched. Because that name — *Leon* — didn’t just confuse him. It gutted him.

“Leon?” He said it again, louder this time, but his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. His eyes darted to Ruben, then to Liora’s tear-streaked face, then back to Ruben. Something clicked behind his eyes, something ugly and sharp.

“That doctor,” Mrs brown whispered. “Dr. Leon Vance. The one who treated Hannah before she died.”

The words tasted wrong in his mouth. Like poison.

Ruben sneered, as if saying it again would make it hurt more. “For years. Right under my roof. While I raised his daughter thinking she was mine. You want to know why I tried to kill her? Because every time I look at her, I see his eyes staring back.”

Liora convulsed in Alex’s arms. A sob tore out of her, raw and animal. Not crying — breaking. “No,” she choked. “No, you’re lying. You have to be lying. My mother loved you. She *loved* you, Dad. She wouldn’t—”

“She was a w***e, Liora,” Ruben said, and this time he didn’t shout. He said it soft. Clinical. Like he was diagnosing her. “And you’re her mistake.”

That was the word that did it. *Mistake*.

Liora went limp. All the fight drained out of her at once. Her fingers clutched at Alex’s shirt, then slipped. If Alex hadn’t been holding her, she would’ve hit the floor like a doll with its strings cut.

Alex pressed his face into her hair, eyes squeezed shut. Dr. Leon Vance. The man who died in a “car accident” six months before Hannah passed.

The timeline didn’t add up. The grief didn’t add up.

His hands started shaking.

And through all of it, Kalen didn’t move an inch.

He stood off to the side, arms loose at his sides, face blank as a sheet of fresh paper.

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The Vex mansion was too quiet.

After the sirens faded and Ruben + Mrs. Brown were dragged away in cuffs, Kalen, Alex, and an unconscious Liora slipped back through the iron gates. Alex laid Liora on the couch in the east wing, checked her pulse, her breathing, her pupils — all steady, just her mind shutting down from the shock. Only when he was sure she wouldn’t slip further did he exhale.

Kalen didn’t say a word. He just turned and walked. Down the hall, up the stairs, straight to his study. Door closed. Silence.

It didn’t last.

The door slammed open so hard it bounced off the wall.

Zach stormed in like a storm cloud with fists. His eyes were bloodshot, jaw locked, and the glare he pinned on Kalen could’ve burned holes through steel.

“Are you seriously going to ignore me after what you did?” Zach’s voice cracked the quiet in half.

Kalen didn’t look up from the desk. He was rearranging papers that didn’t need rearranging. “What do you mean.”

Flat. Dead. Like he was asking about the weather.

Zach laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What do I mean?! You faked yours and Liora’s death, Kalen. You *f*****g* faked it. Did it not occur to you that maybe, just maybe, it was necessary to tell us about your stupid plans?”

Kalen finally lifted his eyes. No guilt. No apology. Just that same unreadable mask. “Telling you wasn’t part of the plan.”

His voice was calm. Worse — it was reasonable. Like he’d just explained basic math.

Zach’s hands curled into fists. “Are you kidding me right now? Ryan was freaking out. Kai practically lost his mind. Do you ever stop to think what your ‘stupid plan’ did to everyone else?!”

He was spiraling. And right on cue, the door burst open again.

Ryan was already crying before he even saw Kalen’s face. Tears cutting clean lines down his cheeks. Kai followed, but he didn’t make a sound. He just stood in the doorway, shoulders rigid, jaw clenched so tight it looked like it might shatter. His knuckles were white where he gripped the doorframe, like he was holding himself back from tearing the whole room down.

“Ka…len?” Ryan’s voice broke. He lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Kalen so tight it looked desperate. “Is this really you? You’re alive.”

Kalen didn’t move. Didn’t hug back. Didn’t even breathe differently. He just stood there, solid and cold, while his brother sobbed into his chest.

“Two f*****g weeks, Kalen,” Zach spat, voice raw with rage and grief. “We all mourned you. We buried you. We said goodbye to your goddamn coffin. You f*****g asshole!”

Kalen tilted his head, almost clinical. “Actually, it has been two weeks, four days, and sixty-nine minutes.”

The precision of it. The indifference.

Kai snapped.

He crossed the room in three strides and drove his fist straight into Kalen’s face. The crack echoed. Kalen’s head didn’t even turn. No flinch. No stumble. He just looked back at Kai with those same flat, empty eyes.

“Why?” Kai shouted, chest heaving. “Why did you do this!”

Kalen wiped a trace of blood from the corner of his mouth like it was nothing. “You asked me to protect Liora, right? That is what I did.”

Kai scoffed, and the sound was pure disgust. “f**k you, Kalen. This has nothing to do with Liora. You never cared if she existed, so why the f**k would you just agree to protect her? I don’t believe you!”

Kalen blinked once. Slow.

“You believing me doesn’t matter.”

"But you did not even care about her.... You barely acknowledge her presence so why?" Ryan asked in confusion. Kalen did not flinched at question. His eyes just lazily moved to Ryan.

TBC