SECRET TRUTH

Chapter 4:The Charity Gala

POV: Ava Chen

I almost didn't go to the charity dinner.

After the strange texts warning me about Ethan, I spent three days avoiding him. I did my job—made his coffee, answered his emails, planned his schedule—but I didn't speak to him unless absolutely necessary. I couldn't look at him without wondering what the texts meant. What did he do to his last assistant? Was he dangerous? Was my mother's life worth risking my own?

But then Ethan told me I had to go to the gala.

"It's a donor event," he said, his voice cold and formal like it had never been warm. Like he had never said he couldn't lose me. "I need you there. You'll be helping with planning."

I wanted to refuse. I wanted to tell him I knew about the texts and ask him what they meant. But I thought about my mother in the hospital bed, getting weaker every day, and I said yes.

The dinner was at a fancy hotel downtown. Women in expensive dresses walked past me like I was part of the furniture. I was supposed to be working, checking on catering and making sure everything was planned. But I couldn't think. My mind kept spinning with questions and fears.

Around ten o'clock, I couldn't take it anymore.

I excused myself and walked outside to the yard behind the hotel. I needed to cry, and I needed to do it where nobody could see me. The garden was empty and quiet, just rows of flowers and stone seats and the sound of the city far away.

I sat down on a bench and let it all come out.

All the fear. All the loneliness. All five years of loving someone who didn't love me back. All the fear about my mother. All the confusion about Ethan and his lies and his strange past. I cried so hard my whole body shook.

I didn't hear him come up behind me.

"Ava?"

I jumped and turned around. Ethan was standing there in his suit, his tie undone, his hair messy like he had run his hands through it too many times. He looked as broken as I felt.

"Are you okay?" he asked, but he already knew I wasn't.

"No," I said. I was too tired to lie. "No, I'm not okay."

He sat down next to me on the bench. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I could feel his warmth. For the first time since the texts came, he seemed like the Ethan I knew. The broken, lonely man who carried secrets too heavy for his shoulders.

"Tell me," he said.

So I did. I told him about my mother getting sicker. I told him about the trial treatment that might not work anyway. I told him about the texts warning me about him. I told him everything I had been holding inside for three days.

He heard without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a long time.

"The texts are from Sophia," he finally said. "She's trying to scare you away from me. She's trying to isolate me from anyone who might find her secrets."

"What secrets?" I asked.

He turned to look at me, and his eyes were full of pain. "My last helper found out that Sophia has been embezzling money from the company. Millions of dollars. When the assistant threatened to tell me, Sophia destroyed her name. She made people think the helper was unstable, unreliable. Now nobody will hire her. She's destroyed."

I felt sick. "Why would she do that?"

"Because I'm all she has," he said softly. "After she was taken when we were kids, she became obsessed with me. She thinks she owns me. She thinks anyone who gets close to me is a threat. So she eliminates them."

"Then why are you getting close to me?" I whispered.

He reached out and took my hand. "Because I can't help it. Because you see me. Because for the first time in my life, I want to be seen."

He kissed me then. Slowly, carefully, like he was asking approval with every second. Like he was afraid I would pull away. I didn't pull away. I had waited five years for this moment, and I wasn't going to waste it on fear.

We talked for hours in that yard. About his childhood suffering. About his fear of losing power. About my mother. About the future. He told me things he had never told anyone. He cried, and I held him. We kissed again, deeper this time, like we were both drowning and we were each other's only chance to breathe.

By the time we left the garden, I knew I was going to sign the deal. I knew I was going to stay with Ethan, no matter what Sophia did. I knew I was going to risk everything for him.

We went to his apartment. And that night, we made love like we were the only two people in the world. Like nothing else mattered. Like we had found something so rare and valuable that we would never let it go.

I fell asleep in his arms believing that everything was going to be okay. Believing that my mother would heal. Believing that Ethan loved me. Believing that I had finally, after so long, gotten my happy ending.

I was still asleep when my phone rang at 3 AM.

I woke up confused and reached for my phone. It was the hospital.

"Ms. Chen," the doctor said, and I could hear the bad news in her voice before she even spoke. "Your mother has had a stroke. You need to come quickly. I'm not sure she's going to make it."

My heart stopped.

Ethan woke up and pulled me close, asking what was wrong. I told him, and I felt him go rigid next to me.

"I'll drive you," he said, getting out of bed.

But as I was putting on my clothes, my phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number—the same person who had warned me before: Your mother's stroke wasn't an accident. Ethan paid a doctor to do it. He needed you desperate enough to sign anything. Check your bank account. The money he promised for her treatment? It went to someone else. A man named Dr. Reeves. The doctor who gave her the stroke.

I looked at Ethan standing in the darkness of his bedroom, and for the first time, I saw him clearly. Not the man I loved. Not the broken boy hiding beneath the power suit.

I saw a monster.

"Ava?" he said, confusion crossing his face. "What's wrong?"

I held up my phone so he could see the text, and I watched as his face changed. He didn't deny it. He didn't even try to explain.

He smiled.

And in that smile, I saw that everything he had told me in the garden was a lie.