Ribbons of fate

Chapter 23: The Return

Tracy Rsman’s POV

The silence hit me as soon as I stepped through the doors of our estate. It was heavy, suffocating, as though the house itself had absorbed the tension from the past week. Jason was still absent, leaving a hollow space that made every footstep echo unnaturally. My chest felt tight, the weight of unspoken events pressing against me.

When my father called, his voice careful and almost artificially concerned, I agreed to return home. Perhaps I needed the familiarity, the illusion of security, even if I knew deep down that nothing was safe anymore. The plane had landed in the predawn haze, and I had barely slept, the memory of Gael—Aiden Clarke, the one who had consumed me—still clinging like a shadow.

By 5:00 AM, the estate was quiet. Jason’s absence gnawed at me, a knot of guilt forming in my stomach. Laura, the maid, confirmed he had not returned since I left. Each passing moment amplified the unease settling in my chest. I was restless, craving a sense of control I had long lost.

After a few hours of disjointed sleep, my father summoned me to his study. He presented stacks of documents—contracts, forms, legal papers—but I scarcely looked at them. My pen moved almost automatically, signing page after page under his watchful gaze. There was a strange disconnect, as if my hands had their own memory, moving on autopilot while my mind wandered.

“That is all for now, Tracy?” I asked, weary, trying to mask my fatigue with indifference.

“Yes, honey,” he replied, eyes sharp, yet relieved. “It was very important.”

I left the study, the signature burning in my memory like a mark I did not consent to. What I did not yet realize was that in those moments, I had legally bound myself to Gabriel Arden Andrez—the orchestrator of the club incident, the man behind the chaos that had consumed my life.

Even as the house returned to its quiet rhythm, my thoughts betrayed me. My mind wandered back to Gael, to the closeness we had shared, the intensity of our farewell. Somewhere in the fog of that intimacy, one small lapse—the missed pill, unnoticed in my exhaustion—had already set the stage for the life I would carry unknowingly: Maddilyn, our child, the tangible consequence of a momentary slip in judgment and vigilance.

I could not have known then, as I walked the halls of our home, that every careful precaution I had taken, every plan I had executed with diligence, had already been slightly undone. The future whispered its secrets quietly, hidden beneath the mundane motions of daily life, waiting for the day it would emerge with undeniable force.