Chapter 8
1136 Words
Their eyes locked. Emrys looked faintly surprised.
Calista, though, had gone deathly pale, a sharp, unrelenting ache twisting in her chest.
Her hand holding the phone dropped limply to her side, her voice trembling. "Was it your call to take my role away?" she asked.
After a beat of silence, Emrys nodded. "Mm-hmm," he replied.
"Why?" Her throat felt raw. "Just because your girlfriend doesn't like me? First you made me move out, now you're taking the opportunity I worked so hard for?"
Emrys's face didn't flicker with even a hint of emotion, his voice as soft and gentle as it had always been.
"This role isn't right for you. I'm investing in another drama, and you can join the cast directly as the female lead."
"What if I insist on playing the part in Degree Zero?" Calista cut him off.
Calista had never hated Emrys's unflappable calm more than she did right now.
Next to that perfect, collected poise, all her grief and heartache looked like nothing more than a toddler throwing a tantrum.
But her chest hurt so badly, it felt like a thousand tiny ants were gnawing through her heart from the inside out.
It was gut-wrenching, soul-crushing pain.
Emrys looked at her evenly. "If you insist on pushing this, then that only shows you probably aren't cut out for the entertainment industry," he said.
The last fraying thread holding Calista's composure together finally snapped.
She stared at him, dazed, and the meaning of his words clicked into place.
If she caved now, she'd still get a role to play.
If she dared to go against Elara, he would blacklist her from the entire industry.
"Are you going to blacklist me?"
The question tumbled out in a soft, shaky murmur. With every passing second, the man in front of her felt more and more unrecognizable, like a total stranger.
Emrys didn't deny it. He just stood there, quiet, waiting for her to make her choice.
A biting, bone-deep chill spread from her heart, seeping into every last inch of her body.
In that single moment, every last trace of color drained from Calista's face, leaving it as white as a sheet.
The other role was for a tiny low-budget web drama, nowhere near in the same league as a massive, high-stakes production like Degree Zero.
Under normal circumstances, her stubborn streak would have kicked in hard, and she would have fought tooth and nail even if it meant burning everything to the ground.
But then reality hit her. She'd just forked over a million dollars in penalty fees to Finlo.
Her dad was still stuck in the ICU, piling up medical bills by the day. On top of that, her installment debt payments were creeping right up, fast approaching their due date.
Calista knew damn well she had no room to be reckless right now. She couldn't afford to waste anything on pride.
She nodded like someone who'd just been snapped awake from a dream, letting out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. "Fine. I'll take the role," she said.
There was no other option. She had to fold.
As she turned to leave, she brushed right past Emrys, then froze mid-step.
She spun around, fished the small ring she'd carried with her for ages out of her pocket, and held it up. "This ring. It never had any other special meaning, did it?" she asked.
"No," he replied flatly.
His ice-cold, flat denial slammed into her, and her whole heart turned to a solid block of ice.
She stared down at the tiny engraving on the ring for a long moment, then set it down gently on the shoe cabinet. Her voice was thin and wispy, like she'd used up every last ounce of strength she had left. "I see," she murmured.
She turned and walked away again.
This time, she didn't pause. She didn't look back.
And she never saw the vague, unreadable darkness that flickered across Emrys's eyes as he lifted his gaze to watch her go.
*****
Deep into the night, Calista wandered aimlessly down the street, her chest tight with a cold, hollow grief.
She couldn't bring herself to go back to the apartment Emrys had arranged for her.
When she finally thought about where she could go, the only place that came to mind was the hospital.
Inside the ward, her dad's vitals had stabilized. He lay in the bed, fast asleep, his face finally relaxed.
Calista didn't want to wake him, but two whole lifetimes' worth of pent-up events were weighing so heavy on her chest that she felt like she was about to burst.
Just like she'd done so many times when she was little, she murmured her deepest troubles to Gideon, her voice soft enough to barely stir the air.
"Dad, it took me until now to realize I had it all wrong this whole time," she whispered.
"I thought Uncle Emrys liked me back, but turns out I was the only one fooling myself."
Before she could finish the sentence, the bedside monitor suddenly blared to life, beeping shrilly in a steady, urgent rhythm.
Her father's previously relaxed brows snapped into a tight furrow, his face twisting like he was fighting through some terrible nightmare.
A nurse rushed in right away, gave Gideon a shot of sedative to calm him down, then turned to Calista, who was frozen stiff with worry. "The patient's condition has only just stabilized. Why would you stress him out?" the nurse scolded.
Calista opened her mouth, but no words came out. There was no way to explain herself.
She hadn't done anything wrong. All she'd done was talk about her own heartache. How could that have possibly upset her dad?
A chilling thought popped into her head out of nowhere.
The second she'd mentioned Emrys's name, her dad had reacted like this. And the last time Gideon's condition had turned critical, hadn't that been right after Emrys had come to visit?
Could there be a connection between her dad's episodes and him?
Her fingers traced the edge of her phone for a long, tense moment, and she finally dialed a number.
Three days later, a thick stack of investigation documents landed in her hands.
Calista flipped it open. The second she read through the contents, her whole body started shaking uncontrollably, her knees buckling so hard she almost collapsed on the spot.
As it turned out, her family's company hadn't gone under from bad luck or bad decisions. The Calder Group had targeted every single one of the Ellery family's projects, hounding them at every turn until their cash flow dried up entirely.
And all those mountains of debt that had been squeezing the air out of her? The final creditor behind all of it was none other than Emrys!
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