Chapter 3 Who is kiara

"Don't give me that look," I said.

Kylian didn't move from the doorway. "What look?"

"The sorry one. I'm used to it. Save it."

He was quiet for a moment, studying me without making a big thing of it. Then he said, "Come for coffee. I have time if you do."

I didn't have time. I had a prep class and an assignment and a face that probably still showed evidence of crying in a stairwell. But the thought of going straight home made my chest feel like a closed fist.

"Fine," I said.

---

Maren's was two streets from school, small and warm and unbothered by the kind of people who walked through its door. We took the corner table. Monica set her folder open on the surface and held her pen and managed to look both relaxed and completely efficient at the same time.

I wrapped my hands around my cup and looked at Kylian across the table.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Twenty-one."

"And they sent you."

"I'm the successor," he said. "The company passes to me. I handle the scouting personally when it matters."

Monica looked up from her notes. "He's also been listed twice as one of the top five most influential male models under twenty-five in the country. His face has been on four international covers this year alone."

Kylian looked at her.

She looked back at him, unbothered.

I sat with that for a moment. Then it clicked. The way he'd paused yesterday when I told him I didn't care who he was. That half-second of something he'd covered quickly.

"That's why you reacted like that," I said.

"I didn't react."

"You did. When I said I didn't care about your name. You looked surprised."

Monica pressed her lips together and found something very interesting to write in her folder.

"Most people recognize me," Kylian said simply.

"I don't follow modelling."

"I gathered."

It wasn't sharp. It landed almost flat, and something about the flatness of it almost made me smile. I looked down at my coffee instead and for a few minutes I just sat there and existed without anything being required of me and it felt like setting down a bag I'd been carrying all day.

Then my phone buzzed on the table.

My father's name is on the screen. I stared at it for one ring longer than I should have before picking up.

"Come home." Flat. Final. "Right now."

He hung up.

I set my phone face down and sat very still.

"You have to leave," Kylian said.

"Yes." I stood and pulled my bag up. "Thank you for the coffee."

He nodded once. I left without looking back.

---

My stepmother was standing in the middle of the front room when I walked through the door.

She hit me before I'd fully registered she was moving. Her hand across my face, hard, and the sound of it was sharper than the pain. I grabbed the door frame and steadied myself.

"Ungrateful," she said. Her voice was perfectly level, which was always worse than shouting. "Wicked, ungrateful girl."

My father was standing behind her. He wasn't looking at me.

"The deal," he said. "You're withdrawing from it."

"What?"

"Trisha wants it." Kiara crossed her arms. "You'll go to your principal tomorrow and tell them you're stepping back. You'll recommend Trisha in your place."

"How do you even know about—" I stopped. The answer settled into place before I finished the question.

Dalton.

"She begged you," Trisha said.

I turned. She was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, arms loose at her sides, face completely calm.

"I came to you privately," she said. "I asked you to let me have it. You refused."

"You never—" I stopped. My mouth felt dry. "You never said a single word to me."

"She asked you," Kiara said. "And you said no. Your father and I have decided. You withdraw tomorrow."

"I worked for that spot," I said. "The principal gave them my name. I didn't go looking for this, they came to me. You cannot take that—"

"You will do as you are told," my father said.

I turned to face him directly. He was looking at me now and there was nothing behind his eyes that I recognised. Just something closed off and already finished with the conversation.

I turned for the stairs.

"Hold her."

The guards moved before I'd taken three steps. They caught both my arms and I pulled hard and my bag fell and I said his name, my father's name, and he walked across the room and hit me four times across the face before he told them to let go.

I caught the banister. I did not fall.

I stood there and breathed and waited until the ringing in my ears settled and then I walked up the stairs slowly without making a sound.

---

I sat on my bedroom floor with my back against the bed.

I wasn't crying. I was somewhere past that. I just sat there with my palms flat on the carpet and breathed in and out and waited for my hands to stop shaking.

A knock. Soft.

Then the door opened without me answering.

Trisha stood in the frame, looking down at me on the floor. Her face was smooth. Unbothered.

"That's what you get," she said quietly, "for going behind my back with my boyfriend."

She let that sit.

"Stay in your lane, Trixie."

She pulled the door shut.

I listened to her footsteps go down the hallway. Then I stood up and crossed the room and closed my door and pressed it shut and stood there for a moment with my hand still on the handle.

Then I picked up my phone and opened Dalton's name.

You told Trisha about the deal.

The ticks went blue immediately. He'd read it.

He didn't reply.

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the screen for a long time. He didn't reply.

---

In the morning we drove to school together.

All four of us in one of Kiara's cars — my father in front, Kiara beside him, Trisha and me in the back with the full length of the seat between us. Nobody spoke. I looked out the window the entire drive and counted the things I passed without seeing them.

The principal's office. Kiara pushed the door open first and walked in ahead of everyone.

She stopped.

My father stopped behind her.

Kylian was already there, standing near the window where he always seemed to stand. But this time there was a woman beside him. Tall. Still. Dressed simply in a way that cost more than it looked. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes moved to the doorway the moment it opened.

Kiara's face drained.

Beside her, my father went rigid.

Kiara took one step back toward the door, then another, her hand reaching behind her for the handle.

"Kiara Lamar."

Kylian's mother's voice was quiet and even and it stopped Kiara completely where she stood.

"It's been a while."

Nobody in that room made a sound.