Act Like You Love Me (Jessica) novel Chapter 122

Chapter 122

Aaron’s POV

:

“The more you keep her hidden, the more my fuel to find her ignites.”

EX 55 vouchers

I’d barely cleared the threshold of my penthouse when that raspy, aristocratic voice reverberated through the living room.

It was a voice that had haunted my childhood, a voice that sounded like expensive cigars and buried secrets.

For a heartbeat, I was startled—a primal instinct of the hunted-but it evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold, searing scowl.

I didn’t break my stride.

I dropped my keys on the console and walked toward the center of the room.

“I could sue you for trespassing, Grandpa,” I said, my brow arched in a challenge that was anything but playful.

Kennedy Tyrone sat on my sofa as if it were a throne, his back straight, his weathered hands gripped tightly over the silver head of his cane.

He looked every bit the architect of an empire, but to me, he just looked like a scavenger in a tuxedo.

A small, thin smirk curled his lips, the same smirk I saw in the mirror on my bad days.

He stood up slowly, the joints of his cane clicking against the floor.

He chuckled, a dry sound like dead leaves, and stepped toward me.

I didn’t move. I remained immovable, a monolith of ice, waiting for him to play his hand and fool himself into thinking he still held the leash.

“I see now why you weren’t scared of breaking the arrangement with Lauren anymore,” he scoffed, his eyes scanning me with a mixture of disappointment and predatory interest.

“You think you’ve found something worth more than the merger. You think she’s a prize.”

He stepped closer, his voice dropping into a hiss.

“No matter where you hide Jessica Reid, Aaron, I will find her. And when I do, I will make sure I destroy her so thoroughly that not even her memories will remain to comfort you.”

The words hung there, heavy and venomous, igniting a fire in my chest that I’d been banking for years.

I stared at him for a long beat, letting the silence stretch, my pulse thundering in my ears.

Then, I did something he didn’t expect. I chuckled. It was a dark sound that started in my chest and died on

15:05 Tue, Feb 3

Chapter 122

my lips.

…

41

55 vouchers

“I have never been one to betray blood, Kennedy,” I said, stepping into his personal space until we were inches apart.

“But for you? You’ll be the first. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a rifle through your skull and feed your flesh to the birds of the earth.”

I paused, letting the visceral image settle. I leaned down slightly, staring directly into his cold blue eyes.

I could see the flicker of shock behind his pupils, a momentary fracture in his mask.

He tried to hide it by clenching his jaw, but I had already tasted the blood in the water.

“I promise you, Grandpa, if anything happens to Jess-if she so much as gets a scratch on her finger or a hair out of place-I will make your wife a widow. And I won’t just kill you. I’ll make sure you live just long enough to experience a death so painful you’ll beg for a funeral.”

I straightened my tie, my movements calm and terrifyingly deliberate.

“Don’t test the waters. You’re an old man, and the tide is coming in.”

I began to walk away, then stopped, pivoting on my heel. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

“One more thing: don’t come close to me anymore. Don’t come to this house. Don’t even let your shadow fall across my path,” I warned.

“And what you did to Mabel Gonzales?” I let out a sharp, mocking laugh.

“Don’t think your luxury and your “power” can save you from a wounded street woman. You should have killed her when you had the chance, because now? She’s coming for you. And she has nothing left to lose.”

I took a final step toward him, my voice dropping to a whisper that filled the room.

“The next time you pull a stunt like this? The next time you break into my home, I’ll prove to you that I am every bit a Tyrone. I am the demon you reared, Grandpa. And I’m much more powerful than the man who

built me.”

Without waiting for a response, I turned and headed for the stairs.

Behind me, the silence was broken only by the heavy, labored breathing of an old man who had finally realized his creation had outgrown him. I didn’t care.

I meant every syllable-every vivid, violent promise. If he as much as hurt Jessica, I’d make his death agonizing, a slow unraveling he’d beg to end.

When I finally reached my room, I let out a breath so deep it felt like my lungs were collapsing.

My sanctuary was a landscape of sharp lines and expensive solitude: the king-sized bed with its crisp, white sheets and the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows where the glittering city lights were just beginning to bleed

15:05 Tue, Feb 3

Chapter 122

into the evening haze.

…

:

I peeled off my suit jacket, and tossed it carelessly over the armchair.

(

S

55 vouchers

I fished my phone from my pocket and dialed Mabel, pacing the length of the window as the secure, encrypted line clicked into place.

She answered on the second ring, her voice surprisingly bright.

“Mr. Tyrone?”

“Aaron is fine,” I mumbled, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

There was a brief, awkward beat of silence, the kind that happens when someone realizes the man they feared is just a man.

“Okay… Aaron,” she corrected softly. “Well, I was just about to head out for some ramen. It’s beautiful here. The air feels different.”

“How is Japan treating you, Mabel?” I asked. My voice was still stiff, the adrenaline from the confrontation with my grandfather still hummed in my veins like a live wire, but I forced a note of softness into my tone.

She deserved that much.

“I’m enjoying it more than I can say. It’s quiet. No one looks at me weirdly here,” she said, and I could practically hear the tears of relief in her voice.

“Thank you, Aaron. Truly. Thank you for keeping your word. For making me feel safe for the first time in years.”

“I told you I would. Just stay low. I’ll handle the rest,” I said. I hung up before she could say more. I wasn’t good at being thanked.

I drifted toward the full-length mirror by the closet, my movements sluggish as I unbuttoned my shirt.

The man in the glass was a stranger-tired eyes, a jaw roughened by stubble, and lines of stress etched deeper into my skin than I cared to admit.

But as the silk slid off my shoulders, my gaze dropped to the ink over my heart.

It was a mark born of desperation, etched there six years ago in a windowless shop while the world was still reeling from her disappearance.

It wasn’t just her name-Jessica-scribed in elegant, flowing script. It was a cartographer’s fever dream, an ancient map

of a life that had been rerouted the moment she vanished.

The letters themselves formed the cardinal points-the sharp North hidden in the elegant curl of the J, the South found in the final, sweeping tail of the a.

Each direction was a silent whisper of the paths we’d crossed and the ones we’d lost in the dark.

15:05 Tue, Feb 3

Chapter 122

:

4L-

55 vouchers

Radiating outward from her name were faint, delicate lines of latitude and longitude, inked in a fading, ghostly black. They weren’t just decorative; they were the coordinates of every city I’d scorched looking for her, every dead-end lead, and every regretful mile.

At the dead center of the compass, where the needles should meet, sat a tiny heart. It was pierced by an arrow, but the artist had captured it with a defiant resilience-it wasn’t shattered.

Instead, the arrow acted as a fixed needle, pointing eternally, unshakeably toward her.

It was my silent vow. A roadmap of a love that had become a haunting, tattooed onto my ribs where no one else could see it.

It was a constant, stinging reminder: no matter how far I traveled or how much blood I spilled to keep the Tyrone name clean, my internal compass only ever pointed home. To her.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify