The Second Secret

"If I stay," I finally said, pulling my chin out of the cupped warmth of his hand, though not without some reluctance. "I won’t be blindfolded, Lachlan. I won’t be caught by surprise." I steadied my breath, even as the room seemed too small for the both of us. "Give me one secret. Something real. Something you’ve hidden. Leave it bare on the table before we go any further. If I’m to give you my trust—fully—I need to know what’s locked beneath your surface."

The muscles in his face tightened. Lachlan McIntyre, the billionaire tycoon, the man accustomed to control and owning everything with his presence alone, hesitated. His fingers slipped from my cheek and grazed the polished wood of the desk, forming a tight fist that told me this wasn’t just a simple ask; it was monumental.

"You’re asking for something no one has ever dared ask me for before," he said quietly, his gaze hardening. "But I suppose that’s what draws me to you, isn’t it? You’re not like anyone else."

I didn’t reply, letting the silence do the work of compelling him forward. A trick of the trade. A way of digging past the walls a subject hid behind walls of charm, power, manipulation.

He gently placed me on my feet and turned from me, retrieving his pants from the floor and donning then without looking at me. The muscles of his back were rigid as he crossed the room to the expansive windows that overlooked the jungle canopies rolling down to the beach. It was only then, with him turned away, that I could see the tension radiating off him—like a coiled animal suppressing years of primal instincts that he barely had a grip on.

“I had a brother once,” he said slowly, the words like stones carefully laid down on fragile ice. “Caleb.” That name, when spoken, was clipped with an accent I hadn’tcaught from him before. Something more raw. More real than what Lachlan typically allowed to bleed into his polished demeanor.

The name hung in the air like the last wisp of smoke from a gunshot—dangerous, unsettling, and final.

My breath caught in my throat. Brother? He had never mentioned this, never once in all the research I had done, had ever mentioned a brother.

"What happened to him?" I asked softly, throwing on my own clothes, careful not to break the fragile atmosphere suddenly drawn tight between us. He was standing so still, I wasn't even sure if he was breathing.

Lachlan’s head inclined slightly, his shoulders tensed as though guarding something. He didn’t answer right away, and I could see the battle waging inside of him, something that cut deep enough to leave scars no tangible wealth or control could cover.

“I killed him.”

Three words. Words I wouldn't have been ready to hear, hadn’t braced for. They reverberated in my head, shaking me to my core.

My hand went cold, tremors of shock making their way down my arms, as my voice stuck somewhere between my heart and throat like a fist curling inside of me. At that moment, it felt like the entire beach, the whole universe, had taken a breath and held it, waiting for what would come next.

"You..."

He turned back toward me now, the moment fractured, the storm rolling in his eyes. "Killed him? Yes, basically."

Lachlan’s gaze hardened. The vulnerability that had flickered there for a moment was gone, but the storm had only grown fiercer, his words like lightening. “Caleb and I—" He swallowed hard, the tension visible in every sinew of his body as though this truth had been locked tightly for so long, but now fought to emerge. "We grew up rough. Not the ‘rough’ that people romanticize as charming or anecdotal. There was only violence. Only survival. He...was my responsibility."

I let out a breath. He wasn't giving me more yet, wasn't telling me what I needed to know.

"And now he's gone," Lachlan continued softly, his voice lacking its usual authority, as if sharing this part of himself was a burden too great to bear alone. "It was in my hands, Quinn." He turned his gaze away, looking out the window once more, watching as the horizon began to blur beneath the weight of the evening shadows. "I made a decision that cost him his life."

I felt a sharp pang in my chest. It wasn’t an explanation, not fully. But it was something real, something raw. A crack in the stone-carved facade of Lachlan McIntyre. It left me suspended between the desire to know more and the realization that some scars ran too deep to be exposed all at once.

“How?” I finally managed to ask, though my voice was barely above a whisper. “How did he die?”

For a long, heavy moment, there was only silence between us. The sound of the ocean crashing against the distant shore and our uneven breathing filled the room, the only sounds punctuating the tense air. Just when I thought he might not answer, Lachlan turned to face me, his shoulders squared with the weight of his truth.

"We came from nothing," he admitted, his voice hoarse with the haunted echo of the past. "Less than nothing, really. And when we finally climbed out of that hell, it was like...like scaling the steepest mountain, knowing at any moment, we could fall back into the abyss we came from. Caleb—"

He stopped abruptly, sighing deeply, as if summoning the strength to continue.

"Caleb wasn’t like me," Lachlan muttered, eyes narrowing slightly with the memories. "He was too soft. He... loved too easily. Trusted too completely." His jaw twitched, a visible manifestation of the war still raging within him. "But this world, Quinn… it chews up people like that and spits them out. He wasn’t prepared for what was required of him to uphold the empire we were trying to build. He didn't have the stomach for it."

Lachlan’s eyes were darker now, the shadows of his past closing in, swirling in the depths of his gaze like a storm that had never fully passed. I felt a chill creep along my spine, a visceral reminder of the power his words held—not just over me but over his own soul as well.

"I tried to save him—in my way. I thought...if I could teach him what it takes to survive, what it takes to wield power, then maybe, justmaybe, he could have been part of it. Part of what I built. But I was wrong. I pushed him too far, too fast. Caleb's heart was never meant to beat in this world.” Lachlan’s voice cracked then, barely perceptible, and it shattered something inside both of us.

I exhaled sharply but stayed silent, sensing that these were the moments where more questions weren’t necessary. Lachlan wasn’t someone easily pried open, and this—this sliver of his truth—was like watching a wound bleed for the first time years after it had been inflicted. It wasn’t a confession in the truest sense. It was grief masked in misplaced responsibility. Love contorted into guilt.

“He got mixed up with people he shouldn’t have,” Lachlan said, his gaze distant. “He wanted to change things, thought he could be a good man and still keep his hands clean, even in the levels we wanted to play at.” Lachlan let out a bitter laugh, the optimism in those words clearly leaving a bad taste. “But you can’t. Not in this business. Caleb thought power could be kind. But in the end, it brought him nothing but betrayal, violence... blood. By the time he believed me, it was too late.”

Silence settled heavily between us. I forced myself to keep looking at him, even though every instinct told me to look away. Beneath his words, I sensed more than grief. There was anger too—but whether it was anger at his brother for not listening to him or at himself for not saving his brother, I wasn't sure.

“And the people he trusted…” Lachlan’s voice started to shake, growing rougher, thicker with emotion he was barely containing, “they turned on him. I warned him not to get involved. Told him they’d eat him alive. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He couldn’t." His gaze flicked toward me, but it was far away, somewhere in the past where the ghosts of his decisions still haunted him. "So... I did what I had to."

"What... what do you mean, did what you had to?" The words left my lips before I could stop them, though I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“I... cut a deal. To protect our interests. To sever ties cleanly,” Lachlan whispered, his voice almost hollow. "But I didn’t realize the price until it was too late. They—they killed him. It wasn’t supposed tohappen like that." His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white as if he were holding on to the weight of history itself. "But it did. I thought I could control it. I thought I could contain the mess. But when you play with fire, someone always gets burned. It turned out to be Caleb."

I swallowed hard, the gravity of his words sinking in. There it was—the horrifying secret I had asked for, laid bare in front of me like an open wound that had never healed. Lachlan's brother was dead because of him. Maybe not by his own hand, but through a series of choices that led Caleb to a place from which he couldn't return. It wasn’t as black-and-white as I imagined; there were layers of grief, regret, and decisions wrapped tightly around each sentence Lachlan spoke. But in the end, Caleb was dead because Lachlan had made the wrong deal.

"You can't blame yourself," I said, my voice quiet as I watched the storm build within Lachlan's eyes.

He exhaled, long and deep, like the confession had drained him. "I made choices. I chose to protect our empire, Quinn. I thought I was protecting him. Isn’t that always the way?" His face twisted in a bitter grimace. "You think you know best. You believe that power will somehow make the ugly parts go away, that you can keep them separate." He shook his head, dropping his gaze. "But once you claw your way up to the top, you realize you’ve paved that road with blood. And you can never wash it off your hands."

I felt a pang of sympathy twist inside my chest, but a deep unease followed behind. This wasn’t the kind of secret you stumbled across, or the kind of story you told lightly. Caleb’s death, Lachlan’s culpability… it was all too much to grasp in one confession. And if this was only the beginning of Lachlan’s hidden truths, what lay ahead might be too painful, too dangerous to uncover.

I took a shaky breath. “Thank you for telling me,” I whispered, though part of me wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear more."

Lachlan's eyes locked with mine, and beneath the storm swirling in their depths was an unmistakable flicker of fear. Brief, but real. It passedquickly, replaced by the same steely resolve I’d come to expect from him. But that moment—seeing even a crack in Lachlan McIntyre’s armor—was enough to remind me that beneath all that power and control, he was still a man haunted by his decisions.

He walked back toward me slowly, his movements deliberate, calculated. When he reached me, his hand lifted to cup the side of my face once more, his thumb tracing a slow, gentle line across my cheek. It was a touch designed to comfort, but I could feel the lingering weight of what he’d just told me pressing down between us. The alternative ending of his brother’s story lay there, unspoken.

"That’s my world, Quinn," he said in a voice that was both soft and firm. "A world full of dark truths and sacrifices. I’ve done what I’ve had to do to survive, to protect what I’ve built. But those choices... they leave scars. On me, on the people I’ve lost." His thumb brushed my lips, causing my breath to hitch slightly. "And now you know a part of that."

I couldn’t help but shiver at the gravity of it all. His confession felt like a door I hadn’t been ready to open, and yet here I was, standing on the threshold of something that could change everything I thought I knew about this man. And maybe even about myself.

"Do you regret it?" I asked, though I wasn’t even sure if I wanted the answer.

Lachlan’s gaze shifted, becoming more distant as though he were truly asking himself that question for the first time in years. His lips pressed together in a firm line before he finally spoke.

"No. Not the choices I made to survive, to build this. The regret is... Caleb never understood the cost. He was willing to throw it all away to play the hero in a world that doesn’t have room for heroes."

I bit my lip and carefully stepped closer, our bodies brushing as I looked up into his face, searching for something human in the storm that had descended over his expression. "And me? Is that what you want from me? "

His fingers tightened around my jaw, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me of the power dynamic that had been lingering heavily between us since the moment we met. His voice dropped into a low growl, oozing with intensity. "I want everything."