The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 209

Chapter 188: Jade

Jade POV

The call came at 7:43 AM.

I was on my third coffee of the morning, standing at the big window of my Mayfair flat in a silk robe. I watched the street below fill with people as the city woke up. I hadn’t slept, and I hadn’t even tried. Sleeping on a night like this would have been impossible, and I had stopped pretending otherwise.

My phone buzzed on the marble counter. The number was one I had memorised and never saved.

I answered on the second ring.

“Talk to me,” I said.

The voice on the other end was fast, shaky, and wrong in all the ways I had been dreading. “It’s ruined. The police are here, the boy is out. I’m moving.”

I set my coffee cup down very carefully on the counter.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“East side. I’ve got maybe four minutes before”

“Stop.” My voice came out flat and cold. “Don’t call this number again. Don’t contact anyone else. You’re on your own from here, do you understand me?”

There was a pause. “We had an agreement”

“The agreement was only if you succeeded,” I said. You failed. We’re done.”

I ended the call.

I stood at the window for a long moment, looking at the street below. A woman walked past with a pram. A man in a suit checked his watch, the city moved on like it always did, completely unaware that everything I had spent months building had just collapsed in a warehouse while the sun came up.

I picked up my coffee and drank the rest of it cold.

Then I picked up the second phone-the one bought with cash months ago under a fake name-and scrolled to a number saved under a single letter.

He answered on the second ring, which meant he was awake, and that meant he was useful.

“I need a place,” I said. “Today it should be clean, secret, and nothing connected to my name.”

“How long?” His voice was flat and professional. He asked no questions about why, which was exactly what I paid for.

“A week, maybe two.”

13

Chapter 188 Tade

Clam

There was a short pause and the sound of typing. “Canary Wharf. Fourteenth floor, facing east. It’s fully stocked, and there is no doorman on that level.” He paused then continued. “I’ll send the door code to this number in ten minutes.”

“Does anyone else have access?”

“No one.”

“What about the building cameras?”

“They are run by a private company, and I know someone there. They won’t be looking at the fourteenth floor.”

“Good.” I paused. “The usual money, doubled. And M-if anyone asks whether you’ve heard from me recently”

“I haven’t heard from you in months,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, this call never happened.”

“That’s why I keep your number,” I said, and ended the call.

I stood in the kitchen of my flat-the flat I had chosen for its views, its address, and the very specific message it sent about who Jade Hart was and what she was worth. I felt the anger move through me like something physical. It was clean, cold, and clear in the way that only real fury ever was.

I was not running.

That was the first and most important decision. I made it in the thirty seconds after the first call, before I even had time to think about it properly. Running meant Bella had won. Running meant I was the person who had tried, failed, and disappeared. I refused-absolutely and completely-to be that person.

Bella had spent years being that person, she had run away. Everyone had watched her go and called it her failure. Then, she had come back as something none of us expected and changed the whole story.

I was not going to do that.

I was going to regroup. I was going to think. And I was going to find the move that Bella, for all her brilliance and careful preparation, had not seen coming.

I went to the bedroom and packed a bag, working through the list in my head. Documents. The second phone. The card linked to the bank account my lawyers didn’t know about. The two pieces of jewellery worth selling if it came to that.

I thought about Bella while I packed.

I had thought about Bella for most of my adult life. That was something I would never say out loud and barely admitted to myself, because the truth of it was humiliating.

She had been the afterthought, the spare person, the one nobody looked at twice. I had spent years being the one everybody looked at first-and somehow, despite all of that, she was the one who had ended up with everything.

Caleb, Tom, the new baby, the empire, the city, the life.

My life, the one I had planned for myself when I was young, watching my father move his pieces around a

Chapter 185-de

beard and deciding I would learn to play the same game. I played it, I had played it better than anyone gave me credit for, but it hadn’t been enough.

Charm

First Caleb was a very difficult variable, so difficult to guess and Bella had simply changed the board, she built a different game entirely, winning by rules I hadn’t known existed until it was too late to learn them.

I zipped the bag.

The code came through from M with Fourteen digits.

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