The Memory Keeper: Twisted Roots

Chapter 26: Leverage and Lies

I felt my stomach drop.

"That's what Letty is after," Khai added, voice grim. "She doesn't just want revenge. She wants the power that comes with it."

Everything clicked into place then. Letty's relentless pursuit, her desperation, the reason she had orchestrated so much destruction just to get her hands on the Black Book.

She wasn't just trying to end Lucious.

She was trying to replace him.

I gripped the edge of the bar counter, my mind reeling. "Then we have to destroy it."

Khai's gaze hardened. "No," she said. "We have to use it."

And just like that, the night didn't just carry the weight of old wounds and resurfaced emotions.

Khai was silent for a moment, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass before she spoke again.

"Why are you so set on ending Lucious?" she asked, almost absentmindedly, as if she already knew the answer but needed to hear it from me.

I let out a slow, measured breath, feeling the weight of my past press against my chest. "Because I want justice," I said, my voice steady but laced with something deeper—something raw. "For what he did to my family. For what he stole from me. If Lucious made one mistake—one fatal miscalculation—it was letting me live with shattered, crumpled memories. He should have killed me that night, but he didn't."

Khai reached for my hand then, her grip warm, grounding me in a way that made my heart lurch. "We will take him down," she murmured, her voice a quiet promise, unwavering. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she added, "And after that, you can marry me."

I blinked. My breath hitched. What?

Before I could even process her words, before I could ask if she was joking or if she meant it, she spoke again—softer this time, but the weight of her words was even heavier.

"I'm sorry for letting you go, Rain," Khai said, her eyes searching mine, filled with a regret that reached deeper than words. "I thought it was the only way to keep you safe. I thought keeping you away from me would make things easier—for both of us. But fate has its own twisted truths, doesn't it?" She exhaled, shaking her head slightly. "Because in the end, it all comes back to us. Just us. Together."

Her words wrapped around me like a spell, pulling at wounds that had never quite healed.

Fate was cruel. Twisted. Unforgiving.

But if it always led me back to her—

Then maybe, just maybe, it wasn't all tragedy after all.

The next morning, I was jolted awake by the sharp vibration of my phone. My heart pounded as I squinted at the screen. Aunt Joanne.

I exhaled, rubbing my temples before answering. "Hello?"

But it wasn't her voice on the other end. It was a man.

"You should've walked away."

The voice was low, distorted, crawling under my skin like ice.

"You should've walked away from everything—this chaos, this drama. But somehow, you just had to be stubborn, didn't you?"

A chilling silence stretched between us. Then—