I Married My Ex's Billionaire Father-Chapter 288: I Am Not Your Wife
The night air felt like a cold, sharp blade against Lyse’s skin as she finally stepped out of the atelier. Every muscle in her body screamed for rest, and her mind was a dizzying blur of silk, silhouettes, and the haunting memory of Brooke’s memorial. She trudged toward the parking lot, her heels clicking rhythmically on the asphalt, half-expecting that the petite blonde woman, Honey would have grown tired of waiting and vanished into the night. Part of her almost hoped for it; the prospect of a quiet, solitary Uber ride was beginning to sound like heaven.
But as she reached the edge of the lot, a single, obsidian-black SUV sat idling, its headlights cutting through the low-hanging mist. The passenger door swung open, and Honey stepped out, her bright blonde hair practically glowing under the amber streetlights. She gestured toward the vehicle with a polished, inviting smile that reached all the way to her eyes.
"Ready to go, darling?" Honey called out, her voice like wind chimes.
Lyse offered a weary, grateful nod. As she approached the vehicle, a driver, a giant of a man whose suit seemed two sizes too small for his massive frame stepped out with mechanical precision and held the rear door open. Lyse crawled into the plush leather interior, the scent of expensive jasmine and old money enveloping her. But just as she began to settle into the seat, a hand clamped onto her shoulder with the force of a vice.
Before she could even register the intrusion, she was yanked backward. The movement was so sudden and so violent that for a terrifying second, Lyse was certain she was going to fall flat on her bum on the hard pavement. Instead, she hit something solid and warm. She felt herself being hauled upright, held firmly against someone’s broad chest.
"WHAT?! WHAT IN THE??!" Lyse exploded, her heart hammering against her ribs. She spun around, her fists clenched, ready to tear into whoever had the audacity to manhandle her after the day she’d had.
Her words died in her throat.
"Levi?" Honey’s voice rang out, no longer melodic, but sharp with genuine shock.
"Levi?" Lyse screeched, her voice cracking. She looked between the two of them. Levi, who looked like a thundercloud personified, and Honey, whose poised mask had momentarily slipped. Lyse’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "Wait... you two know each other?"
Levi didn’t look at Lyse. His grip on her arm remained firm, his gaze fixed entirely on the woman in the SUV. "Well, you see..." he began, his voice a low, vibrating growl.
Lyse wrenched her arm away, taking a deliberate step back. She stared at Levi with eyes full of accusation and a sudden, sharp sting of jealousy she hated herself for feeling. "What is happening here, Levi? Seriously? Is she one of your girlfriends? Did you send her to ’shop’ at my show just to keep tabs on me?"
Levi finally turned to her, his expression cool and infuriatingly calm. "You don’t even know who she is," he said, his voice dropping into a register of icy authority. "Yet you were perfectly willing to crawl into her car in the middle of the night. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"
For a moment, Lyse was taken aback. The sheer audacity of his lecture, combined with the underlying truth of it, left her momentarily speechless. But before she could formulate a scathing rebuttal, Levi turned back to Honey. The temperature in the parking lot seemed to drop several more degrees.
"What do you think you were doing, Honey?" he demanded.
Honey leaned against the frame of the SUV, her lip curling into a pout that was more predatory than playful. "Buying clothes, obviously," she said, her voice lilting with a false hope that he might actually believe her. "The girl has talent, Levi. It’s not a crime to appreciate art."
Levi’s face remained rigid, a mask of stone. He wasn’t buying a single word of it.
"What’s a girl supposed to do?" Honey added with a theatrical stomp of her designer heel. "I needed a wardrobe refresh."
"Maybe you should start by not trying to kidnap my wife," Levi answered, his voice a lethal whisper.
"I am not your wife!" Lyse snapped at the exact same moment Honey exclaimed, "She is not your wife!"
Honey raised her eyebrows at Levi, a silent ’You see?’ dancing in her eyes. The tension between the three of them was a physical weight, a cord stretched to the point of snapping.
"We are leaving. Now," Levi said. He didn’t wait for an argument. He reached out, grabbed Lyse’s hand, and began to drag her across the parking lot toward his own car.
Lyse was so stunned by his boldness that she followed for several paces before her pride caught up with her. She dug her heels into the asphalt, refusing to budge another inch. "Stop it! You are not going to just drag me around like I’m some little girl who lost her way!" she yelled, violently pulling her arm out of his grasp.
Levi stopped and turned, his eyes burning with a mixture of frustration and fear. "Are you sure you’re not a little girl? Because I would expect a grown woman, a professional woman to at least know the pedigree of the people whose cars she enters at midnight."
"I know exactly who she is!" Lyse retorted, her face flushing with heat. "She is a valued customer who just spent a small fortune to keep my studio afloat while your family’s scandals try to sink it!"
"A valued customer?" Levi let out a harsh, jagged laugh. "So you know that she is a vicious pimp? Do you know she’s famous for ’dealing’ with girls who skim off her profits by stuffing the stolen cash back into their bodies after she’s finished with them?"
Lyse’s face went deathly pale. Her jaw literally dropped, her mind struggling to reconcile the petite, fashion-forward woman in the SUV with the grotesque image Levi had just painted. She stood paralyzed as Honey’s SUV began to roll slowly past them. Honey stuck her head out of the window, her blonde hair whipping in the wind, and blew a mocking, theatrical kiss toward them before the vehicle roared out of the lot.
"She is Brett’s wife, Lyse," Levi continued, his voice heavy with the gravity of the situation. "She isn’t here for the fashion. She’s here for something else"
"Whatever!" Lyse shouted, her voice trembling with a cocktail of shock, exhaustion, and fury. She couldn’t process the Honey revelation, not yet. It was too much. She turned on her heel and began marching away from him, her heart thudding in her ears.
"Where do you think you’re going?" Levi called out, following her with long, effortless strides.
"Home! Alone!" came Lyse’s short, clipped answer.
"Lyse, be reasonable. I am here already, my car is twenty feet away. Just let me take you home. It’s not safe."
Lyse stopped suddenly, spinning around to glare at him so fiercely that even Levi paused. "Wait. Have you been stalking me? Is that what this is? You’re suddenly appearing everywhere I am, at my apartment, now at my show. What is this really about, Levi? Is this some sick game of control?"
"I have something important that I need to tell you," Levi said, his voice rising with a sudden, desperate urgency. He took a step toward her, his hand reaching out. "Something about why you’re in the middle of all this. Please, Lyse, just listen to me."
"I have told you a thousand times, Levi," Lyse said, her voice breaking as she started to walk away again. "We are not getting back tog..."
She never finished the sentence.
The world suddenly tilted. The air was violently wooshed out of Lyse’s lungs as Levi tackled her with the force of a freight train. He didn’t just grab her; he threw his entire weight against her, launching them both behind a thick concrete structural pole.
Lyse opened her mouth to scream, to ask him what kind of lunatic he had finally become, but the sound was drowned out by a series of sharp, rhythmic cracks, pop-pop-pop-pop.
She felt the vibration through the concrete. She heard the terrifying whizzing sound of metal slicing through the air just inches from where she had been standing seconds ago. The unmistakable sound of bullets striking the metal siding of the building rang out like bells from hell. Then came the screech of tires, a high-pitched wail of rubber against pavement as a dark vehicle tore out of the parking lot and vanished into the night.
