Sweet Love 2x: Miss Ruthless CEO for our Superstar Uncle-Chapter 198: I’ve Already Lost Him

The drive back remained uninterrupted.

The estate gates opened as the car approached. The headlights cut across the path ahead, catching the trimmed edges of the grounds where winter had not fully receded. Cold in the soil. Cold in the air across the open space. Cold in the way the trees stood without leaves.

Inside the car, nothing carried forward in words.

Franz kept his attention on the road, posture unchanged. Arianne sat beside him, her gaze directed ahead, not fixed on anything specific. The conversation at the bar had ended there. It had not been left behind.

When the car stopped, the engine cut.

Neither of them moved.

Then Arianne reached for the door.

The air met her again — cool, present. Franz followed, closing the distance to the entrance without speaking.

The door opened. The house was warm. No sound from upstairs.

Arianne stepped inside, removed her coat, set her phone on the entry table. Her movements even. Unchanged on the surface.

Franz came in behind her.

The door closed.

He stood in the entry longer than she had. Not frozen. Just not moving yet. He hadn’t taken his coat off.

Arianne had gone a few steps into the sitting area before she noticed.

She turned.

He was near the door. Coat on. One hand against the wall, not leaning — just there.

"Franz."

He looked at her. His face was even. But his eyes weren’t.

She went back to him.

"Come here," she said.

He moved.

He stopped within reach. And then:

"How are you this calm?"

It came out flat. Not accusatory. But raw at the edges in a way he hadn’t planned.

Arianne held his gaze.

"Do you really think I’m calm?"

She reached for his sleeve. Her hand settled on his arm.

And then she looked away.

Just for a second. Just long enough that he saw it — whatever she had been keeping back from the bar, from the drive, from the whole night. It crossed her face before she could stop it, and she couldn’t quite look at him when she said the next part.

"Alex was mine and Gilbert’s best friend."

A pause. Her hand tightened on his arm.

"This isn’t easy for us."

She looked back at him then. And there was something in her face that he had never seen there before — not fear, not grief exactly. The particular expression of someone who has been carrying something they know is their fault and finally said so out loud.

"Do you think I can stay like this," she said, "knowing that Alex and Layla possibly died because of me?"

No rise in tone. No hesitation. Just placed where it needed to be.

But her hand on his arm had gone tight. And she was looking at his chest, not his face — because she had said the thing she had been carrying since the moment Gilbert’s words had aligned in that bar, and now she couldn’t quite look up.

Franz watched her.

He had seen Arianne Summers hold a boardroom. He had seen her face down lawyers and journalists and people who came at her sideways with implications and pressure designed to make her flinch. She didn’t flinch. That was the thing about her — she met everything head-on and didn’t let it show.

She was letting it show now.

Not breaking. Not crying. Just — the armor was off. Whatever she carried behind the steadiness, it was visible for the first time since he had known her. And it looked like guilt. The specific, heavy kind. The kind that had been sitting inside her for months.

He didn’t say anything yet. He just looked at her.

Franz’s chest moved. One breath.

"He didn’t tell you either."

Not a question.

Arianne shook her head. "No."

Franz looked at her.

Then he looked away.

He stared at the wall beside the entry table for a moment. Not thinking about the wall. Just needing somewhere to put his eyes while he got through the next few seconds.

His brother had known. Had been looking at it. Had chosen not to tell him.

He understood why. That was the thing — he completely understood why. Alex had always been that way. Nothing until it was solid. Nothing until he was certain. He didn’t want to be wrong, didn’t want to make something worse by putting it in front of people before he knew what it was. Franz had watched him operate like that his whole life. Careful. Precise. Never alarmist.

He had always admired it.

Standing in this hallway, less than a year after the funeral, learning that his brother had been tracking something dangerous without a word to him — he admired it. He did. He just wished, right now, that Alex had been a little less like himself.

He turned back to her.

"He didn’t tell anyone."

"No," Arianne said.

Franz exhaled. Short. One sound.

Then he stepped forward and pulled her in.

No hesitation. No ceremony. His arm around her, holding, and she let him — her hand moved to his side, pressing there, holding him as much as he was holding her.

"I’m sorry."

No explanation. No qualifier.

He held her. The room was around them and neither of them was in it.

Then—

"If Gilbert’s right—"

His voice was low. It stayed even. But she felt the arm around her tighten before he’d finished the sentence.

"—someone is pushing this. And it leads to you."

Arianne didn’t speak. She listened.

"The leak wasn’t meant for me."

A pause.

"It was meant to force you out."

"It succeeded," she said.

He pulled her tighter. Just a fraction. The kind of movement you make when the thought is too much to hold at arm’s length.

"Which means they’re not done," she added.

"No."

Then—

"I’ve already lost him."

He stopped.

He had meant to keep going. There was more. But the sentence ended there because something in his throat closed and he was not going to open his mouth and let whatever was behind it come out. Not here. Not now. He had been holding it together since the bar and he needed to keep holding it together because the alternative was falling apart in front of her, and he was not going to do that.

His arm around her tightened. She felt it in her ribs — the full weight of him suddenly present, the tension running through his whole body at once. His hand was shaking. Small. The kind that would have been invisible across a room.

There was no room between them.

She pressed closer. Her other hand moved to his back, flat against it, holding. Not pulling him anywhere. Just something solid.

He got himself back. It took a few seconds. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"I won’t lose you too."

His voice was even. Only just.

Arianne didn’t move. Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t make it easier by saying something that made it manageable.

She understood.

Not just the words. The weight behind them.

Alex. The investigation. The pattern that had been in motion before any of them could see it clearly.

And now — her. In the center of it. Again.

She had come back to this city because Alex died. She had told herself that the two things — what had happened to her five years ago, and what had happened to him — were separate. Different Chapters. She had needed to believe that.

She was less sure of it now.

And if the pattern held — if the things Gilbert had been tracking before Alex’s death had connected to her — then Franz wasn’t outside of it either. He was in it now. Because of her.

She held him tighter. She didn’t say any of that out loud.

"We’ll handle it," she said.

Low. Not reassurance. Direction.

The hold loosened. Not a release — just a change.

They didn’t separate. She moved slightly, and his arm allowed it without breaking contact.

Arianne reached for a glass and poured water without looking. Franz stood beside her, one hand on the edge of the table.

"Gil should have said something earlier," he said.

"He didn’t have enough."

"Now he does."

"Yes."

Arianne set the glass down without drinking. Her phone was dark on the table. No new alerts.

"We’ll see what he found," she said.

Franz nodded.

His hand moved to her waist. Not pulling her back. Just contact. Just that.

She let it stay right there.

The room was around them. Lights steady. Everything in its place, exactly as they’d left it an hour ago.

None of it touched what they were carrying in with them.

Franz didn’t let go. Arianne didn’t move away.

Tomorrow, they would look at what Gilbert found. They would go through the files and trace the patterns and figure out what Alex had seen and what it meant and what came next. All of it, in order.

Tonight, this was enough.

It had to be.