Jessica's voice cut through the silence first, sharp and desperate. "Damien. Wait."

He stopped at the threshold, his back to them, duffel bag hanging from one hand. The Greek sunlight blazed around his silhouette, turning the edges of his dark hair to gold, but he looked like a man standing in shadow.

"Wait for what?" His voice was flat. Dead. A voice that had left his body behind.

Jessica crossed the room in five quick strides, her bare feet slapping against the cool tile. She grabbed his arm, spun him around. Her honey-brown hair swung wild around her shoulders, her brown eyes wide and searching. "Wait for an explanation. You can't just—you get a phone call and suddenly we're done? The whole trip is over? What the hell happened?"

Damien looked at her hand on his arm. His ice-blue eyes were hollow, the color of winter sky just before a storm. He didn't shake her off. He just stared at her fingers like he didn't recognize them.

"Damien." Jessica's voice cracked. She pushed his chest, hard, and the impact made a dull sound against the tailored fabric of his dark button-down. "Talk to me. What is wrong with you?"

He didn't move. Didn't blink. The push barely registered.

Jessica pushed him again, both hands flat against his chest, and this time her voice broke into something rawer. "You owe me that much. After everything. After this whole summer, our year together—you owe me an answer."

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not anger. Not yet. Something deeper and colder, rising from a place Elena had never seen him reach before.

"They're dead."

The words fell into the room like stones into still water. Two words. Flat. Final.

Jessica's hands dropped from his chest. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. "What?"

"My parents." Damien's jaw worked, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. His voice stayed level, but Elena could hear the effort it cost him—the way each word had to be dragged up from somewhere broken inside him. "Car accident. An hour ago. My father's driver lost control on the coastal highway near the estate." He paused. Swallowed. "They're both gone."

The room became absolute ice.

Elena stood frozen by the kitchen island, her hand still gripping the edge of the marble counter. The cold stone bit into her palm. She watched Damien's face—that face she had studied for weeks, the cruel mouth and the sharp jaw and the eyes that saw through everything—and saw something she had never seen there before.

He looked lost.

Not angry. Not calculating. Not manipulating. Lost, like a man who had walked into his own house and found the furniture rearranged in a way that made no sense.

Jessica took a step back. Her hand came up to cover her mouth. "Oh my God. Damien. Oh my God."

He didn't respond. His gaze had drifted past her, past the villa, past the Mediterranean sky blazing through the windows. He was somewhere else entirely—somewhere dark and empty and utterly alone.

And then the phone rang.

Jessica's phone, buzzing against the marble counter where she'd left it. The sound sliced through the silence like a blade. Everyone flinched.

Jessica stared at the screen. The name flashing across it made her face go white.

Melinda.

She looked at Damien. He didn't meet her eyes. He was already turning back toward the door, his shoulders rigid, his duffel bag hanging from his grip like a dead weight.

"Answer it," he said. Flat. Final. Then he stepped through the doorway and was gone, swallowed by the Greek sunlight.

Jessica's hand trembled as she picked up the phone. Swiped to answer. Pressed it to her ear.

And Melinda's voice—hysterical, sobbing, barely coherent—flooded the line.

"Jess? Jess, oh God, you have to come home. Please. Please, I need you. I can't—I don't know what to do. They're gone. They're both gone. Mom and Dad, they're—Arthur and Eleanor are dead. Damien won't answer his phone. I've been calling him for an hour. I need you here. I need my sister. Please."

The words tumbled out in a torrent of grief, each one a sob, a gasp, a punch to Jessica's chest.

Jessica sank onto the nearest dining chair, her legs giving out. Her hand gripped the phone so hard her knuckles went white. "Mel. Mel, slow down. I'm here. I'm listening." But her voice was shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

Elena watched from the kitchen island, her heart hammering against her ribs. She could hear Melinda's voice through the speaker—thin, fractured, raw—and something in her chest cracked open.

That's his wife.

That's the woman I've been helping him betray.

And she's calling her little sister, the one who's been sleeping with her husband for a year.

The guilt hit Elena like a physical blow, doubling her over the counter. She pressed her palm to her stomach, felt the nausea rise, forced it down.

Jessica was crying now. Silent tears streaming down her face as she listened to her sister's voice crack and break over the line. "I'm coming home. I promise. I'm on my way. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Melinda sobbed something Elena couldn't make out. Jessica nodded, even though her sister couldn't see it. "I know. I know. I love you too. Just hold on. I'm coming."

The call ended. Jessica lowered the phone and stared at the dark screen, tears still falling. Her face was a wreck—mascara smudged, cheeks flushed, mouth trembling.

She looked up at Elena. "I have to go home."

Elena nodded. "I know."

"I can't—I can't believe this is happening. His parents. They were—" Jessica's voice broke. She pressed her fist to her mouth, trying to hold it together. "I've been sleeping with my sister's husband for a year. And now his parents are dead. And my sister doesn't know what I've done."

The confession hung in the air between them, raw and bleeding.

Elena crossed the room slowly. She knelt beside Jessica's chair, took her hand. "You didn't know this was going to happen. None of us did."

"That doesn't make it better." Jessica's voice was barely a whisper. "I betrayed her. Every single day, for a year, I betrayed her."

Elena squeezed her hand. Her own guilt was a second heart beating in her chest—the knowledge that she had done the same thing. Worse, maybe. She had done it to her best friend, right beside her, in the same bed.

But now wasn't the time for confessions. Now was the time for getting home.

"I'm coming with you," Elena said.

Jessica looked up, her brown eyes red and swollen. "What? Lina, you don't have to—"

"I want to." The lie came easily. Too easily. Elena felt it slide off her tongue like silk. "You need support. And I'm your best friend. I'm not letting you go through this alone."

The truth was different. The truth was that Elena needed to see Damien. Needed to be near him, even in grief, even in silence. The truth was that she couldn't let him disappear into that dark place without her.

But Jessica didn't need to know that.

Jessica hugged her, fierce and sudden, her arms locking around Elena's neck. "Thank you. God, thank you."

Elena hugged her back, closed her eyes, and tried not to think about what she would do when they landed.

They broke apart slowly, Jessica wiping at her face with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheekbone. She took a shuddering breath, then another, forcing herself to stand on legs that still trembled.

"I need to pack." Her voice was hollow, mechanical. "I need to call the airline. Damien probably already has a jet waiting, but I need to—" She stopped, pressed her palm to her forehead. "I don't even know what I need."

"Start with packing," Elena said softly. "I'll help you."

Jessica nodded, already moving toward the stairs, her bare feet silent on the cool tile. Elena followed, her own legs heavy, her mind spinning through the implications she couldn't yet name.

The guest bedroom was chaos—clothes draped over chairs, makeup scattered across the vanity, the remnants of a summer that had ended mid-breath. Jessica stood in the center of it, staring at nothing.

Elena moved past her, opened the first suitcase, and began folding. Silks and linens and the sundresses Jessica had worn to the beach club, each one a memory of sun-drenched afternoons and Damien's hands hidden beneath tablecloths.

"I can't believe I'm going back there," Jessica whispered. "Back to that house. To her."

Elena didn't look up. "You don't have to tell her anything."

"I know." A pause. "But I also don't know how to look at her and pretend I didn't spend the last year fucking her husband. Before was different but…you don’t understand, Lina. We grew up with the Blackwoods, losing Arthur and Eleanor feels like we lost our parents."

The word hung in the air, ugly and honest. Elena's hands stilled on a silk blouse.

"We'll figure it out," she said. It was the only thing she could say.

Jessica laughed, a broken sound with no humor in it. "Will we?"

Elena didn't answer. She kept folding.

The silk blouse slid between her fingers, smooth and cool, and Elena pressed the folds flat against the suitcase's lining. She could feel Jessica's gaze on her back—heavy, searching, desperate for something Elena couldn't give her.

"Lina." Jessica's voice came from somewhere behind her, small and raw. "What am I going to do?"

Elena's hands stilled. She turned, slowly, and found Jessica sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, her honey-brown hair tangled from running her fingers through it, her face streaked with tears she hadn't bothered to wipe away. She looked smaller than Elena had ever seen her—the fierce, confident girl who had strutted through beach clubs and thrown her head back laughing at expensive dinners, reduced to something fragile and trembling.

"When we get there," Jessica continued, her voice cracking on every third word, "she's going to be grieving. Expecying me to be by her said and I'm going to have to look at her and pretend I didn't spend all summer—" She stopped, pressed her palm to her mouth. "How do I do that? How do I look at my sister and pretend?"

Elena crossed the room. She sat down on the bed beside Jessica, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. The mattress dipped under their combined weight, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.

"You don't pretend," Elena said quietly. "You just survive the first day. Then the next. One day at a time."

Jessica let out a shuddering breath. "That's not an answer."

"I know." Elena stared at her hands, at the faint tan lines from weeks in the Greek sun. "But it's all I have."

The silence stretched between them, filled with the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliffs below and the hum of the villa's air conditioning. Somewhere in the house, a door closed—Damien, probably, moving through the spaces like a ghost.

Jessica reached out and took Elena's hand. Her fingers were cold, trembling. "Thank you. For coming with me. I don't think I could do this alone."

Elena squeezed back. The guilt coiled in her stomach, a living thing, but she pushed it down. "You don't have to."

They sat like that for a long moment—two girls who had shared a summer of secrets, now facing a winter of consequences. Then Jessica pulled her hand away, stood up, and walked to the wardrobe without another word.

Elena watched her go, watched the way her shoulders hunched forward, the way her fingers trembled as she pulled dresses from their hangers. She wanted to say something—something true, something that would cut through the lies and the guilt and the mess they had made—but the words wouldn't come.

So she stood, crossed to the other side of the bed, and started packing her own things.

The silk wrap-skirt she had worn to the beach club. The thin top Damien had unbuttoned with such deliberate slowness. The green dress that finally wore after teasing him before. The cover-up that Damien tore off her that night in the yacht that started it all.

Each garment was a memory. Each fold was a goodbye.

Elena pressed her palm flat against the stack of clothes, feeling the smooth fabric beneath her fingers, and tried not to think about what waited for them on the other side of the Atlantic.

---

Their summer throuple had vanished in an instant, replaced by a dark, clinical urgency that none of them were prepared for. The bright Aegean coastline blurred outside the window of their car, as they drove straight to the airport in silence. Like a dream they were being forcibly evicted from.

Boarding the sleek corporate jet felt like stepping into a tomb. As the aircraft taxied and climbed steeply into the graying horizon, the sunny freedom of Greece completely evaporated, leaving them trapped in the dark reality heading toward New York. Jessica immediately collapsed into the leather seat further up the cabin, completely distracted and crying on a highly emotional, static-filled phone call with a hysterical Melinda back home.

Elena could only sit quietly across the aisle, murmuring soft, useless words of comfort until the sheer exhaustion of the tragedy finally took its toll, causing Jessica to drift off into a deep, heavy sleep. With the cabin lights dimmed to near-total darkness over the black waters of the Atlantic, Elena stared at her best friend's resting face before shifting her gaze back to the shadowed corner.

Where Damien sat completely isolated, an unmoving shadow against the glass.