Part 86

When they reached the penthouse, the apartment was still staged for a celebration that would never happen, bottles of expensive vintage champagne chilling in silver buckets, a spread of food that looked like a mockery.

Liam practically poured Noel onto the oversized velvet sofa. Noel's head hit the cushion, his eyes rolling back, staring at the panoramic view of the city skyline.

'I'll get you some water,' Liam muttered.

'Don't bother,' Noel croaked, his voice sandpaper-raw. He reached out with a trembling hand, fumbling for his phone in his pocket. His thumb hovered over her contact name: Caro. He had a hundred drafts of a text he couldn't send, questions that demanded answers, insults that tasted like ash, pleas that made him feel pathetic.

Suddenly, his thumb slipped. He didn't send a text; he hit the 'Call' button.

He held the phone to his ear, his breath hitching.

"The person you are calling is unavailable or out of the coverage area..."

Noel let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-strangled sob. 'Coverage area, he whispered to the empty room. 'She's definitely out of my coverage area!. She clearly didn't want to be there anymore, fuck her!.'

He threw the phone across the room. It skittered across the hardwood floor, landing face-up near the window.

Liam returned, setting a glass of water and some aspirin on the coffee table. He looked at his brother, and saw a hollowed-out shell. 'You need to sleep, Noel. We'll deal with the press in the morning. We'll figure out where she went.'

'I know where she went,' Noel growled, a sudden, jagged spark of the old fire returning to his eyes, though it was fueled by pure bitterness now. 'She went exactly where she wanted to be. Somewhere far away from me. She played the part of the supportive muse until the check cleared and the lights went down..and then she went to Rob..who ran her car off the road, she just had me fooled this whole time..stupid cunt'.

He rolled onto his side, curling into himself, the luxury of the penthouse feeling like a gilded cage. 'I'm not looking for her, Liam. Tell the security team to stand down. Tell the police it was a 'misunderstanding.' If she wants to be a ghost, let her rot in the dark.'

But as Noel finally drifted into a heavy, alcohol-induced sleep, his hand stayed clenched in a fist, gripping the fabric of the sofa as if he were still trying to hold onto something that had already slipped through his fingers.

Liam stepped out on the balcony, taking a deep breath as the cold night air hit his face.

"She just walked out, Liam. She didn't look back. She got in the van like she was planning all along."

Those words were looping in his head, like a  broken record. He looked through the glass at Noel, who was now dead to the world in a drunken stupor, and felt a wave of pure, unadulterated shock. His brother's words, stupid cunt, still rang in the room, vibrating with a venom that Liam had never heard of him before, especially where women were involved.

'This is not happening,' Liam whispered to himself, his voice trembling. 'It has to be a lie.'

But the doubt was a physical weight, pressing down on his shoulders. If the camera showed her walking away willingly, then everything he thought he knew about Caroline was fiction. The girl who managed Noel's life, the girl who had become the heartbeat of their inner circle within the band..was she really capable of this level of cruelty? To leave during the final song? Without even looking back?

The shock was different for his brother. For Noel, it was a betrayal of the heart, a betrayal of reality. He'd spent so much time watching them, convinced they were the only real thing in a world full of fake stuff. If this was a lie, then nothing else was real.

He looked at the champagne, the food, the 'Congratulations' banner that had started to peel at one corner..all organized by Caroline. It all looked like props from a horror movie now.

He felt a sudden, desperate urge to see the footage for himself. He needed to see her face. He needed to see if there was a flicker of hesitation, a hidden signal, anything that proved the camera was lying. Because if it wasn't...then he was left alone to pick up the pieces of a brother who might never recover and he would never forgive her for that.

He grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, his eyes lingering on Noel's slumped form. He couldn't stay here watching his brother drown in bitterness.

--

Rob stepped back inside, the smell of damp earth and gasoline clinging to his jacket. He looked down at Caroline, who was still slumped in the chair under the buzzing yellow light.

'Noel's at the club, partying like there's no tomorrow' Rob said casually, tossing a heavy bag of supplies onto the scarred table. The thud made Caroline flinch. He pulled out his phone and turned it so she could see the screen. It was a grainy social media video, already viral: Noel, stumbling, shouting 'To Caroline!' with a glass raised in a mock toast 'the best actress I ever knew! Stupid cunt'.

'See?' Rob whispered, leaning over her until she could smell the cold air on his skin. 'He's already celebrating. I can assure you he's telling the police it was a misunderstanding because he's too embarrassed to admit his trophy girl walked out on him.'

Caroline stared at the screen, her heart breaking beyond repair. The Noel in the video was unrecognizable, cruel, drunk, and full of hate. It was exactly what Rob wanted her to see: a world that had already closed its doors on her.

She stared at the wall, her eyes vacant. It was the hopelessness that hurt the most. If Rob had dragged her kicking and screaming, she could hold onto the hope of a rescue. She could imagine Noel's fury, the police sirens, the manhunt. But Rob had been more surgical than that.

She thought of Noel in his penthouse, looking at the city lights. She knew him, she knew how his mind worked. He would replay the entire night, searching for signs of her "betrayal." He would remember a glance she gave a stranger, or a moment she stayed silent, and he would twist those memories until they fit Rob's narrative. By tomorrow morning, Noel wouldn't be looking for his missing lover; he'd be trying to forget a girl who never existed.

A sob finally broke through her throat, jagged and raw. I'm dead to him, the thought alone made her sick. I'm already dead.

The signal jammer on Rob's belt had done more than block a frequency; it had severed the tether of her soul. She was trapped in a room with a madman who believed he was a savior, while the only man she loved was currently learning how to hate her.

He was safe, and so was his family, that part of the deal was the most important, but the hopelessness of her own situation really dawned on her now, it was a physical weight, pressing the air out of her lungs until she felt like she was drowning in the middle of a forest.

Rob's back was turned as he organized the fuel canisters, his posture relaxed, the arrogant stance of a man who believed the battle was already won.

Caroline saw her moment. It wasn't a plan; it was a desperate, white-hot explosion of survival. She lunged from the chair, grabbing a heavy, iron fire poker from the fireplace. With a guttural cry of rage, she swung for his head with every ounce of her remaining soul, but Rob didn't even flinch.

He caught her wrist in a grip that felt like a vice, twisting it until she cried out, and then his fist connected with her jaw. The world didn't go black immediately; it shattered into a million white sparks before the floor rushed up to meet her.

When she drifted back to consciousness, the room was spinning in a nauseating, slow-motion blur. Her jaw throbbed with a rhythmic, stabbing heat, but it was the weight on her arm that anchored her to the nightmare.

Rob was sitting on the edge of the cot, his shadow stretching long and distorted across the peeling wallpaper. He looked calm, terrifyingly so, as he tapped the side of a small syringe.

'I didn't want it to be like this, babe,' he murmured, his voice sounding like it was coming from underwater. 'But you're still fighting for a man who has already replaced you with a bottle and a lot of other women. You're addicted to the chaos of him. I need to help you detox.'

'Please..' she tried to say, but her tongue felt like a heavy, foreign object in her mouth. Her vision swam, catching the glint of the needle.

He didn't hesitate. The sting in her arm was sharp, followed almost instantly by a thick, honey-like warmth that flooded her veins. It was a terrifying sensation, the feeling of her own will being unplugged. The fear didn't vanish; it just became something she could no longer reach.

'There,' Rob whispered, leaning over her. He began to unlace her shoes, his touch possessive and slow. 'Now the world can stay outside. No more Wembley. No more Noel. Just us.'

Caroline's eyes rolled back, focusing on the buzzing yellow bulb above. As the drug pulled her under, the light started to look like the sun over the stadium. She could almost hear Noel's voice, not the drunken slur from the video, but the real Noel, whispering that they were going to make it.

The image flickered and died. The darkness took her, leaving her a passenger in her own body, unable to scream as Rob's shadow closed over her.

--

The next morning didn't arrive with a sunrise; it arrived with the phantom sensation of her hair against his cheek.

Noel reached out, his eyes still closed, his arm heavy and warm as he swept the silk sheets. He expected to find her there, the soft dip in the mattress, the rhythmic, quiet sound of her breathing that usually anchored him to the earth.

'Caro,' he croaked, his voice a dry rasp.

Nothing. Just the hum of the air conditioning and the distant, muffled thwack-thwack of a police chopper somewhere over the Thames.

He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, his thumb moving with muscle memory to her contact. He was going to ask her to bring up extra water. He was going to tell her his head felt like a shattered lightbulb. He hit 'Call' before his eyes were even fully open.

"The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again."

The mechanical, female voice was a bucket of ice water to his soul.

The phone slipped from his hand, bouncing off the duvet. The realization didn't hit him all at once; it seeped in like a slow-acting poison, starting at his toes and freezing his blood until it reached his heart. Wembley. The final song. The empty dressing room. The video. The police.

Stupid cunt.

The words he'd spat the night before echoed in his skull, sounding louder than the helicopter outside. He groaned, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling. The luxury of the room felt mocking now. The gold leafing on the cornices, the Italian marble, it was all just expensive silence.

He forced himself upright. The world tilted, a wave of nausea rolling through his stomach. He was still in yesterday's clothes, his shirt had the lingering scent of her perfume that still clung to the fabric. It made him want to vomit.

He stood on shaky legs and moved toward the window, dragging the heavy blackout curtain aside just a few inches.

A dozen long-lens cameras were perched on the balcony of the hotel across the street. The paparazzi were huddled like vultures on the pavement below, their faces obscured by black plastic equipment. They weren't looking for a rockstar; they were looking for a corpse.

'Get fucked,' he hissed, letting the curtain drop.

The 'Congratulations' banner on the wall had started to peel, the 'C' hanging limply. He felt the old fire try to spark in his chest, that defensive bitterness that told him to go out there and flip them all off, to tell the world he didn't care that she'd left for Rob.

But the fire wouldn't catch. He was too hollow for it.

He navigated his way into the master bathroom. He caught sight of himself, bloodshot eyes, hair matted, a bruise forming on his ego that felt like a physical wound. He turned on the shower, the water hissing as it hit the tiles, but he didn't get in.

Instead, he slid down the wall, his back against the cold, polished stone.

He pulled his knees to his chest, burying his face in his hands. He made sure the water was running loud enough to drown out the world, loud enough that even Liam, if he were standing right outside the door, wouldn't hear.

And then, the "Chief" finally broke.

The grief didn't come in waves; it was a total, airless submersion. He wasn't just crying; he was breaking apart. His head held in his hands, his fingers digging in his hair as if he were trying to anchor himself to a world that was spinning off its axis.

Each sob was a violent, convulsive jerk of his spine, a raw sound that started deep in his chest and tore upward, leaving his throat feeling like he'd swallowed glass. It was a rhythmic, helpless heaving, the sound of a man who had spent his whole life being the loudest person in the room suddenly finding himself with nothing left to say.