Chapter 26: WHY WAS HE NEVE’S YOUNGER BROTHER?
Chapter 25
Lumi
The hotel room door shut with a simple click. I dropped my bag on the bed and didn’t even bother unpacking. I just walked straight into the bathroom, turned the shower handles until the pipes groaned and the steam started to rise, and pulled off my clothes.
Stepping under the water, I leaned my forehead against the cold tile wall. The hot spray hit my back, stinging my skin, but my mind wouldn’t quiet down. It was stuck on loop, replaying the last ten minutes in Callum’s office.
More than the anger or the shouting, it was the look on Callum’s face when I told him I was taking Theo that stayed with me.
When the words left my mouth, his eyes hadn’t just filled with rage—there had been a brief, ugly flicker of amusement there.
A small twitch at the corner of his mouth that said he thought I was throwing a tantrum. He looked at me like I was making a joke.
And as the water pooled around my feet, the cold reality set in: I knew exactly why he looked at me that way.
Callum had everything. He had the Vance legacy, a multi-million-pound logistics firm, a massive corporate structure, and an army of lawyers who slept in suits.
What did I have right now? A hotel room key. No independent income, no business backing, no real leverage of my own.
In the eyes of a family court judge, I was an ex wife with a broken marriage trying to pull a child across the Atlantic Ocean away from a wealthy, established father. The law didn’t care about my broken heart; it cared about stability.
If I wanted to beat him, I couldn’t just sue him for divorce. I had to stand on his level. I needed something that wouldn’t just give me enough money for a legal retainer, but raw, undeniable power.
I needed to be a threat. I would never, ever let him win this. I would never let him keep my son because he had a larger bank account.
The realization hit me so hard I forgot to breathe for a second. The blueprint was already mine.
My mother’s old company was sitting in the United States, dormant, locked away in legal limbo since the day she died. It was a massive, multi-million-dollar empire that had been left to rot because the grief killed her before she could run it.
I turned off the water, dried myself off roughly, and pulled on a pair of dark jeans and an old grey sweater.
I didn’t dry my hair; it was still damp, clinging to the back of my neck as I walked out of my room and straight down the quiet, carpeted hallway to room 412.
I didn’t give myself time to think about what I was doing or why I was rushing. If I stopped to think, I’d talk myself out of it.
I needed to tell Ren about my plan. Recently, I’ve been finding myself wanting to tell him anything and everything. I actually do not know why, maybe because I know he won’t ever judge me.
I knocked hard on Ren’s door. Twice.
"Come in," his deep voice called out.
I turned the brass handle and pushed the door open. The room was identical to mine, but it felt smaller with him in it.
Ren was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his large frame bent forward as he scrolled through something on his phone.
The moment his eyes found me, he dropped the phone onto the white sheets and didn’t take his eyes off me as I walked across the room and sat down heavily on the small fabric couch by the window.
The action made a little flip flutter in my tummy but I buried it immediately. What was wrong with me.
He slid off the bed, walking over with that slow, unhurried stride, and sat down on the low stool opposite me.
He leaned his forearms on his knees, his dark eyes studying the tight set of my shoulders. "Is such a surprise to see you in my room. Hope everything is good? Hope you’re fine?." He asked, not even giving me chance to reply the one before.
"I want to go back to the US," I said. My voice sounded thin to my own ears, clipped and demanding because I was trying so hard to keep it from shaking. "In the next few hours. Can you help book the flight?."
Ren’s brow furrowed, a genuine flash of surprise crossing his face. He didn’t move, but his posture grew completely still. "Why the rush? Are you okay?" He asked again but was a little worried this time.
" I’m... fine... I want...to..." he raised his brow but still waited patiently for me to bring the words out.
"I’m thinking of bringing my mom’s company back to life....to how it was before everything... collapsed" I said, staring at the floor between us.
The silence that followed was heavy. Ren didn’t blink. He just sat there, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a weight that made me want to look away.
He knew. Out of everyone in my life right now, he was the only one who understood how sensitive and toxic the topic of my mother was to me. He knew she was the ghost I had spent my entire life trying not to become.
"Why?" It was a simple question, short and direct, stripped of any judgment.
"Because if I want to beat Callum, I need to bring it back to life," I said.
I tried to shrug, forcing my shoulders to move like it was just a casual business decision, but my fingers were gripping the fabric of my sweater so hard my knuckles were turning white. I stared at a loose thread near my wrist.
"It happened years ago. Whatever happened, happened when I was a child. What’s a better time than now to rebuild her lost legacy? It makes sense."
Ren didn’t say anything for a long time. The only sound in the room was the distant hum of traffic down on the London streets below.
He just watched me, his gaze cutting right through the fake, tough act I was trying to put on. He could see the tremor in my hands. He could see how hard I was trying to pretend I was fine.
"You’re not like her, Lumi," he said softly.
I froze. The words felt like a blow, hitting the exact, bleeding wound I had spent my whole life guarding with everything I had. The air left my lungs in a sharp, quiet gasp.
"Whatever Callum did is on him," Ren continued, his voice low and steady, vibrating through the small space between us. "It’s not because you’re her daughter."
I opened my mouth to respond, to give him some logical reason why he was wrong, but nothing came out.
A thick, painful lump immediately formed in my throat, choking me. My eyes started to burn, the heat rising fast and hot behind my eyelids.
I swallowed hard, my throat aching with the effort to force the emotion back down, to keep the walls from collapsing right in front of him.
"You’re strong," he continued, shifting slightly closer, his dark eyes fixed on mine so intensely I couldn’t look away. There was no pity in his face, just a hard, unyielding certainty.
"And you’re beautiful. I’ve watched you for weeks now, Lumi, and I can tell you that you are nothing like her.
You don’t have to prove a point to anyone. You don’t need to rebuild an empire just to show Callum you can. If you want to do it, do it because you want to bring back her legacy. Do it for yourself, not for him. Because you’re perfect just the way you are." A sharp, broken sob tore out of my throat before I could stop it.
Once the first one broke through, the rest followed like a flood. I covered my face with my hands, my shoulders shaking violently as years of buried terror, exhaustion, and the suffocating fear of failure came pouring out of me.
I sat there on his couch, completely unraveled, crying like a child who had been holding her breath for a decade.
How was he doing this? How could he just say those words like they were nothing, sitting there completely solid, staring at me with so much raw honesty that it was impossible to doubt him?
He wasn’t trying to comfort me with cheap phrases. He wanted me to know, without a single doubt, that he meant every word.
He was giving me a piece of solid ground to stand on when my whole world was turning to dust.
Through the tears, as I looked at him through my wet fingers, a sudden, desperate thought flashed through my mind.
I looked at his sharp, young jawline, the clear skin, and the immense, quiet power radiating from his frame.
Why was he so young?
Why wasn’t he older than me? Why did a man who hadn’t even lived through half the betrayals I had possess the exact, unyielding strength I needed just to survive the day? It felt unfair, and it terrified me how much I wanted to lean into it.
And lastly, that question I’d never let myself think all these years came back.
Why was he Neve’s younger brother? Why?
