Chapter 59-Fake performance

Chapter 59: 59-Fake performance

Aymara’s words resonated in his ear over and over again, on repeat.

Dylan’s face collapsed. He pictured Aymara, sweet and naive girl who always asked for his permission for everything and found it hard to place that version with the one talking to him now.

Sarah felt something twist painfully in her chest. Aymara was doing exactly what Sarah had feared. She had survived, prepared enough, and was now sitting somewhere safe, watching them suffer.

Worse, she wasn’t even angry anymore. She was amused by their misery and waiting to be entertained by their struggles in the future.

Sarah suddenly realized that this was far more frightening than hatred. Aymara didn’t need revenge because she was already living the life Sarah had wanted, and Dylan was listening to her as though that life still belonged beside him.

"Wait!" Sarah suddenly lunged for the phone.

Dylan turned. "What are you doing?"

She grabbed his arm. "Give it to me!" she desperately reached for the phone but Dylan didn’t give in.

"I have it!"

Dylan insisted as he wasn’t done. He still wanted to sweet talk Aymara and convince her to take him back so that he can join her wherever she was and enjoy the luxury and comfort she had to offer.

"Please!" Sarah’s word escaped her before she could stop it. Both of them froze, and Sarah’s face flushed with humiliation.

She had never begged Aymara before, not like this but she couldn’t help it. She needed to know where Aymara was and how much better prepared she was.

Most of all, she needed to know whether Dylan was already thinking about her, or whether he was playing games to get the supplies Aymara had hoarded.

The thought clawed through Sarah’s mind, sharp enough to make her vision blur. She wanted to believe Dylan was only afraid and desperate for survival, but the way he held the phone and the way his voice had softened around Aymara’s name told her otherwise.

Aymara heard the struggle on the other end. A soft laugh escaped her.

"Oh, Sarah," her voice was full of pity.

Sarah froze. The sound made her feel exposed, as though Aymara could see every jealous thought twisting inside her.

"Don’t worry," Aymara’s voice was almost sweet. "You two still have plenty of time to suffer."

Sarah’s face turned white. She had a bad feeling at the pit of her stomach that Aymara had been reborn too and if that was the case. It meant that Aymara remembered the way they killed her.

Her body drained of colour and she looked like she had just lost ten years of her life.

"The world has no laws anymore. Nothing will stop me from settling every score that exists between us."

Click.

The call ended and Aymara didn’t immediately withdraw the signal connecting their phones. She left it open as bait and waited for them to fall into her trap.

Silence filled the ship after the call ended, and Dylan stared at the dead phone. His chest rose and fell rapidly.

"Aymara..." her name was barely a whisper as it fell off his lips.

Sarah watched him carefully. She saw the look in her eyes, a look she knew all too well. It was his calculating look and it was enough to tell her that he was considering whether surviving with Aymara would be better than sticking with her.

That tiny flicker of longing, hope, and calculation was no longer something she could dismiss as fear. He was imagining Aymara’s shelter, and her voice waiting on the other end.

He was imagining what it would feel like to stand beside her again and enjoy the comforts that she had prepared.

Sarah could see the desire taking shape before he even admitted it to himself.

Her stomach dropped. She had been terrified that Aymara would steal Dylan from her, but now, for the first time, she realized something even worse.

She might not have to worry because Dylan might willingly go back to her.

"How do you think she still has a phone signal out here?" Sarah asked as she took her phone back.

"I don’t know." Dylan shrugged and returned to arranging the supplies.

He acted as though the question meant nothing. As though Aymara’s call hadn’t shaken him and hearing her voice after everything that had happened hadn’t stirred something he desperately wanted to bury.

But the truth had already exposed itself long ago. Sarah almost applauded for him. ’What a performance!’ she thought.

If she hadn’t known Dylan so well and hadn’t spent enough time watching him manipulate people and hide his true intentions behind carefully chosen expressions, she might have believed him.

He looked completely indifferent, calm and unbothered but Sarah could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his fingers moved a little too quickly as he rearranged the supplies.

The slight crease between his brows that appeared whenever he was thinking about something he didn’t want her to notice.

She almost laughed, but the sound caught somewhere behind her ribs. Jealousy burned through her first, hot and humiliating.

It was absurd that a single call could still make her feel threatened. Aymara was nowhere near them. She had no idea what had happened, no idea what they had lost, and had no claim on Dylan anymore.

And yet Sarah could still feel her presence between them. Worse, she could feel Dylan reaching toward it.

"I think we should finish up and get some rest," Dylan said casually. "I don’t want to waste energy thinking about things that don’t matter."

Things that don’t matter. Sarah nearly clapped for him as his performance deserved an Oscar.

She simply never thought she would live to see the day when Dylan would perform for her.

That was something he had always done with other women. The women whose hearts he strung along while pursuing whatever agenda benefited him.

He would smile, pretend to care, say exactly what they wanted to hear, and make them believe they were special while quietly using their feelings against them.

Sarah had always thought she was different from those women. She had believed she was the one woman who truly understood him and the one woman he wouldn’t manipulate.

Yet now, standing in the middle of their battered ship, surrounded by ruined supplies and the remains of the future they had so confidently planned, she finally understood.

He had reduced her to one of those women as he was performing for her because there was something he didn’t want her to see and Sarah knew exactly what it was, Aymara.

"I won’t lose to you in this life as well," she said and turned on the tracker on her phone and pinned Aymara’s location. "And once I find you, everything you have will be mine!"