Chapter 210: Leaving

Liam stood in the study with the lights low.

The villa was quiet in the way it only became after midnight. Outside, the perimeter lights held steady against the dark.

Inside, the house felt full even in silence five claimed women sleeping under the same roof, the weight of everything they had built together pressing softly against the walls.

The Multi Claim still sat at the edge of his awareness like a held breath. He could have started it tonight. The conditions were met. The window was open.

Instead, he was packing a small bag.

The decision had settled in him sometime after Cole fell asleep against his chest.

It had nothing to do with the System and everything to do with two names he had not spoken aloud in a long time.

Sophie.Sarah.

In his old life they had been the only people who were ever truly good to him without calculation.

Sophie with her limp and her quiet, stubborn loyalty. Sarah with the kind of warmth that had once made a failing man feel like he still belonged somewhere.

He had lost both of them in that life. In this one, they were still alive.

That fact had been sitting in the back of his mind for weeks, growing heavier every time the villa got quieter and the board got fuller.

Power, money, claimed women, a house that bent around his presence none of it erased the simple truth that he had never gone back to check on the only two people who had treated him like he mattered before any of this existed.

He folded a shirt into the bag and zipped it halfway closed.A soft knock came at the door.

Then another.

Then the door opened without waiting for permission.

Renee entered first. Behind her came Jessica, Vanessa, Veronica, and Cole. None of them looked like they had been sleeping deeply.

Renee’s expression was calm but alert. Jessica’s arms were folded loosely across her chest.

Vanessa hovered near the doorframe, fingers resting against the wood. Veronica’s gaze moved from the bag on the desk to Liam’s face and stayed there.

Cole stood slightly apart, precise even now, but her eyes were sharp in a way that said she had already read the room.

"You’re leaving," Renee said.

It wasn’t a question.

Liam rested a hand on the bag. "For a while."

Jessica’s brow furrowed. "How long is a while?"

"I don’t know yet."

Vanessa’s fingers tightened against the doorframe. "Is something wrong?"

"No." He looked at each of them in turn. "There’s someone I need to check on. Two people. From before all of this."

Silence settled over the room. It wasn’t empty silence. It was the kind that formed when five people who were bound to him tried to process the idea of the house without him in it.

Cole was the one who broke it. "You’re going alone."

"Yes."

Veronica’s voice was quieter than usual. "And we’re supposed to stay here."

"Yes."

The temperature in the room changed. Not with anger. With something tighter and more complicated.

The five of them had been claimed separately, shaped by different nights and different breaking points, but the bond worked the same way in all of them.

The idea of him walking out of the villa for an undefined stretch of time sat wrong under their skin.

It wasn’t just attachment. It was the quiet, instinctive pull of women who had already crossed a line with him and no longer knew how to stand comfortably on the other side of it.

Renee stepped closer to the desk. Her eyes moved over the half-packed bag, then back to his face. "Who?"

Liam didn’t answer immediately. The names felt strange in his mouth after so long, like picking up something fragile he hadn’t touched in years.

"Sophie. And her mother, Sarah."

Jessica studied his face. "You’ve never mentioned them."

"I know."

Vanessa looked between the bag and his expression. "Are they in trouble?"

"I don’t know. That’s why I’m going."

Cole’s gaze flicked to the bag again, then back to him. "You’re leaving the villa undermanned."

"The rotations are covered. Jack is here. The perimeter will hold."

"That’s not what I meant."

He knew what she meant. The security detail could function without him. The house itself was another matter.

Five claimed women in one structure created a kind of gravity. Removing the center of it, even temporarily, would leave a pressure none of them had tested yet.

Renee exhaled slowly through her nose. "When?"

"Morning."

The word landed heavily. Jessica’s jaw tightened. Vanessa looked down at the floor. Veronica’s fingers curled against her own arm.

Cole remained still, but the line of her shoulders had gone rigid. Renee held his eyes for a long moment, reading everything he wasn’t saying the old guilt, the unfinished thread, the part of him that still belonged to a life before Systems and villas and women who broke open under his hands.

"You’re set on this," she said.

"Yes."

No one argued further. Not out loud. But the resistance in the room was thick enough to taste.

These were not women who begged. They had each been broken and claimed in their own way, and what bound them to him was deeper than ordinary attachment.

The thought of the house without him in it even temporarily scraped against something raw and newly formed in all of them.

Jessica was the first to look away. "We’ll adjust the schedules."

"I already did."

Vanessa’s voice was small. "Will you come back?"

Liam looked at her. The question was simple. The weight under it wasn’t.

"Yes."It should have been enough.

It wasn’t. ℯ

Renee nodded once, sharp and controlled. "Then we’ll see you in the morning."

She turned and left. The others followed in a loose, reluctant line Jessica with her arms still folded, Vanessa glancing back once toward the bag on the desk, Veronica silent and tight-jawed, Cole last of all.

Cole paused at the threshold for half a second, as if she might say something else, then stepped through and closed the door behind her with a soft click.

Liam stood alone in the study with the packed bag and the quiet.

Outside, the villa held steady. The perimeter lights burned against the dark. Somewhere on the far side of the property Jack’s training yard sat empty and waiting for morning.

Inside, five claimed women walked back to their rooms carrying the same unspoken conclusion.

He was leaving.

And none of them intended to make it easy.