The champagne tower crashed down, glass shattering, liquid spraying everywhere. Screams erupted as the crowd scrambled back.

"Boys, tear it up." The lead thug's voice scraped like gravel. "Fifty grand a head. I take the heat for any fallout."

A chorus of raucous shouts exploded from his crew. "You got it, Sis! Consider this part of the premium service."

They surged forward—muscles rippling under tight shirts, tough, ruthless, efficient. They plowed into Sara Graves's gaggle of toxic friends, shoving them aside like ragdolls. The private room descended into chaos.

I didn't hesitate.

I darted through the confusion, wound my hand into Sara's hair, and yanked her head back. *Smack. Smack.* Two sharp slaps echoed through the room.

She tried to claw back, but Ava Finch was faster. Ava drove her heel into the small of Sara's back. Sara stumbled in her eight-centimeter stilettos, knees hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

Right in front of me.

No mercy. I gripped her hair tighter, forcing her face up, and delivered two more stinging slaps.

Just as satisfaction began to settle in—

The door burst open.

Adrian Vance stormed in. Disheveled. Chest heaving with fury.

"Stop it! All of you, stop!"

His face was a mask of ice, eyes burning with suppressed rage. He shoved me aside hard enough to make me stumble, then immediately scooped Sara up from the floor.

Sara, ever the performer, dissolved into tears and nestled deeply into his embrace. Her face was already swelling. "Husband... how could she be so barbaric? It must be so hard for you, having to be with this kind of woman just for my sake."

Adrian shot me a look of pure loathing. "Hailey Henson, if you have a problem, come at me. You do not touch Sara."

His voice dropped an octave. Menacing. Cold.

"Apologize to Sara. Now. Admit your mistake, or I'll have your father come down here and teach you some manners."

I looked at Adrian. At how tightly he held her. At the depth of tenderness and heartache in his eyes—something I had never witnessed in our years together.

It wasn't that his personality was naturally cold.

It wasn't that he was too busy with work to care.

It was simply that I wasn't the one he loved.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. I plucked the cigarette from the fingers of the male model beside me, took a long, hard drag, and blew a cloud of smoke directly into Adrian's face.

"Adrian Vance." My voice dripped with disdain. "You want me to apologize to a mistress? Are you insane, or is your skull full of water?"

I stepped closer, eyes locking onto his—

And jammed the burning end of the cigarette onto the back of his hand.

"Leash your dog," I hissed. "Don't let it bark at me. Push me too far, and I'll drag the entire Vance family down to hell with me."

Adrian hissed through his teeth, jerking his hand away. Reflexively, he raised his arm to strike—

But the male model stepped in, shielding me with his own body.

"Mr. Vance." The model's voice was smooth as silk. "You can't hit a woman. Especially not such a beautiful one."

Adrian watched me—tucked safely in another man's arms, my hand resting casually on the model's waist.

His control snapped.

"Hailey Henson," he roared. "You actually came to a club to find gigolos? You just gave birth, and you're this desperate?"

Sara supported Adrian as he straightened, shooting me a look of triumphant mockery. "Adrian, maybe Miss Henson has always been... hungry. Remember back then? She was stripped naked and groped by eighteen thugs, and she didn't get hurt at all. Maybe she enjoyed it. Maybe she had the time of her life playing with eighteen men."

Adrian's expression twisted. His gaze filled with a cruel, resentful light.

"Hailey." His voice was a sneer. "Back then, when they stripped you... why didn't you resist?"

He stepped forward, words like acid. "Is it really like Sara said? Did you sleep with all eighteen of them? Did you beg those thugs to ravage you?"

I stared at him.

The blood drained from my face.

This was the man I had adored. The man I had loved.

His words were ice blades, stabbing straight into my heart.

I pushed the model aside and rose slowly. My eyes were bloodshot as I glared at him.

"Adrian Vance, you are an animal. Go to hell."

I grabbed a wine bottle from the table and smashed it against the floor.

*Crash.*

Glass shards exploded outward. My voice rose above the ringing silence—cold and final.

"Adrian Vance, back then you hired people to humiliate me. Today you belittle me again."

I turned on my heel and strode toward the door.

"I will get justice for myself."

Behind me, Adrian's voice drifted out, thick with concern.

But not for me.

"Sara, where did that crazy woman hurt you? Let's get you to the hospital."

The crisp night wind hit my face at the hotel entrance, drying the tears on my cheeks. With trembling fingers, I dialed a number.

"Uncle Walter." My voice was steady. "This is Hailey Henson. I have a proposition."

Hesitant silence on the other end. I cut through it coldly.

"I hold twenty percent of the Vance Group's equity. I can help you take the company. In exchange, I want Adrian Vance destroyed."

The silence stretched.

Then a deep, firm voice replied. "Alright. Thirty minutes. Meet me at the café."

The day my wife died, new words bled across a diary I'd sealed away twelve years ago.

*"Hello, thirty-year-old Dominic Delgado. I am you at eighteen."*

I couldn't breathe. Before the shock could settle, another sentence burned into existence, the ink still wet.

*"Amy has already married you by now, right? She has to be."*

*"I'm so nervous. Hurry up and tell me the result. I'm getting ready to confess to her."*

The diary slipped from my fingers. It hit the floor with a sound like a coffin lid slamming shut.

Amy Ware and I dated for eight years. Married for four.

And for those four years, I watched her drown in a loveless marriage with the cold detachment of a stranger. I never once reached for her hand.

Before she died, Amy left me with only two sentences.

"I will always love the eighteen-year-old Dominic Delgado."

"If he saw you bullying me like this, he would kill you."

The memory carved through me. I scrambled for the diary, ripped off the pen cap, and scrawled across the page so hard my hand shook. The letters came out jagged, half-crazed.

*"Don't confess to her! You're a monster! You will destroy her!"*

——

The moment the last word landed, something inside me shattered.

Tears came without warning—hot, violent, blinding. My knees gave out. The floor rose up to meet me, and I stayed there, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Amy Ware and I were high school classmates. I harbored a crush on her for three agonizing years.

It wasn't until the day I received my university acceptance letter—confirming we'd be in the same city—that I finally worked up the nerve to confess.

That was the day I started this diary.

The sour ache of secret longing. The dizzying sweetness of mutual love. The hot tears of our first fight. I recorded every moment, pen to paper.

Truthfully, I'd forgotten this book existed. Amy was the one who kept it safe all these years.

Sometimes I'd come home to find her weeping over these pages, fingers tracing the words of the boy who used to love her.

I never asked why.

Not until pancreatic cancer put her in a hospital bed did this diary cross my mind again.

"Do you want me to bring it?" I'd asked, standing stiff and useless beside her.

She wouldn't even look at me.

"No. I don't want him to see me like this."

At the time, I thought the illness had confused her. I missed the profound disappointment in her eyes. The way the light behind them had finally gone out.

Guilt clawed at my throat, sharp and suffocating. I gripped the pen tighter, desperate to write more.

That's when I noticed something strange.

This pen was a cheap freebie from the shop where I bought the diary twelve years ago. It had been clipped to the cover ever since. The ink should have dried up a decade ago.

Yet when I pressed the nib to the yellowed paper, it flowed smooth and dark.

*"I'm begging you, don't confess to her! Let her live a good life without you!"*

I bore down so hard the nib tore through the page.

As the final stroke landed, the full weight of my regret crushed the air from my lungs.

But there was nothing I could do.

No way to undo what I had broken.

I curled up on the floor and howled—raw, animal, inhuman.

*Dominic Delgado, you really are a monster.*

*The one who should be dead is you.*

When I finally lifted my head and wiped the grime from my face, new words had bloomed on the page.

*"Who are you? How are you writing in my diary?"*

*"What nonsense are you spouting? Why can't I confess to Amy? I, Dominic Delgado, will never let Amy Ware down!"*

I stared at the page.

This wasn't a hallucination.

This was real.

On the other end of this impossible connection was my eighteen-year-old self.

The boy who had just received his acceptance letter. The boy who was moments away from changing Amy's life forever.

I dragged my sleeve across my face and wrote back, handwriting urgent.

*"I am you at thirty. Believe me. I would never lie to you."*

I waited.

And waited.

No reply came.

A bitter smile twisted my lips as fresh tears dripped onto the page.

Of course he didn't believe me. He was me, twelve years ago.

How could I not understand him?

He was an eighteen-year-old boy who thought a crush was destiny. Who believed love was an unbreakable vow. Amy Ware was the center of his universe—the girl he'd sworn to protect with everything he had.

If he gave up just because a stranger scribbled a few discouraging words in his notebook, he wouldn't be Dominic Delgado.

I clutched the diary to my chest and curled into a tight ball on the cold floor.

When Amy was still alive, she used to fall asleep like this. Defensive. Lonely.

I didn't know how much time passed before a cacophony of voices dragged me back. The front door banged open.

My mother. My younger sister.

"Where is your brother? The lights are on, but the place is silent."

"Hurry up. Pack up all that jinx's trash and throw it out. Keeping a dead person's things is bad luck."

"I need to get Vivi moved in ASAP. Then I can finally hold a grandson. That useless woman—married four years and couldn't pop out a son or a daughter. Good riddance. At least now we have space."

They barged into the master bedroom. My sister yelped when she spotted me on the floor.

"Brother? You're home? You... you didn't hear anything, did you?"

She recovered fast, sliding on a mask of concern. "Sister-in-law is gone, so Mom and I came to help you tidy up. We were afraid seeing her things would upset you. Don't misunderstand."

I looked at them—the two women who were supposed to be my family. Guilt flushed their faces, but their eyes held no remorse.

A cold realization settled into my gut.

*So this is how they treated Amy when I wasn't around.*

During our four years of marriage, Amy had asked—begged—to live separately from them.

And what did I do?

I scolded her. Called her petty. Told her she was intolerant and unfilial.

My father died young. My mother raised my sister and me alone. I felt I owed her everything. So after marrying Amy, I moved my mother and sister in. Four people under one roof.

In front of me, my mother treated Amy like a princess. Better than her own daughter. The best food, the best clothes. Never let her lift a finger.

Amy tried to tell me it was all an act.

Tears in her eyes, she told me the moment I left for work, my mother would treat her like a servant—piling chores on her, mocking her for being a "hen that couldn't lay eggs."

Every time she brought it up, I shut her down. I was impatient. I didn't want to hear it.

Eventually, Amy stopped talking.

Deep down, didn't I know what my mother was like?

Of course I did.

But I was busy. I was the man of the house. I didn't have time for "trivial domestic squabbles." My mother had suffered her whole life—why couldn't Amy just yield a little?

*Heh.*

I wasn't just a bad husband.

I was scum.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as I fixed a glacial stare on them.

"Vivi and I are finished. She isn't moving in. And you won't be holding a grandson."

My voice came out dead calm.

"The one who can't have children isn't Amy. It's me."

My mother's gasp echoed off the walls.

"Find a new place to live. Didn't I buy you a condo across town? Move there."

"This is Amy's home. Mine and hers. If a single item of hers goes missing, I will hold you personally responsible."

My mother swayed, clutching her chest. My sister barely caught her before she crumpled.

"What... what did you say?" Her voice climbed to a shriek. "How can a man be unable to have children? It's clearly that jinx's fault!"

"And you want me to move out? I gave birth to you! Now that you're successful, you want to toss your own mother aside?"

"What do you mean 'yours and hers'? A home without a mother isn't a home!"

I looked at her.

Really looked at her.

And felt nothing but a vast, desolate emptiness.