I stared at him, my voice shaking. “Stefano, those are my parents!”

They raised me with my brother. They gave up everything just to make sure I and my brother had a chance in life. The only time I ever went against them was when I chose him. That's my biggest mistake I ever did.

For a brief moment, something in his eyes softened, then his phone rang.

He answered, annoyed. “What the fuck now?” His face changed. He glanced at me, slower this time. “Fine. I’m coming.”

He hung up and looked at Vexanna. “It’s real.”

She rolled her eyes. “What a mood killer. Hmp!”

I stood up, grabbing my crutch. “So I can leave now.”

He yanked it from my hand without warning. “I’m driving you. No one else touches you.” He said it like a threat, not care.

By the time we reached the hospital, I could not even cry anymore. The halls smelled of disinfectant and endings.

“The emergency room is that way,” a nurse said.

I limped toward it, heart pounding, and stopped dead.

A gurney. White sheet. Still.

“No. No, please!” I grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “Where are they? Where are my parents?”

Please, tell me ..”

He removed his mask, and pity flooded his face. “I’m sorry. They did not make it. They called your name until the very last moment.”

My body dropped on its own. I kneeled on the cold floor and lifted the sheet with shaking hands.

Their faces were pale. Quiet. Too quiet.

“Mom… Dad,” I whispered, touching their cold skin. “I’m sorry. I came too late. I’m sorry.”

“What were their last words?” I asked.

The doctor hesitated. “They were fading in and out. They kept saying Floryn, leave your husband.”

Stefano snapped. “Don’t spout that fucking nonsense from a dying person! Show some fucking respect.”

The doctor flinched, confused by his rage, but I was already somewhere else, drowning under the truth.

When we returned to the villa, I walked through it like a soul that never made it to heaven.

My parents were gone and now nothing Vexanna did could break me any further. My pain was already complete.

For the funeral, Stefano let me go, but placed four guards around me like I was a criminal. Rain soaked through my clothes as I knelt in front of their grave. My brother Clint was't even there. The guards waited behind me, bored and cold.

“Time’s up,” one of them said.

I touched their names on the stone. “Mom… Dad, I will leave. I promise.”

Back at the villa, my silence seemed to infect him. Stefano started flaunting his mistress harder. Ordering me to pour them wine, clean their shoes, kneel and scrub floors.

Vexanna smiled like a spoiled cat. She pressed her heel into my fingers. “Look at you. The great ballerina. Now a crawling mutt.”

I felt nothing. Pain was just air now. Anger settled in my bones like iron.

…

That night, the screaming hit like a siren straight from hell, and it wasn’t pain nor fear. It was a craft. It was a curtain rise.

Vexanna sat crumpled outside my door, mascara bleeding down her cheeks like deliberate ink strokes and her white slip torn exactly at the places that would scandalize without crossing into indecency. Thin red lines streaked her arms and neck, the kind shallow enough not to sting yet dramatic enough to photograph. She raised her eyes to me, wide and wet, not with grief but with calculation polished over mirror rehearsals.

“Why are you doing this to me?!”

She was breathless but not weak, and she waited with the poise of someone who knew her next cue. Stefano rushed out from the far end of the corridor, his steps frantic as he fell to his knees beside her. His hands hovered over her like she was some fragile relic instead of a creature who sharpened her narrative like a blade.

“What happened? Who touched you?”

Vexanna grasped his wrist, trembling in perfect tempo.

“She… your ex-wife… she attacked me.”

She pointed at me not with fear but with precision,

“I only tried to speak to her. I only wanted to help her cope… after everything she’s lost because of me. I know she blames me for her baby. And her parents. I know she resents you for choosing me. I just… I just wanted to be kind.”

The sob that followed was so polished it deserved lighting crew and applause. Stefano turned to me, fury already locked and loaded.

“What did you fucking do?!”

I met his stare, steady and tired.

“Nothing.”

Vexanna thrust herself into another sob, “She cornered me in the hallway. She grabbed me. She said if you didn’t return to her, she’d finish what the fall started. I tried to run but she—”

The note she hit was agony wrapped in silk, and Stefano’s gaze settled into finality, not sharp but sealed.

“You lost your child. You lost your family. Your ability to dance and yes, I understand your pain. But I won’t let you harm her.”

I laughed, soft and hollow, too dry to be hysteria yet too real to be denied.

“You actually believe that.”

He stepped closer, his breath carrying cold and regret in equal measure.

“She tries to make peace while you hold onto bitterness. This is what you’ve become.”

My palm met his cheek in a quiet strike and his head snapped to the side.

SLAP!

He looked at me not with rage but with the ache of someone who wanted to remember when love was easier than clarity.

“You used to be gentle.”

“And you used to be loyal.”

Before he could answer, Vexanna gasped louder than necessary, “Stef… I’m scared… don’t leave me. She hates our baby. She wants me gone.”

That was all he needed. He gathered her into his arms and strode past me, issuing orders like vows.

“Get the car. Now.”

The guards followed without hesitation.

---

The hospital air tasted like disinfectant and quiet disaster. I was dragged into the private wing, and guards gripping my arms while Vexanna lay in the bed. IV threaded into her arm, skin pale in that delicate way actresses wear during award season. Stefano ignored me until I was placed in front of him, and when he finally spoke, there was nothing soft left in his voice.

“Kneel.”

I blinked, more from disbelief than defiance.

“What?”

He pointed to the floor. Coarse salt waited there, grains thick enough to bruise, arranged deliberately.

“You assaulted my Vexanna. You will stay on your knees and think about the woman you have become.”

He leaned close, his voice a storm sealed behind teeth.

“And when she wakes up, you will apologize. For everything. The jealousy. The cruelty.”

I didn’t move, and I didn’t breathe, yet I didn’t resist either. The room held its judgment like a sealed ritual and I walked to the center of the salted floor, kneeling without a word.

Pain arrived with precision. Salt didn’t simply sting, it burrowed and burned, and every grain felt engineered to remind me that humiliation was the point, not correction. Skin cracked open on contact, slow and quiet, creating tiny bleeding constellations across my knees.

The first hour turned warm and wet as blood surfaced. The second slid into numbness that wasn’t mercy but shock. By the third, I felt my body hollow into a vacant house, and they kept swinging at the beams to see what collapse looked like.

I stayed still and silent because stillness was the last thing they expected me to own.

Then she woke up.

Not groggy, not disoriented. Vexanna lifted her lashes.

“Stef…”

He was at her side before the sound finished leaving her mouth. I remained on the salt, bleeding into white tile.

Her gaze drifted, searching, then stopped on me with a perfect measure of pity.

“Baby… why is she on the floor?”

Stefano didn’t soften, at least not in my direction.

“She needs to understand what she’s done. She can’t keep hurting you.”

Vexanna turned her face just enough to appear fragile without appearing weak. "I only wanted to help her grieve. She lost her baby, and I know she resents me because of everything… because of the decision you made. But I never wanted her pain. I only wanted to talk. I only wanted peace.”

She took his hand with trembling fingers, and her eyes watered like she was afraid compassion might drown her.

“She threatened me, Stef. She said I ruined her life. She blamed me for her parents. For her useless leg but I swear... I never touched her."

She sniffed delicately, then added the final stroke.

“Please don’t make her kneel because of me. She’s hurting enough.”

Stefano’s features eased, not toward me, never toward me, but toward her performance wrapped in tragedy silk.

I laughed.

“You almost convinced me you believed that.”

Vexanna blinked, feigning confusion. “What do you mean?”

I lifted my head, “You’re not comforting anyone. You’re rewriting. You threatened to end your life unless he left me, unless he made me erase a child he didn’t want because you wanted his world without my shadow. Now you need him to believe I’m the danger.”

Stefano’s shoulders tensed. Vexanna’s throat caught on its own script. “Floryn… I never meant to—”

“You meant everything,” I said calmly. “You wanted his ring. My home. My perfume on his collars. My seat beside him. You didn’t take a man, you took a life and wore it.”

Stefano stepped forward, voice sharp. “Enough!”

“No,” I said, rising without asking my legs if they still belonged to me. Salt clung to torn skin and blood slid in quiet lines down my shins, yet I didn’t tremble.

“I bled for you. I lost a child because it was easier for you to protect her comfort than my existence. My parents begged you to let me go and you turned their pleas into ashes. And now you kneel me on salt while she plays saint, while she paints me unhinged because she ‘cares’?”

Silence thickened until breathing felt intrusive. I faced him fully, the man who called destruction devotion and named control love.

“You’re not punishing me,” I said, voice low. “You’re punishing yourself every time I stand back up. You hate that I survived you.”

Stefano’s jaw locked and Vexanna’s breath faltered, and in the stillness they finally saw what they built. Not ruin. Not a ghost.

…

By the time I got back from the hospital, blood had already seeped through the gauze on my knees.

Stefano followed, quiet and composed, as if the last twelve hours hadn’t happened.

He placed a cup beside me, “Drink a little... It’s ginger. You always said it settled your stomach. I just want you to rest.”

I didn’t answer.

“I need air,” I said quietly.

He flinched. Not visibly. But I saw the tiny betrayal flicker in his jaw.

“Floryn,” he tried, softer now, “I know today was—”

“You don’t get to narrate my pain,” I cut in. “Not after you ordered it.”

Before he could reply, the upstairs intercom crackled alive. Vexanna’s voice burst through perfectly pitched panic.

“Stefano, please—come up. I can’t move my arm. I think something’s wrong. I’m scared.”

“Stay in the house,” He was halfway to the stairs before he even looked at me, "I’ll be back.”

He turned, taking the steps like salvation waited at the top. I didn’t bother replying. The door clicked behind me before his footsteps reached the landing.

No running. No slamming. No theatrics. Just leaving. Because after kneeling, bleeding, and losing a child by his decree, I finally understood something fundamental:

He didn’t want a wife.

He wanted an audience.

And tonight, I chose not to sit in his theater anymore.

…

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I typed. Clint, my brother, was the only name that ever meant safety, even when he swore he was done with me. Bureau men quit nothing—not blood, not loyalty, not vengeance.

Me: I need out brother. Not just leaving. I want him to think I’m gone. For good.

The phone rang before I could breathe.

“Floryn.” Clint’s voice was controlled steel. “You swore you’d die for him. You cut us out for him. You threw your entire life at his feet. And now you’re calling me? After our parents death? Wow.”

I swallowed. “He made me end my pregnancy,” I said, “He pushed me when I cried. He already signed the divorce yet still keeps me on a leash. I don’t want freedom... I want absence. I want him to lose me the way I lost my child.”

Silence.

Then Clint’s tone shifted. “Details,” he said. “Location. Timeline. I’ll handle the rest.”

“I know you resent me,” I whispered. “I know I chose him over everyone. I just… I need to disappear before he decides how I will die.”

Another beat of quiet. Then the man who interrogated terrorists and erased identities spoke with finality.

“Tomorrow at dawn. You vanish. Records, files, traces—gone. You’ll be a shadow with a new pulse. And Floryn…”

“Yes?”

“This isn’t mercy for you. This is punishment for him. He wanted you erased.. now he gets to live with the version he never finds.”

Then the call ended.

…

The next morning…

The taxi waited at the curb. Not luxury. Not attention seeking. Just a quiet black sedan with tinted windows and a driver who nodded once when I opened the door.

I managed to get out from the house.

I slid into the backseat. My knees burned beneath the bandages but I kept my face still.

“Ms Worthington,” the driver said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Everything is cleared. Clint locked all signals within ten kilometers. Once we reach Marker seventeen, the operation starts.”

I rested my head against the cool glass. The city slipped away behind us like a memory that had already decided to forget me.

The mountain road was steep, filled with thick trees and air that tasted like metal. Halfway up, the driver spoke again.

“We already placed the substitute. Female body. Same height. Correct proportions. The medical tags were prepared weeks ago.” His voice remained calm, professional. “There will be an explosion. Not accidental. Not suspicious. Just tragic.”

I listened without reacting.

“Your clothes are duplicated,” he continued. “Your signature perfume has been applied to the body’s collar. Your clutches. The watch you always wore is beside her. Dent visible. Name engraved. Enough for confirmation. Enough for tears.”

“Clint planned it well,” I said quietly.

“He did. He said you do not need comfort. Only closure.”

He looked at me in the mirror. Not pity. Not judgment. Just accuracy.

“You died long before today, Ms Worthington.”

He was right. I stopped breathing when Stefano told me to get rid of my child. I stopped hoping when he pushed me down the stairs. Everything that came after was just noise.

The trees thickened. Marker seventeen appeared in faded yellow paint.

“Now,” he said.

He turned the wheel, smooth and controlled, toward a narrow dirt cut in the cliff. The second car waited behind the brush. Same model. Same plates. Same dust on the windshield.

I stepped out. The air smelled of pine and gasoline.

“You know the script,” the driver said.

I nodded. “Make it believable.”

“It already is.”

He guided me to the second car, where silence felt clean for the first time in months. He spoke without ceremony.

“This is where you leave the version of you that begged.”

“And the one that loved,” I added.

He shut the door. The first sedan rolled back onto the main road, accelerating hard.

I watched from the tree line. One minute passed. Then two. Then the world split open.

A blast ripped through the mountain curve. Fire climbed into the sky. Heat rolled across the earth like a hot tide. Metal screamed. Tires flew. The shepherd down the lower ridge shouted for help into an old radio.

My watch. My bag. My clutches. My identification. All discovered in the wreckage.

Name visible.

Floryn Worthington.

The scream of sirens began in the valley.

Not for rescue.

For remains.

I leaned back against a tree, knees aching, lungs steady. For the first time since Stefano, since the salt, since the forced abortion and the second life he built with Vexanna, I did not feel hunted. I felt gone.

Not lost.

Erased.

…

STEFANO’S POV

My phone rang just as I was stirring honey into Vexanna’s tea.

I didn’t bother checking the caller.

“What.”

The voice on the other end shook like he’d swallowed glass.

“Sir… it’s Ms Floryn. She—” a breath, “there was a crash. Eastern mountain road. The car exploded on impact. The body’s been retrieved. Identification matches her. Watch matches too.”

My pulse stopped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Silence. Then the voice cracked.

“It’s already on national feeds. Witnesses recorded the fire. They’ve confirmed it’s Mrs Worthington.”

I stared at the wall. Blank. Thoughtless. Then heat ripped up my spine.

“Don’t feed me that bullshit!” I snarled. “She’s fucking fine.”

“Sir… it’s everywhere,” he whispered. “News crews are already at the site.”

Before I could answer, Vexanna’s voice cut through the room—soft, trembling, practiced.

“Stef, my chest… it’s tight again. Can you come here, please?”

I hung up. No goodbyes. No orders.

I went to her. Like I always did.

Kneeling beside her, adjusting her blanket, smoothing her hair like she wasn’t the reason Floryn’s eyes stopped shining months ago.

“You’re okay,” I said softly. “You just need to rest.”

She clutched my wrist, shaking delicately. “Don’t leave me when I feel like this. It scares me.”

“I’m right here,” I murmured, kissing her knuckles.

I pretended the room was quiet again. Normal. Safe. But then the door slammed open. My mother stumbled in, pale and shaking, phone clutched like a death notice.

“She’s gone!” she gasped. “Floryn. The car, she burned to death on the ridge. They’re broadcasting it live—look!”

She shoved the phone against my chest.

On-screen:

mountain curve, flames devouring metal, medics pulling what was left of a woman—charred, unrecognizable but branded by what she carried.

Then the anchor’s voice:

“Confirming: Floryn Worthington, legal wife of Stefano Worthington, perished in a fatal explosion today. Sources say the remains and personal items match—”

I didn’t hear the rest. The phone slid from my fingers and hit the floor.

I walked out of the study and didn’t slow down.

“Prepare the convoy,” I said, voice flat. “Full response unit. Medics. Extraction. Everything.”

A hesitation over the comm. “Sir… Vexanna—”

“She can breathe without me,” I cut in. “Move, now!"

No one argued again.

---

The crash site was still a furnace disguising itself as a grave. Smoke curled through the trees, heavy and slow, like it wanted to witness the ruin it helped build.

The fire crews stepped aside when they saw me.

Reporters were held back by my men; drones forced down; helicopters rerouted. No one got close.

I crossed the blackened rail, boots crunching over glass and ash. The lead medic approached, careful not to meet my eyes.

“We recovered what we could,” he said quietly.

He held out a sealed tray.

I took it.

Her watch. Still clasped. Still engraved. Still hers and a wallet half burned, but the letters of her name survived more than she ever did.

For a long moment, there was no sound except the hiss of dying flame.

Then my knees hit the dirt when the zipper of the body bag rasped shut behind me.

No. No. No!