Darius rubbed the back of his neck, genuine confusion written across his face.

"So that's what this is about?" His brows drew together. "Marianne, as far as I know, anyone could've gotten hurt in that situation. It was an accident. What exactly does that have to do with Verona?"

I stared at him.

And suddenly, I felt tired beyond words.

How could I explain something to someone who didn't want to understand? How could I compete with a woman he kept choosing over and over again?

I didn't have the strength anymore.

"You're right." I nodded slowly. "I was being petty. That's obviously the problem here." The words tasted like poison. "Happy now?"

Darius opened his mouth but nothing came out.

For the first time since I'd known him, he looked completely lost.

He kept staring at me as though something important was slipping through his fingers, something he couldn't identify no matter how hard he tried.

But he was too late. I pulled the blanket higher and turned onto my side. The movement pulled painfully at the burns beneath the bandages, but I barely reacted.

Behind me, Darius remained standing there for a long time.

Finally, he spoke.

"Marianne, that's not what I meant. You know that's not what I meant."

I didn't answer.

A moment later, he stepped closer and adjusted the blanket where it had slipped from my shoulder. Once, that small gesture would've meant everything to me. Now it felt hollow.

"Get some rest." His voice softened again. "I've got work to deal with, but I'll come back as soon as I'm done. We'll talk when you're feeling better." Then he left, and almost immediately, my phone began to ring.

"The arrangements are set for next week."

Mrs. Davenport's cold voice came through the phone.

"When the time comes, leave immediately. Don't play games with me, Marianne. If I find out you're trying anything clever, I won't be as patient as I was two years ago."

A quiet laugh escaped me.

"You don't have to worry. I'll leave exactly as promised.”

"Good."

"Frankly, this is the smartest decision you've made in years."

My grip tightened around the phone.

"You couldn't even save your own child. Lara died right under your nose, and there was nothing you could do about it. Do you know how pathetic that is?"

The words hit like a knife driven straight into an old wound.

I closed my eyes.

Even now, hearing Lara's name felt like having my heart torn open all over again.

"Mrs. Davenport—"

"No. Listen to me." Her voice hardened further. "You and Darius should've divorced a long time ago. Faking your death and disappearing is the right thing to do. At least this way, my son can finally move on and marry the woman he actually belongs with. I like Verona far more than I ever liked you."

"Then congratulations, Mrs. Davenport." My voice came out surprisingly calm. "You'll finally get the daughter-in-law you've always wanted."

She fell silent.

“Once I'm gone, neither you nor Darius will ever see me again.

And before she could respond, I ended the call.

"What do you mean nobody's ever going to see you again?"

The voice behind me made my heart nearly stop.

I looked up and found Darius standing in the doorway. His dark eyes were fixed on me, and from the expression on his face, it was obvious he had heard enough. I immediately ended the call, but the damage was already done.

"It's nothing," I said. "Just a friend."

Darius stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "A friend? That's a pretty strange conversation to have with a friend. Usually when people start talking about never seeing each other again, something a lot bigger is going on."

"They were ending the friendship. Apparently we had a disagreement and now we're supposed to pretend the other person doesn't exist anymore. It was dramatic, but that's all it was."

He stared at me for several long seconds, clearly unconvinced. For a moment, I thought he would keep questioning me, but instead he shook his head and dropped the subject.

"Whatever. Just stay away from people who make you upset. You already have enough to deal with right now."

He tossed his phone onto the bedside table and sat beside me. His hand brushed against mine naturally, almost absentmindedly, but I quietly moved my fingers away before he could hold on.

The movement was small, yet I still saw the change in his expression. Something dark flashed through his eyes before disappearing so quickly that someone else might have missed it.

...

The next five days felt suffocating.

Darius barely left the hospital room. He handled company meetings through video calls, barked orders at executives, threatened people from La Serpienten over the phone, and somehow still found time to keep track of every medication the nurses gave me. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find him sitting beside the bed, watching me with an intensity that made my chest feel heavy.

Five years ago, I would have mistaken that look for devotion.

Now I wasn't sure what it meant anymore.

Every conversation between us ended in silence. Every touch felt forced. The colder I became, the more restless Darius seemed. I noticed it in the way he paced around the room, the way his eyes kept drifting toward me, and the way his patience grew thinner every day. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't seem to figure out what it was.

The day I was discharged, he never showed up.

There were no calls, no messages, and no explanation.

I wasn't surprised.

After completing the paperwork myself, I left the hospital and went straight to my lawyer's office. There, I handed over the divorce agreement and signed the authorization documents that would allow him to proceed even if I wasn't present. Once that was finished, I returned to the villa and began packing.

There wasn't much I wanted to take with me. Most of what filled the villa belonged to a life I no longer wanted. In the end, I packed only a few clothes, my parents' belongings, several albums of Lara, and her precious urn.

The villa felt strangely empty as I moved from room to room.

Maybe because I already knew I was never coming back.

I had just finished sealing the final box when the bedroom door slammed open hard enough to crash against the wall.

I turned sharply.

Darius stormed into the room.

His face was terrifying. Without saying a word, he crossed the room and grabbed my wrist.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you completely lost your mind?"

I stared at him in confusion. "What are you talking about? What happened?"

His grip tightened. "You're still pretending you don't know? Even now you're going to stand there and act innocent?"

Before I could react, he threw a stack of photographs against my chest. They scattered across the floor between us.

"Tell me something, Marianne. When exactly did you become this fucking vicious?"

I looked down and immediately understood.

The photographs were all of Verona.

Some showed her being dragged into a vehicle. Others appeared to have been taken during the week she spent in captivity. The later photographs were worse. Bruises covered her skin, a brand had been burned into her shoulder, and the fear in her eyes was impossible to miss. The entire story was laid out in front of me without anyone needing to explain it.

A cold feeling settled inside my chest.

Not because of what had happened to Verona.

Because I already knew where this conversation was heading.

"Darius... Are you accusing me?"

His jaw tightened immediately. "Who else would I accuse? Give me one reason to suspect somebody else."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

“Verona left that life five years ago. She's stayed clean ever since, and nobody has dared touch her, especially not after she had her son, Carson. But suddenly, someone grabs her in broad daylight and does all this to her? Tell me, Marianne, who else could have a motive besides you?”

For a moment, I simply stared at him.

Trying to understand how we had ended up here.

Trying to understand how the same man who once crossed continents looking for me could stand in front of me now and look at me like a criminal.

"Darius..." A quiet laugh escaped me. "You really believe I did this? After everything that's happened between us, that's honestly what you think of me?"

"Don't fucking play games with me! I know you're angry our daughter died during surgery! And I know how much you hate Verona. Stop pretending otherwise."

My eyes burned.

Before I could stop myself, my hand flew across his face.

SLAP!

The crack echoed through the bedroom.

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

My palm stung from the impact, and the pain traveled all the way up my arm. I slowly curled my fingers into a fist and forced myself to breathe through the tightness in my chest before finally finding my voice.

"Darius, do you have any idea how shameless you're being right now? You can believe whatever story makes you feel better, but this has absolutely nothing to do with me. Not a single part of it."

A bitter laugh escaped me as I wiped at my eyes.

The moment the words left my mouth, I crouched down and began gathering my daughter's belongings from the floor.

A pink hair clip.

A stuffed rabbit.

A tiny sweater she would never wear again.

The sight nearly shattered me.

I didn't want to stay in the same room as him anymore. I didn't want to look at him, and I certainly didn't want to hear another accusation.

Before I could stand, his hand clamped around my wrist.

Pain shot through my injured arm instantly.

"Fine," Darius said through clenched teeth. "Let's forget feelings for a second and talk about facts. You got discharged from the hospital today, so explain something to me. Why didn't you come straight home?"

I frowned.

"What are you talking about? I went exactly where I needed to go."

His expression darkened.

"Then why were you at an apartment complex in Brooklyn? You've never been there before, Marianne. Never. Yet somehow you show up there on the same day Verona gets taken."

For a moment, I didn't understand.

Then it clicked.

The lawyer's office.

He was talking about the lawyer's office.

Unfortunately, my silence only convinced him further.

"Verona was unconscious when they brought her in," Darius continued, his voice rough with anger. "Do you know what she kept saying? Even after everything she'd been through, she was still begging you to let her go."

He stepped closer.

"Marianne, you know what kind of life she came from. Even if you hate her, how could you do something like this? How could you be this cruel? You're a mother too. Verona has a son. What would her son think of you for hurting her?"

For a second, I couldn't speak.

My daughter was dead.

Dead.

Yet somehow everyone kept asking me to think about Verona's child.

Nobody seemed to remember that I had just buried my own.

I almost laughed.

"Darius, listen to yourself. Just listen to what you're saying right now."

He either couldn't hear it or refused to.

His fingers dug deeper into my wrist.

"You owe her an apology. You owe her an explanation for what happened."

Something inside me cracked completely.

I yanked against his grip.

"Darius, I didn't do it. I didn't touch her, I didn't hire anybody, and I didn't even know where she was. Did it ever occur to you that somebody else could be responsible?" The words came out before I could stop them. "Did it ever occur to you that she might have arranged this herself?"

"Fuck, Marianne! Do you hear yourself right now? You're actually suggesting she'd destroy herself for attention? You're seriously standing here trying to convince me that's what happened?"

Darius dragged a hand through his hair and looked away before turning back to me.

"When did you become this person? When did you get so bitter that you'd say something like that about another woman?"

I stared at him in disbelief.

"You grew up with nothing, Marianne. You know what it's like to be looked down on. You know what it's like to be powerless and have people judge you without giving you a chance."

His voice rose with every sentence.

"And now you've spent five years living as Mrs. Davenport and somehow you've forgotten all of that. You've forgotten exactly what it feels like to be the person nobody believes."

I felt something cold settle in my chest.

"Forgotten what?"

"Forgotten where you came from. You're still just a fucking orphan, Marianne."

The room went silent.

For a second, I couldn't breathe.

Darius looked away first, as if part of him already regretted saying it.

But the damage was done.

"Maybe my mom was right," he said quietly. "Maybe you really are cursed. Maybe everyone around you gets hurt eventually, including our daughter Lara."

The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet.

Those words followed me throughout my entire childhood.

After my parents died, relatives abandoned me. I spent years believing I destroyed everything I touched.

The night I almost gave up on my life, it was Darius who found me.

I still remembered him sitting beside me in the rain.

I still remembered him wiping away my tears.

I still remembered his voice.

"People die because life is unfair, Marianne. Not because you're cursed."

Back then, he had saved me.

Now he was the one pushing me back into that darkness.

Tears streamed down my face.

This time I couldn't stop them.

I looked at him and saw a stranger wearing the face of the man I used to love.

"So that's who I am to you now."

My voice trembled.

"A jealous woman who would ruin someone's life for revenge. A vicious woman capable of anything as long as she's angry enough."

Darius opened his mouth.

I didn't let him speak.

"No. I won't apologize for something I didn't do. Whether Verona lives or dies has nothing to do with me."

My throat tightened painfully.

"And from today forward..."

My voice broke despite my efforts.

"...the same goes for you."

For the first time since entering the room, Darius looked genuinely stunned.

I used all my strength to rip my wrist from his grasp.

Then I wiped the tears from my face, picked up my bag, and walked toward the front door.

I grabbed the handle.

"Since you're so damn stubborn, Marianne, don't blame me for what happens next."

The moment I tried to leave, Darius's men stopped me.

I barely made it through the side exit before two bodyguards caught up to me.

One grabbed each arm and dragged me back despite my struggles.

"Darius, let me go!" I shouted. "Stop this before it goes too far."

Neither bodyguard responded.

They pulled me through the private floors of La Serpienten's headquarters and into one of the underground meeting rooms.

I had only heard stories about this place before.

It was where major deals were negotiated, punishments were decided, and people disappeared without anyone daring to ask questions afterward.

The room was crowded with capos, enforcers, business partners, and other men who held power simply because everyone else feared them.

Conversations died the moment I was dragged inside.

My eyes immediately searched the room for Darius.

I found him sitting at the head of the table.

Verona sat beside him with one hand resting comfortably on his arm, as if that position belonged to her.

The sight made my stomach turn.

My daughter's funeral flowers had not even wilted yet.

Yet here they were.

Looking more like a family than Darius and I had in months.

"Darius, please listen to me," I said, trying to pull free from the guards. "You know me better than anyone. You know I wouldn't do something like this."

For a moment, I thought he might actually look at me.

Instead, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

"This woman still refuses to admit what she did," Darius said calmly as he looked around the room. "I've given her multiple opportunities to tell the truth, but she insists on pretending she's innocent."

Several men exchanged looks.

A few laughed quietly.

Verona lowered her gaze.

"Darius, maybe we should let it go," she said softly. "I'm worried this will only make Marianne hate me more. To be honest, I'm already scared enough as it is."

The reaction was immediate.

One man snorted.

Another shook his head.

"Scared of her? Boss has protected her for years."

"She's had a better life than most people in this city."

"She doesn't know how lucky she is."

Laughter spread through the room.

I looked directly at Veronica.

For a brief moment, she met my eyes, and I saw the satisfaction she was trying so hard to hide. She was enjoying every second of this.

"Darius, you can't seriously believe this," I said. "You know exactly what kind of person I am. After everything we've been through, how can you still sit there and listen to this?"

His jaw tightened.

"What I know is that Veronica ended up in the hospital while you keep insisting you had nothing to do with it. At some point, Marianne, repeating the same lie doesn't make it true."

"I didn't do anything," I shouted. "I've told you the truth from the beginning. I never touched her, I never hired anyone, and I never even knew where she was."

Darius let out a short laugh.

"You've been saying that for days, and I'm getting tired of hearing it. Every time I give you a chance to take responsibility, you find another excuse."

The room fell silent. Everyone seemed to recognize the warning in his voice. Fear crawled up my spine. Not because of the men surrounding me… but because the man I had loved for ten years was looking at me like I was a stranger.

Darius rose from his chair and walked toward me.

“Break her pride,” he said. “Not her body yet. Just enough so she understands what happens when she keeps lying.”

The first blow came without warning. A fist slammed into my ribs and forced the air out of my lungs. I staggered into the edge of the table, pain exploding through my burned shoulder as my body folded. Before I could recover, someone grabbed my arm and yanked me up only to throw me down onto my knees again.

Laughter spread around the room as if nothing serious was happening.

“She still thinks she can stand?” one of them said. “She won’t last long like this.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I choked out, forcing myself to look toward Darius even as my voice broke.

A kick hit my side before I could finish. Agony exploded through my abdomen. That side had barely healed after losing a kidney. My body was still weak from the surgery.

My vision blurred. Lara's smile flashed through my mind. Her laughter. Her tiny hand in mine.

Tears slipped down my face.For a moment, I genuinely thought I was going to die.

Then someone grabbed my shoulder where the bandage was still attached and twisted me around. The dressing tore open completely.

I screamed, and warm blood immediately soaked through the fabric.

Veronica sat beside Darius with her hand pressed lightly against her chest, as if she was disturbed by what she was seeing. But her eyes stayed steady, calm, and focused on me in a way that didn’t match her expression at all.

I looked at Darius again, still holding onto something inside me that refused to die, still waiting for him to recognize me.

He was leaning back in his chair, watching everything without a flicker of emotion, like I was nothing more than noise he no longer cared to silence.

Another hit followed. Then another. They stopped treating me like someone who could speak and started treating me like something that only reacted. Every time I collapsed, they dragged me back up. Every time I tried to breathe, something else interrupted it.

My body stopped responding properly. My vision blurred at the edges. The floor became harder to distinguish from the room itself. Blood dripped down and gathered beneath me.

Eventually I couldn’t stand anymore. My legs gave out completely and I fell forward, shaking, curling slightly in on myself because there was nothing else left I could do.

“Darius…” I whispered, barely able to form the word. “Please… stop this.”

He stood up.

The entire room went silent at once.

Even the men stopped moving.

For a brief moment, something inside me reacted to that silence. Not hope exactly. Something worse. Habit.

He walked forward slowly and picked up a heavy wooden chair.

“This is the price... For touching Veronica.”

I shook my head weakly, trying to speak through the pain. “I didn’t…”

But he had already lifted the chair higher.

And in that moment, I understood there was nothing left to argue, nothing left to reach for. Whatever I had been to him before was gone, replaced by something he could erase without hesitation.

The chair came down.

And everything went dark.

…

When I finally opened my eyes again, Verona was already there. She stood at the edge of the room like she belonged to it, like she had always been part of my pain instead of the reason behind it.

My body still ached from everything before, but the moment my gaze landed on what she was holding, everything else disappeared.

It was Lara's music box!

My breath caught painfully.

I had given it to Lara on her third birthday.

She had loved it so much that she slept with it beside her pillow every night.

After she died, it became the only thing that still carried traces of her.

I pushed myself upright despite the pain tearing through my body.

"Who gave you permission to touch that?" I demanded, my voice shaking.

Verona turned the music box slowly in her hands. The soft melody drifted through the room. A melody I hadn't been able to listen to since Lara died.

"This?" Verona asked softly. "Carson saw it and immediately fell in love with it. He wouldn't stop talking about it."

My stomach dropped.

"Give it back." I reached for it instinctively.

Verona stepped back. "Darius gave it to me," she said casually. "He said Carson could have it."

For a moment, I couldn't process the words.

"No." My voice came out barely above a whisper. "No. That's impossible."

Verona's smile deepened.

"Carson likes it very much," she said. "I suppose children know how to appreciate gifts."

The cruelty beneath her words was impossible to miss.

"Give it back," I repeated.

"Why?" she asked. "Lara isn't using it anymore and my son, Carson treasures it already. You wouldn't want to upset a child, would you?"

Before I could speak, the door suddenly opened.

Darius walked in.

The moment his eyes landed on Verona, something shifted across his face, quick and controlled, before it settled into something unreadable.

“Get out,” he said simply.

Verona looked at him, then at me, as if memorizing the moment. Then she smiled gently and lowered her gaze.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll leave, baby.”

As she passed me, she leaned in just enough for me to hear her clearly.

"Good luck,” she whispered. “He always chooses me when it matters.”

Then she was gone.

The silence she left behind felt heavier than her presence.

I turned to Darius immediately.

“Why did you give her that?” I said, my voice breaking as I forced myself to speak through the pain. “That music box belonged to Lara. You know exactly what it means to me.”

I could barely sit up straight, but I still looked at him, waiting for something that felt like truth.

Darius exhaled slowly.

“It’s just a thing,” he said as he stepped closer and brushed my hair back. “You’re making this bigger than it needs to be.”

“It’s not just a thing,” I snapped. “I gave that to Lara. She loved it. She carried it everywhere. It's one of the only things I have left of her.”

He didn’t react to the words the way I needed him to.

Instead, he kept his hand there like I was something fragile that needed managing.

“I know what it is,” he said more calmly. “But you’ve been difficult lately, and I needed to handle things in a way that made sense.”

Difficult?

“So you took something that belonged to our daughter and gave it to her son?” I whispered.

“I’ll replace it,” he said. “I can buy you a hundred music boxes. Just stop reacting like this.”

I stared at him.

“No..." My voice shook. “You don't get to replace Lara.”

For the first time, he looked slightly uncomfortable.

But it lasted only a second.

Darius's expression shifted, impatience creeping in.

“You’re overreacting again,” he said. “This isn't something worth breaking down over.”

I let out a short, empty laugh.

“Not worth it?” I repeated. “Is that what I am to you now? Is that what Lara is? Everything we loved is just not worth it?”

Before he could answer, the door burst open.

His assistant rushed in, out of breath and pale.

“Mr. Davenport,” he said urgently. “There’s a situation on the rooftop. Miss Stuart is there, and she’s threatening to jump.”

Darius froze.