I thought everything would go smoothly, but right before the charter flight took off, the crew called me in a panic.

"The gentleman's condition isn't good. His wife says he has a heart condition, and with the severe weather here—rain, flooding, everything waterlogged and impassable—he's had a serious scare. He's gone into cardiac arrest. There aren't any decent medical facilities in the area, so we're putting him on the plane and bringing him back. But I can't promise he'll make it. You need to prepare yourself."

Before I could say a word, there was a deafening crash on the other end of the line, followed by people screaming. Two minutes later, the signal tower collapsed.

After that, I couldn't get through at all. Two days passed before the plane finally landed, and it brought the news I'd been dreading.

"We got the gentleman out, but he died on the plane halfway back."

I staggered forward. Paige was on her knees, her legs too weak to hold her, her voice shredded raw from crying. She had draped her own coat over Grant Mason's face, clutching him as though she could hold him in this world a little longer.

"Sybilla... Sybilla..." Her voice broke. "Your father-in-law... he's gone."

I rushed to her and wrapped my arms around her. She collapsed against me, sobbing so hard her whole body shook. Crumpled in her fist was a glossy travel brochure—cherry blossoms, blue skies, a paradise that had never been meant for her.

Hudson had planned to send them both on a vacation—somewhere beautiful, somewhere they could see the flowers in bloom and breathe fresh air. But Emily had deliberately booked the wrong tickets, routing them straight into a disaster zone.

His parents, trusting and unsuspecting, had been shipped off to a nightmare. They'd spent days surrounded by terror, watched lives snuffed out around them, and were only pulled out when it was already too late. Everything had changed.

Guilt gnawed at me until I could barely breathe. I kept blaming myself, over and over.

"This is my fault. If I'd handled the arrangements myself instead of letting Emily do it, none of this would have happened."

Paige's eyes brimmed with tears again. She pulled me close, told me not to blame myself, and asked me to help her take care of the funeral.

Seven days later, Grant was cremated and laid to rest. Paige had survived, but the woman who came back was a hollow shell. Every spark of life had drained out of her. She was running on sheer willpower alone, and the only thing she kept saying, again and again, was that she needed to see Hudson.

Hudson never showed. Not once. He wasn't at the office, either. I only found out where he was after scrolling through his and Emily's social media.

He'd taken Emily to the Maldives. The two of them were having the time of their lives.

Emily had posted a photo of an enormous diamond ring on her finger, captioned with four words in bold: "Officially on the job." As if she wanted the entire world to know that Hudson and I were divorced.

Meanwhile, with my help, Paige filed a police report. She was determined to make Emily answer for what she'd done.

The moment Emily and Hudson touched down at the airport, the police were waiting. Emily was arrested on the spot.

I followed right behind the officers. Emily's face was white with panic, and she clung to Hudson like a drowning woman, refusing to let go. But Hudson didn't look nervous. He didn't look concerned for her at all. Instead, the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—so subtle most people would have missed it.

That was when I knew. Emily had walked straight into Hudson's trap.

"Hudson, save me! Help me, please!" she begged, her voice pitching higher. "I just made one tiny mistake and they called the police on me. Tell them—explain it to them!"

Hudson turned back to her, his voice still gentle, still reassuring.

"The innocent have nothing to fear. Just cooperate with the investigation. The police will clear your name."

Emily went quiet instantly. The fear drained from her face, replaced by blind trust. She stopped struggling, stopped pleading, and let the officers lead her away without another word.

She actually believed he would come for her. Believed he wouldn't hold a workplace mistake against her. She had no idea she was already dancing on the end of his strings.

I still couldn't make sense of what I'd just seen. When Hudson got into his car, I climbed in right after him, shut the door, and asked him point-blank what the hell he was doing.

"You never actually liked Emily, did you? All of that—indulging her, letting her run wild—it was deliberate. You were baiting her into making mistakes."

Hudson's lips curved into a half-smile, that same devil-may-care mask he always wore. But behind it, something shifted in his eyes—a flicker of genuine respect.

"Can't get anything past you, can I? You figured it out just like that." He tilted his head. "Even Emily bought it. She was convinced I'd actually fallen for her. But I could never fool you."

A chill crawled up my spine, settling deep in my bones.

"So you knew. You knew Emily bought the wrong plane tickets. Why did you let her send your parents to a disaster zone?"

"To punish them."

His expression went cold. Flat. Like a door slamming shut. The warmth drained from his eyes, replaced by something so deep and frigid it made me swallow the next question whole.

That was when I finally understood: Hudson had never forgiven his parents. Not once. Not ever.

The truth of his past was something I'd only pieced together after our marriage. Hudson's wealth, his empire—none of it came from his birth parents. He'd been abandoned two days after he was born, left on the side of a road. A local tycoon had found him, taken him in, and raised him as his own, giving the boy his surname and the name Hudson.

That man had been good to him. More than good. He'd left Hudson everything—the properties, the business, the fortune. And when Hudson was diagnosed with a serious illness as a teenager, his adoptive father had spared no expense tracking down his biological parents. He'd even paid them a sum of money, asking only that they donate bone marrow to save the boy they'd thrown away.

Hudson recovered. His adoptive father did not. The old man's health deteriorated, and within a few years, he was gone.

That was when Hudson's biological parents resurfaced, promising to take care of him. They had an explanation ready: it wasn't them who'd abandoned him, they said. It was his grandparents. Too many children in the family. Hudson had been one too many, so they'd left him on the roadside. His real parents, they claimed, had searched for him for years.

Hudson didn't buy it. He couldn't. Whatever love they offered, he had no way to return it. But out of a sense of duty—conscience, maybe—he'd lived with them for several years. Partly to observe. Partly to give them a chance. And partly, I think, because the bitterness and resentment inside him needed somewhere to go.

I hadn't known any of this before the wedding. When we first met, I'd naively assumed Hudson and his parents had a decent relationship—distant, maybe, but only because he wasn't the type to show affection easily.

We'd been introduced through his parents, in fact. He'd chosen me because my social circle was small, my family background uncomplicated. Practical. Low-maintenance. Good enough to build a life with.

So he married me.

We fell in love after the wedding, not before. And for a while, those years were genuinely happy. But Hudson never wanted children.

By the fifth year, he started pulling away. Most nights we barely exchanged three sentences. In the sixth year, he suggested separate bedrooms. By the seventh, there was Emily.

...

Tears blurred my vision. I blinked them back hard, dragging my wandering thoughts to the present, forcing myself to stay on topic.

"Why? Why suddenly decide to punish them? Did something happen? Couldn't you have just confronted them? And why drag me into it—why the divorce?"

Hudson answered without hesitation.

"Because you're one of them. And that disgusts me."

Before I could even process the words, blood trickled from his nose—bright red, sudden. He swiped at it carelessly with the back of his hand, and in that same instant something in him snapped. His whole demeanor changed. He lunged across the seat, shoved the door open, and pushed me out of the car.