Dominic’ POV

The scream simply stopped.

And somehow, that silence was worse than everything that came before it—the grinding metal, the violent screech of steel tearing against rock, the distant thunder of impact echoing up from the canyon below. Those sounds at least made sense. They belonged to something happening.

But the silence that followed did not.

One moment, she was there. I could still hear her voice cutting through the storm, calling my name, begging me not to let go.

And then, in the next breath, there was nothing. Only the empty space where the vehicle had been—swallowed completely by the cliffside darkness.

“Oh my God,” Liliana gasped, pressed tightly against my chest. She was shaking so badly I could feel it in her grip, her fingers clawing into my soaked shirt as if I were the only thing anchoring her to the world. “Dominic… is it over? Is she gone?”

I couldn’t answer.

I couldn’t even draw a full breath.

My pulse pounded violently against my ribs, erratic and suffocating, as I stared at the shattered guardrail. Twisted metal jutted outward like broken bones, pointing into the void where the car had disappeared. Rain lashed across my face in sharp, relentless sheets, but I barely felt it.

Because everything inside me had gone strangely hollow.

I had done it.

The realization didn’t come all at once—it settled slowly, heavily, like something sealing shut inside my chest.

I had made the choice.

In that brief, impossible moment when the vehicle tilted and physics demanded its price, I chose who stayed and who went. It wasn’t chaos in my mind. It was calculation. Cold, immediate, undeniable.

The heir.

The original.

The one I was supposed to protect.

I pulled Liliana out.

And I let Sofia go.

“Dominic?” Liliana’s voice trembled as she tugged at my sleeve again. “Talk to me. We’re okay now. The baby is safe.”

Something inside me snapped.

A sharp, sudden surge of anger tore through my chest, so intense it drowned everything else. I shoved her away before I even realized what I was doing.

She stumbled back onto the slick asphalt, her expression collapsing into shock as she looked up at me.

“Stay back,” I said harshly, my voice barely recognizable.

Without thinking, I ran.

I scrambled toward the edge of the cliff, my shoes slipping uselessly against mud and broken gravel. The expensive leather, the ruined suit—none of it mattered. I dropped to my knees at the shattered barrier, gripping the cold, rain-slick metal with shaking hands as if I could force reality to undo itself.

The storm swallowed everything around me.

And then I roared her name into it anyway.

“Sofia!”

Nothing came back but the sound of the wind and the crashing waves hundreds of feet below.

I squinted into the darkness, my hands shaking uncontrollably. Where is the car? Where is the light?

I expected to see headlights beaming up through the water. I expected to see the car caught on a jagged rock halfway down. I expected… something.

But there was nothing. Just a black, gaping maw of ocean. The current down there was vicious; I knew that. It swallowed ships. It swallowed bodies.

“Sofia!” I screamed again, my voice cracking.

Why was I screaming? I wanted this, didn’t I? I wanted the clean slate. I wanted the problem gone so I could focus on Liliana and my son.

But as I stared into that void, I didn’t feel relief. I felt a phantom pain in my chest, like a rib had been ripped out.

I remembered her face in that last second.

She hadn’t looked angry. She hadn’t looked hateful.

She looked… broken.

“Dominic!”

The raw, animal sound of her voice played on a loop in my head. She had looked at me not as her killer, but as her husband. She expected me to save her. She always expected me to save her.

And for four years, I had. I was her god. I was her world.

And I just threw her away like garbage.

“Dominic, please!” Liliana crawled toward me, grabbing my ankle. “Get away from the edge! It’s dangerous! She’s gone, Dominic! She’s gone!”

I looked down at Liliana.

The rain had plastered her hair to her skull. She looked terrified, yes, but there was something else in her eyes. Relief.

She was glad.

For the first time in five years, looking at Liliana’s face—the face I had obsessed over, the face I had bought Sofia to replace—I felt a wave of nausea.

She looked exactly like Sofia.

But she wasn’t Sofia.

Sofia would have jumped over the edge to save me. Sofia would have died before she let me fall.

“I have to go down there,” I muttered, trying to stand up, my equilibrium gone. “I have to… maybe she jumped. Maybe she’s on a ledge.”

“Are you insane?” Liliana shrieked, standing up and grabbing my shoulders. “It’s a three-hundred-foot drop into freezing water! No one survives that! She’s dead, Dominic! The car is gone!”

She shook me.

“Think about the baby! Think about us! This solves everything! We can say it was an accident. The hydroplaning… the storm… no one will know you chose me. No one will know!”

I stared at her mouth moving, the words blurring together.

This solves everything.

I looked back at the edge. The darkness seemed to be staring back at me, mocking me.

I had the original now. I had the woman I wanted.

So why did I feel like I had just lost the only thing that was real?

Sirens wailed in the distance. Blue and red lights flickered against the wet cliff face, getting closer.

I sank back onto my heels, the mud soaking through my trousers. My hands were empty.

I looked at my palms.

Ten minutes ago, I was driving her to a party. I could still feel the ghost of her warmth in the passenger seat.

Now, there was just rain.

“Dominic, the police,” Liliana hissed, composing herself instantly. She wiped her face, practicing her tears. “Remember. It was an accident. You tried to save her. The car just… slipped.”

I closed my eyes, the image of Sofia’s terrified face burned into my eyelids.

“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger. “I tried to save her.”

I stood up, turning my back on the cliff. I wrapped my arm around Liliana, pulling her close as the police cruiser screeched to a halt.

Dominic’ POV

Blue and red emergency lights pulsed across the rain-soaked road, flickering over the wet asphalt in chaotic bursts that made everything feel unreal. The downpour had only grown heavier, turning the storm into a wall of water that washed mud from my shoes but did nothing to rinse away what had already settled deep inside me.

“Sir? Mr. Ashford?”

The voice came from a young police officer standing a few feet away. He looked uneasy, almost frightened, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was the one questioning me here—on a cliffside, in a destroyed suit, facing a man like me.

I tried to respond, but nothing came out. My throat felt raw, as though filled with shattered glass. Every time I blinked, I saw it again—the car slipping, tilting, disappearing. And her eyes right before it was gone.

“He’s in shock,” another voice answered quickly, softer, trembling.

Liliana.

She was seated on the edge of an ambulance bumper, wrapped in a thermal blanket that reflected the flashing lights. When she looked up at the officer, her eyes were glossy with tears, her expression fragile in a way that looked almost rehearsed. Perfect grief. Perfect survival.

“My husband… he did everything he could,” she said through shaky sobs, reaching for my hand and gripping it tightly. The pressure wasn’t comfort—it was control. “The road was so wet. We lost traction and spun. My… my twin sister was in the back. She was trapped inside.”

The officer lowered his gaze and started writing in his notebook. “And the victim’s identity?”

“Liliana,” she replied instantly.

No hesitation. No crack in her voice.

“My sister, Liliana,” she repeated, carefully shaping the lie. “She came to visit us. She… she didn’t survive.”

I turned my head slowly to look at her.

She wasn’t just speaking. She was replacing her.

Taking Sofia’s name, her identity, her place in the story—while Sofia’s body was still somewhere beneath the storm, far below the cliffs and the crushing dark water.

My stomach twisted violently.

I wanted to retch. I wanted to shout that she was lying. I wanted to tear the words out of her mouth before they became permanent.

But the words wouldn’t come. I killed her, my mind whispered. If I say she’s Sofia, I admit I let my wife die to save my mistress. I go to prison.

So I stayed silent. A coward. Again.

Then, a black Rolls Royce tore through the police barricade, ignoring the officers waving it down. It screeched to a halt right next to the ambulance.

My stomach dropped.

Grandfather.

The driver opened the door, and Salvatore Ashford stepped out. He was eighty years old, leaning heavily on a cane, but his eyes were sharp as diamonds. He didn’t look at the police. He didn’t look at the wreckage.

He looked straight at me.

“Dominic!” he barked, his voice cutting through the storm. “What is this? I heard there was an accident. Where is she?”

Liliana stood up immediately. She dropped the blanket, revealing the navy silk dress—Sofia’s dress. She rushed toward him, arms open, tears streaming down her face.

“Grandfather!” she cried, throwing herself at him. “It was horrible! We lost her! We lost Liliana!”

She buried her face in his coat.

For a second, the old man stood still.

Then, he shoved her.

It wasn’t a gentle push. He planted his cane on the ground and physically repelled her. Liliana stumbled back, shocked.

“Don’t touch me,” Salvatore snarled.

“Grandfather?” Liliana gasped, her hand flying to her chest. “It’s me… it’s Sofia. I’m okay. I’m safe.”

Salvatore stepped closer to her, squinting in the harsh police lights. He looked at her face—the face that was identical to the one I had watched fall. He looked at her posture. He looked at her eyes.

“You are not Sofia,” he said. Low. Dangerous.

The air left my lungs.

“Of course I am,” Liliana stammered, her smile faltering. “I’m your granddaughter-in-law. I’m—”

“Sofia doesn’t cling,” Salvatore spat. “Sofia doesn’t wail for an audience. And Sofia would never, ever look at Dominic with that look of relief when her sister just died.”

He turned his gaze to me. It was a look of pure disgust.

“Where is my granddaughter, Dominic?”

The question broke me.

The numbness shattered. The silence in my head was replaced by a roaring scream.

Where is she?

I turned around, facing the cliff edge. The black emptiness.

She was down there. Alone. Cold.

She was afraid of the dark. I knew that. I used to leave a nightlight on in the hallway for her.

And I just dropped her into the deepest darkness imaginable.

“She’s… she’s there,” I whispered.

“Dominic?” Liliana hissed, stepping toward me. “Stop it. Tell him. Tell him I’m Sofia.”

“No!” I roared.

The sound tore from my throat, raw and ugly. I shoved past Liliana, nearly knocking her into the mud.

“She’s not my wife!” I screamed at my grandfather, pointing a shaking finger at Liliana. “That’s not her! That’s the fake! That’s the copy!”

The police officers stopped writing. The paramedics froze.

“Dominic, stop!” Liliana shrieked, grabbing my arm. “You’re hysterical! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“I know exactly what I’m saying!” I ripped my arm away. “My wife is down there! Sofia is down there!”

Panic, hot and blinding, seized me.

Why was I standing here? Why was I talking?

I had to get her. I had to pull her out.

I started running toward the broken guardrail.

“Mr. Ashford!” a police officer shouted, lunging for me.

“Let me go!” I fought them off, kicking and thrashing. “She’s in the water! She can’t swim! She never learned to swim because I told her I’d always be there to catch her!”

“Dominic, please!” Liliana was crying now, real tears of terror because her plan was unraveling. “Think about the baby! Think about the future!”

“To hell with the future!” I screamed, my eyes fixed on the abyss.

I broke free from the officer and scrambled to the edge. I looked down.

Nothing. Just black waves crashing against jagged rocks.

No tail lights. No wreckage.

Just the end of the world.

“Sofia!” I screamed her name until my voice gave out. “I’m coming! Just hold on!”

I put one leg over the broken rail. I was going to jump. I didn’t care about the height. I didn’t care about the rocks. If she was dead, I needed to be dead too.

Strong arms grabbed me from behind. Two officers, then three. They dragged me back from the edge, pinning me to the wet asphalt.

“No! Let me go! She’s waiting for me!”

I thrashed against the mud, sobbing like a child.

Salvatore Ashford stood over me, leaning on his cane. He looked down at me with no pity, only cold judgment.

“You fool,” the old man whispered. “You traded a diamond for a piece of glass. And now you’ve lost both.”

He turned to his driver.

“Call the coast guard. Tell them to find Mrs. Ashford’s body. And get this… woman… out of my sight.”

As the officers held me down, forcing a sedative into my arm, the last thing I saw was Liliana standing alone in the rain, wearing a dress that didn’t belong to her, looking at me with hatred.

And beyond her, the empty cliff edge.

Silent.

Final.