It turns out that when heartbreak hits its peak, you can't feel anything at all.
Pain and rage, both at once, until I blacked out and fell into a dream.
……
“When the mountains crumble flat and heaven crashes into earth, only then would I dare leave you. Mia, I will love you until the world itself ends.”
Cherry blossom petals fell like rain over the two of us, young and certain of forever.
The vow still echoed in my ears. But that childhood devotion was gone, and it was never coming back.
I woke in the hospital, steadied my breathing, and Valerie walked in.
“Boss, are you okay? Jim bought it completely. I already sold his company secrets to his biggest competitor.”
It was Valerie Summers.
Outside the ward, Jim stood frozen, disbelief carved into every line of his face. He couldn't process what he'd just heard.
His secretary came running down the corridor, drenched in sweat：
“Sir, it's bad! Our company secrets have been leaked. We went bankrupt this morning!”
Dead silence outside the ward.
Jim stood there like lightning had struck him.
The secretary was still rattling off the damage：
“CEO Gilbert, the bank has already frozen our accounts. Every partner is terminating their contract. The media can't be contained anymore……”
But Jim heard none of it. One sentence looping in his skull.
“Boss, are you okay?”
Boss.
Valerie had called her *boss*.
So for the past three months, the woman who'd clung to him, pouting and cooing and calling him her darling, had been Mia's plant from the very start.
Inside the ward.
I slowly lifted my head, saw that rigid silhouette standing beyond the door, and smiled.
When Jim pushed the door open and stepped in, his face was white as a corpse.
“Mia……”
His voice shook.
“What you two just said……what did that mean?”
I leaned against the hospital bed, pale but perfectly composed.
“Exactly what it sounded like.”
Valerie dropped the act too, lazily flicking her hair back：
“You really thought you were so charming that someone like me would throw herself at you?”
“The day you claimed bankruptcy, our boss started digging into you.”
Jim's eyes locked onto me：
“So you knew the whole time?”
“Knew I wasn't bankrupt? Knew I was lying to you?”
I looked at him calmly.
“By the second month.”
The air went solid.
Jim's breathing came apart：
“Then why didn't you call me out?”
Why?
I thought of myself hauling bricks on a construction site in hundred-degree heat.
I thought of my feet, cracked and bleeding through the winter cold.
I thought of my father on his deathbed, his bodyguards blocking the door while I knelt outside, begging them to let him take my call.
I smiled, just barely.
“I was waiting to see if you'd ever show a shred of conscience.”
“What a pity. I never did.”
Jim stumbled back a step, like someone had finally ripped the mask off him with bare hands.
So all these years, it wasn't that he didn't know I loved him.
He'd simply used the fact that I did.
So he could do whatever he wanted.
So he could feel untouchable.
So he could grind my heart into the dirt.
The secretary's phone rang again. He answered, and the color drained from his face：
“CEO Gilbert, it's worse! The files Ms. Summers leaked were only the first batch. A second wave just hit online. Evidence of years of cooked books, hostile acquisitions, competitors you drove into the ground!”
“The board is demanding your immediate removal!”
Jim's head snapped toward me.
“You dug up all of that too?”
I looked at him steadily.
“Jim Gilbert.”
“Did you really think all I did for three years was work for you?”
I pulled a file from my bag.
Set it gently on the edge of the bed.
Copies of every crime Gilbert Group had ever committed.
