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!
