I strode forward and slammed my fist against the table.
“Serenya, we agreed—unless one of us dies, we’ll never talk about breaking up!”
I pulled the burning cigarette from my lips and pressed it into Caelan’s palm.
Then I reached for the knife on the table and dragged it toward my wrist.
Before the cold steel could touch my skin, Caelan seized it.
“Want to die? That’s too easy, Serenya. I won’t divorce you!”
“If I don’t leave, you’ll never give me a home.”
“It was just a lie to coax the child. I’m sorry it offended your ears.”
Ignoring the burn seared into his palm, he checked me frantically, his fingers trembling as they searched for blood.
“Serenya, enough. Two lives are enough to ease your anger.”
Then he tossed a phone at me. On the screen, the girl who had been screaming moments ago now lay motionless, her chest still.
But she wasn’t dead.
That was the second time Caelan had lied to me.
The first was when I was twenty-three—when he killed my mother for me. I had asked if he was heartbroken. His eyes were red, but he told me no.
The second was now—pretending the girl was gone, when he was only protecting her.
Three days later, I went to the hospital he had sealed off.
“Move. I know she’s inside.”
Caelan blocked my car, helplessness carved into his face.
“Serenya, I put her here for treatment. She’ll leave when she recovers. Do you really need to be so ruthless toward an unarmed girl?”
At the end, frustration edged into his voice, anger at being caught in his lie.
I sat in silence for a moment, then pulled the divorce papers from my car and flung them at his feet.
“Fine. Let me go. Sign it.”
The moment his eyes registered what it was, rage exploded across his face.
“Serenya, I told you—unless I die, we won’t break up!”
As soon as the words left his mouth, I slammed the accelerator. The car shot forward, straight at him.
He didn’t move. He only stared, his eyes carrying the same fire as when he carried me away from the blaze at eight years old, when he faced down the adults with sticks.
The distance was short. In a heartbeat, the impact hurled him backward, blood pouring from his mouth as his body convulsed on the ground.
Struggling, he picked up the divorce agreement, crumpled it in his fist, and shoved it between his teeth.
“Serenya—I told you. I won’t divorce you.”
As his men rushed him away, his figure blurred from sight. That was when I heard a delicate female voice behind him.
“Serenya Marlowe, you’re nothing but a woman trampled by thousands. Too dirty. You don’t deserve him.”
She stepped forward, her phone in hand. A familiar, piercing scream echoed from it—my own, at twenty-three, as I was beaten while trying to save Caelan.
“He was right to call you trash! He should have lived—you should have died!” Her smile twisted. “Caelen promised me after this he’d give me a wedding. A real wedding, not a funeral!”
Pain split my skull, sharp and unbearable.
I yanked the hairpin from my hair and drove it straight into her left eye.
Her scream mingled with the blood that burst across her face—and with my own cries from more than a decade ago.
