Elena's quiet testimony lingered in the air. "I can assure you, sir. She didn't leave the study."
Hayden's gaze shifted from Elena back to Justina, his certainty wavering. But before he could process it, he hung up the video call with Kinsey, his face hardening once more. "Kinsey said you sent her a threatening text message two days ago."
Another baseless accusation. It was a relentless assault, a barrage of lies designed to wear her down. A memory surfaced, sharp and painful: Justina, a year ago, working through the night to counter a smear campaign launched by a business rival, protecting Hayden's reputation while he slept. And this was her reward. To be believed a monster on the word of a manipulator.
The irony was so bitter it coated her tongue like poison. She had bled herself dry protecting this man from enemies he didn't even know he had. She had sat in boardrooms as his proxy, smiling through meetings while her own body screamed with exhaustion. She had buried scandals that would have toppled his empire. And now he was looking at her as if she were the threat. As if she were the villain in a story where she had always been the ghost.
The look of raw pain on her face seemed to irritate him. He saw her sway slightly on her feet, and his hand shot out, an instinctive gesture to steady her.
Justina recoiled as if she'd been burned. "Don't touch me," she hissed, the words raw.
His hand froze in mid-air. He let it drop, a muscle twitching in his jaw. "Justina, listen to me," he said, his voice strained with a frustration that felt almost desperate. "Kinsey's heart can't take any more of this. I'm asking you... please, just leave."
That was the final straw. The dam of her composure, already fractured, finally broke.
"Her heart?" Justina's voice was a low, trembling snarl. "Is her body the only one that matters to you? What about when I gave you my blood, Hayden? Did you worry about the stress on my body then?"
The words tumbled out before she could stop them, a truth from a past he couldn't remember. It was her most vulnerable secret, the very foundation of their twisted union.
He stared at her, his face a mask of pure confusion. "What are you talking about? Blood?"
His utter lack of recognition was more painful than any insult. He saw her outburst not as a cry of pain, but as the incoherent rambling of a woman scorned. He reached into his jacket, pulling out a sleek black card.
"Here," he said, tossing it onto a nearby table. "There's five million on this. Take it and stop this madness."
The card clattered against the wood—a small, insignificant sound that somehow echoed like a gunshot in the silent room. Five million dollars. The price of her silence. The price of three years of marriage. The price of the blood that still ran in his veins.
Justina looked at the card, then back at him. "You really don't remember, do you?" she said, her voice barely a whisper. "You don't remember the transfusion. The hospital room. You don't remember who saved your life."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but something flickered in his eyes—a shadow of doubt he couldn't quite suppress.
"No," she said. "You don't. And that's the tragedy of us, Hayden. You've forgotten the only thing that ever made this marriage real."
As the card clattered against the wood, his phone rang again. This time it was his assistant. Hayden answered, his tone clipped. "What is it?"
There was a pause, and then the blood drained from Hayden's face. "What do you mean, critical? The doctor said what?" He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of a chair. "I'm on my way."
He didn't look at Justina. He didn't say another word. He just turned and strode toward the elevator, his focus entirely on the new crisis, on the only woman who mattered to him.
The elevator doors slid shut, and he was gone.
The silence he left behind was absolute, a crushing weight. Justina stood motionless for a long moment, the strength draining out of her body until her legs felt like they might buckle. She walked, zombie-like, to the expansive, back-lit wine cellar built into the wall. Her hands bypassed the delicate crystal glasses. She pulled out a bottle of Romanée-Conti, a wine they were supposed to have opened on their fifth anniversary.
Twisting the corkscrew with numb fingers, she opened it and lifted the bottle directly to her lips.
The wine was rich and complex, but she tasted nothing but ash. She drank deeply, the expensive liquid a burning trail down her throat, a desperate attempt to numb the fist of pain clenched in her chest. All his promises of forever, of us, they were just words. Empty air.
In the elevator, Hayden leaned against the wall, loosening his tie. Justina's frantic words echoed in his head. What about when I gave you my blood? It made no sense. He dismissed it as melodrama, a desperate, last-ditch attempt to wound him. And yet... the image of her face, pale and shattered, lingered. It stirred something uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach, a faint disquiet he couldn't name.
Justina stumbled to the floor-to-ceiling window, the wine bottle clutched in her hand. The city lights blurred into a meaningless smear of color. She felt like an island, adrift in a sea of his indifference.
"Liar," she whispered to her reflection, the word a ghost on the cold glass. "All of you... liars."
She remembered every time Kinsey had looked at her with false sympathy, her eyes holding a glint of cold triumph. She drank again, the alcohol finally beginning to work, dulling the sharp edges of her agony.
At the hospital, Hayden found Kinsey looking paler and more fragile than ever. She clung to his hand, her tears dampening his cuff. "It was the stress, Hayden, darling," she whispered. "Knowing she's still there... it feels like I can't breathe." She expertly planted the seed, blaming Justina for her decline. And he, steeped in a guilt he didn't understand, believed every word.
Back in the penthouse, Justina finished the bottle. The world tilted, and she slid down the cold glass of the window, collapsing onto the plush, expensive carpet. The empty bottle rolled from her grasp. She was a cure, a living, breathing antidote. But what was the point of being the cure when the patient didn't even remember the disease?
As darkness claimed her, a final, coherent thought surfaced. He has to go.
Miles away, Hayden walked out of Kinsey's room and spoke to his assistant. "Whatever it takes," he said, his voice cold as steel. "Get her to sign that agreement and get her out of my house."
