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.
