**Natalie’s POV**
> *"What are you doing with my fiancé?"*
>
The sentence did not merely fall into the quiet living room—it tore through it like a bullet, shattering the fragile air into a thousand razor-sharp fragments.
I froze where I stood, my breath locking tight in my chest. My hands, which had been resting casually at my sides just a second prior, suddenly felt heavy, ice-cold, and entirely useless. My entire body went completely numb as my eyes locked onto the woman standing in the grand doorway of the mansion.
*My fiancé?*
The words echoed in the hollow spaces of my mind, amplifying with every passing second until they roared like thunder behind my eyes.
*My fiancé.*
So Gavin had a fiancée. A real one. Not a fabricated title spun from desperation and panic in a sterile hospital corridor, but a living, breathing woman standing on the polished marble floor.
My heart constricted violently, squeezing so hard it felt as though my ribs were crushing inward. In an instant, every confusing moment from the past few days aligned with painful clarity. It was as if a blinding light had been thrown onto a dark puzzle. This was why I had always felt like a ghost floating on the periphery whenever I was near him. This was why I could never decipher his distant, guarded expressions, or understand where I truly stood in his complicated world.
I had been a fool. A naive, reckless fool, lulling myself into the absurd fantasy that I was somehow his girlfriend—that I belonged in his shadow.
Meanwhile, he already belonged to someone else.
And the woman in front of us was everything I was not. She was breathtakingly beautiful, wrapped in effortless elegance, exuding an air of supreme confidence. She hadn't knocked; she hadn't waited for an invitation. She had simply walked into his private sanctuary as if she owned every inch of the foundation, demanding answers with the absolute authority of a woman who knew her place in his life.
My heart sank straight to the pit of my stomach.
*Who told me to lie? Who told me to pretend I was his girlfriend in the first place?*
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling dry like sandpaper. My fingers trembled against the soft fabric of my dress as guilt, sharp and unrelenting, pierced through my ribs.
I should have just told him the truth from the very beginning. I should have looked into those piercing, dark eyes the moment he woke up in that hospital bed and laid out every horrifying detail. I should have confessed that I was the one behind the wheel that rainy, cursed night. I was the reason his life had hung by a thread. I was the stranger who had nearly taken everything from him.
If I had just spoken up then, perhaps the nightmare would already be over. Maybe I would be sitting in a cold cell or facing the wrath of his lawyers, but at least I would be free from the suffocating weight of this deception. Gavin would hate me, undeniably. He would have thrown me out into the street without a second thought. But at least I wouldn't be standing here, trapped inside a towering web of my own design, suffocating on my own cowardice.
Slowly, almost against my own will, my gaze shifted away from the stranger and toward Gavin.
He hadn't moved an inch, but the atmosphere surrounding him had dropped to a sub-zero temperature. He was staring at the woman with an unyielding coldness I had never seen in him before—a look so dark it could freeze blood in veins.
"Ava."
His voice didn't rise, but it carried a lethal, calm weight that echoed off the high ceilings.
The woman’s sharp, demanding expression melted away in an instant, replaced by a radiant, almost theatrical sweetness.
"Yes, babe."
My heart gave a sickening twist.
*Babe.*
She uttered the word with effortless intimacy, rolling it off her tongue as naturally as breathing. It was a habit carved over months, maybe years, of shared history. A thousand memories I knew nothing about hovered in the space between them.
I instinctively took a subtle half-step backward, suddenly feeling like an unwanted intruder caught trespassing in a life that had never belonged to me.
"What are you doing here?" Gavin asked. The temperature in his voice plummeted even further.
Ava’s practiced smile faltered around the edges, her perfectly painted lips twitching. "Excuse me?"
"Have I not warned you never to set foot in my house again?" His voice grew sharper, each syllable cutting like a blade through the silence.
I watched as Ava’s polished facade began to crack. Her posture stiffened, the warmth draining from her features to reveal something far more brittle underneath.
"After cheating on me with my cousin," Gavin continued, his eyes burning into hers with lethal intensity, "you still have the audacity to walk into my home and call me your fiancé?"
My eyes widened in sheer shock.
*His cousin?*
I flicked my gaze back and forth between the two of them, my mind reeling.
This was her. This was the woman who had shattered him. The woman who had taken his trust, dragged it through the mud, and handed it to his own family member. And yet, here she stood, posing in his foyer with her head held high, acting as though nothing had happened, expecting him to fall back into her arms.
For a brief, fleeting moment, the icy mask Gavin wore slipped. Deep behind the anger and disgust rawly exposed in his eyes, I saw something else.
Pain.
It was a deep, agonizing, buried pain—the kind of quiet torment that only comes from being torn apart by someone you once loved with every fiber of your soul.
Ava took a swift step toward him, her hands reaching out imploringly. "Babe, please... it was the work of the devil. You have to believe me."
I almost choked on my own breath.
*The devil?*
She had betrayed him with his own blood, broken his heart into pieces, and now she was shifting the blame onto an invisible force? The sheer absurdity of her excuse left me speechless.
"You know you're the love of my life," Ava continued, her tone softening into a desperate, pathetic plea. Her eyes welled with practiced tears. "Please, Gavin, forgive me. It was just a small mistake. I wasn't thinking straight. I was confused."
*A small mistake?*
I stared at her in utter disbelief. How could anyone destroy a person they claimed to love and dismiss it as a momentary lapse in judgment? How could betrayal ever be called *small*?
Gavin’s jaw tightened so hard I could see the sharp muscle flexing beneath his skin. "Don't—"
Before he could push her away, Ava surged forward and closed the distance between them, throwing her arms tightly around his neck.
My breath trapped itself in my throat. My heart came to a dead stop.
She held him. Right there. Right in front of my face.
I stood utterly helpless as her arms locked behind his head, her face buried into his shoulder. A physical ache, sharp and agonizing, bloomed behind my breastbone, cracking something delicate inside me.
I tried to suppress it. I scolded myself internally, reminding my foolish heart that I had no right to feel this agonizing surge of jealousy. I wasn't his real girlfriend. I wasn't his fiancé. I was a fraud, a liar, a stranger who had collided with his life by tragic accident and constructed an entire reality out of deception.
And yet, seeing another woman touch him, hearing her claim him, made my soul ache in ways I couldn't comprehend.
Gavin reacted instantly, his posture rigid as steel. He gripped her wrists, trying to pry her off. "Ava, let go of me!"
"Babe, please listen to me!" she whispered urgently, clinging to him tighter, refusing to release her grip. "I heard you had an accident... I heard you were in the hospital! I was out of my mind with worry, Gavin. I came here because I want to take care of you. I want to make things right!"
"Leave."
The single word cut through her frantic pleading like a thick sheet of glass breaking. It was devoid of warmth, devoid of negotiation. Pure ice.
Ava went rigid.
Gavin violently broke her grip, shoving her back a few feet until she stumbled slightly on her high heels.
"Leave my house this minute," he ordered, his breathing heavy, his chest heaving with barely suppressed rage.
"Gavin—"
"Or I swear to God, I will have security throw you out and call the police."
His eyes burned with an absolute, terrifying fury that signaled he wasn't making empty threats.
Silence descended over the room, heavy and suffocating. Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. The air was thick with the residue of their toxic history.
Then, slowly, Ava’s tearful gaze drifted away from Gavin.
Her eyes slid across the grand hall, traveling past his shoulder, until they locked directly onto me.
A slow, deliberate transformation took place across her face. The desperate, pleading woman disappeared, replaced by a cold, calculating creature. A strange, twisted smile curved the edges of her painted lips.
"Am I really the one who's supposed to leave, Gavin?" she asked softly, her voice laced with venom.
My stomach churned into a tight knot.
"Or is it this little lady standing behind you?"
The blood drained entirely from my face. My breath hitched, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs.
Gavin immediately turned his head toward me, his brows furrowed in confusion and growing suspicion.
I stood frozen in his shadow, paralyzed, unable to retreat, unable to speak.
Ava didn't look at Gavin anymore. Her eyes stayed locked on mine as she took a slow step forward.
Then another.
The rhythmic *click-clack* of her designer heels on the marble floor sounded like the countdown of a ticking bomb. My heart pounded so violently against my ribcage that I thought it might burst. There was something terrifying, something deeply predatory lurking in her eyes—an unspeakable malice that triggered every basic instinct in my body, screaming at me to turn around and run as fast as I could.
She stopped inches away from me.
I involuntarily pressed myself back, taking a timid step away, but the wall behind me offered no escape.
Ava leaned in close. Her expensive perfume invaded my senses, heavy and intoxicating. Her lips curved into a sinister, triumphant smile right beside my ear.
"Be careful, sweetheart," she purred.
My breath caught in my throat. The world around me seemed to fade into absolute darkness, narrowing down to the chilling vibration of her voice.
Her tone dropped to a harsh, razor-thin whisper.
> *"Because I know what you did to Gavin that night."*
>
Everything inside me ground to a complete standstill.
My heart failed a beat. My breathing stopped. My thoughts vanished into a terrifying void of white noise.
*No.*
I stared at her in utter, unadulterated horror.
*She knew.*
The phrase screamed in my head over and over until it was all I could hear. *She knew. She knew. She knew.*
My knees buckled slightly, turning to water beneath my weight. I gripped the back of a nearby chair just to stay upright. How? How on earth could she possibly know? It was impossible. There were no witnesses on that deserted, rain-slicked road. There was no evidence left behind.
Desperately, my wide, terrified eyes searched her face, looking for a twitch, a smirk, any microscopic sign that she was merely bluffing to scare me away.
But there was no lie in her gaze.
Ava knew.
She knew I was the monster who had slammed my car into Gavin's. She knew the dark, unforgivable truth I had sacrificed my sanity to hide.
She slowly pulled her head back, retracting from my ear, and locked her eyes straight into mine. She watched me crumble, drinking in my terror like a fine wine.
My lips parted, desperate to form a defense, to scream, to deny it, but no sound came out of my throat. I was entirely rendered mute.
Ava’s smile widened—cold, malicious, and entirely victorious.
She leaned in one final time, her eyes flashing with dangerous intent.
"And if you don't pack your bags and leave this house tonight..."
She paused deliberately, letting the silence stretch until my body trembled uncontrollably under her gaze.
Her eyes flickered toward Gavin, who was watching us with deep, growing alarm, and then snapped back to my trembling frame.
"I'll tell him everything."
