Caroline Garrett POV:
The fresh wound on Jacob' s brow, not yet fully healed, split open under the pressure of the gun. A single, perfect drop of blood beaded and trickled down his temple, a crimson tear.
The ballroom erupted. Women shrieked, clutching their pearls. Men shouted, their faces a mixture of outrage and fear.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" one of Jacob' s allies, a portly board member named Peterson, bellowed. "This is Jacob Gillespie! Do you know who you're dealing with?"
One of my men moved silently, grabbing Peterson from behind and slamming his face onto a nearby table laden with champagne flutes. The glass shattered.
"Let me go!" Peterson sputtered, blood mixing with champagne. He twisted his head, his eyes landing on me as I stepped out from the shadows behind the stage. His eyes widened in horrified recognition. "Mrs. Gillespie... Caroline?"
I walked slowly toward the center of the room, my heels clicking on the marble floor. The crowd parted before me like the Red Sea.
I stopped in front of Jacob. He was frozen, the gun still pressed to his head, his eyes wide with a dawning, terrible understanding.
"Having a good time, darling?" I asked, my voice light, conversational. "Buying islands? Throwing parties? It's so expensive to be in love."
I let my gaze drift towards Karina, who was cowering behind a large floral arrangement. I raised the small, silver dagger, the same one I'd used on the portrait, and pointed its tip at her.
"Let her go, Caroline!" Jacob finally found his voice, a strangled roar. "Whatever your problem is, it's with me! Leave her out of this!"
He stared at me, his face a mask of fury. "You're insane! You've lost your mind! You're not a woman, you're just... this. Violence. Destruction. It's all you know."
His words should have hurt. They should have cut deep. But I felt nothing. It was like watching a movie with the sound turned off. The actor's mouth was moving, but the words were just empty noise. He thought I was throwing a tantrum. He thought this was about jealousy. He had no idea.
"Are you finished?" I asked calmly when he paused for breath.
He mistook my calm for weakness, for a sign that his words had hit their mark. "If you don't stop this right now, Caroline," he said, his voice dropping to a low, threatening growl, "so help me, I will forget every good thing we ever had. I will destroy you."
I smiled. A real smile this time. It felt foreign on my face.
Because I remembered. I remembered Karina's face on the video call, twisted with smug cruelty.
"He said that night, the night you lost your... innocence... it wasn't some random attacker your father covered up. He said he hired the man. To break you. To make you dependent on him. He said he never wanted a child with a tainted, barren bitch like you."
I remembered Jacob's strange, almost obsessive questions after I' d found out I was pregnant. 'Are you sure he's healthy, Caroline? We need to do every test. Every single one.' I'd thought it was a new father's anxiety. Now I knew it was a conspirator's fear, a fear that his lie was about to be exposed by a simple blood test.
The car accident. His "heroism." My "miscarriage." The child.
It was all a lie. A sick, elaborate stage play he had directed for ten years.
My love for him hadn't just died. It had been murdered. And I was standing at its gravesite, ready to salt the earth.
