The fire had gone out.
The east wing of the Silvera estate was reduced to ruins, charred beams jutting crookedly from the debris. Mira had vanished somewhere within the wreckage.
The first thing Lucien did after waking up was return to the ruins and start digging through the rubble with his bare hands.
No one could stop him. They could only watch as his fingers clawed into the still-burning ash, as if he could dig out a shred of her clothing, a strand of her hair, anything that still carried her warmth.
There was nothing.
Only a blackened cufflink lay in his palm. It had been her birthday gift to him three years ago, a line of tiny letters engraved on its silver surface.
"L & M, forever."
Now, the "M" had melted away in the fire, leaving behind only a broken "L."
A hoarse laugh escaped him.
By the time he returned to the main building, dawn was breaking.
The butler hurried over, trembling. "Mr. Yates, the elders are waiting for you… The attackers have been identified. It was the Carlow family. They obtained our defense layout…"
"Get out." Lucien didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the liquor cabinet.
Amber liquid filled the crystal glass, and he downed it in one swallow. The burn traveled from his throat to his stomach, but it did nothing to fill the cold void in his chest.
In the days that followed, Lucien never left his study.
Documents piled up, phones rang endlessly, and the elders berated him for "ruining the family over a traitor." He ignored them all.
He just sat by the window, drinking glass after glass, his gaze fixed on the empty chair across from him. That was where Mira used to sit. She would curl up there with a book, sunlight filtering through the curtains and settling on her lashes like a dusting of gold.
The memories came, unstoppable.
Eight years ago, on a rain-soaked night, he saw her for the first time. She had been cornered in a warehouse, a blade pressed to her throat, yet her eyes burned with defiance.
He should never have saved the daughter of an enemy family. But in that moment, something drove him to pull the trigger.
Because he couldn't look away from those eyes.
From that day on, she became the only light in his dark world.
In the spring of their second year living together in secret, Lucien was shot during a firefight and fell into a coma from excessive blood loss.
Mira hid him in a safe house on the outskirts overnight. For seven full days, she never left his bedside, changing his dressings, feeding him water, and warming his cold hands with her own body heat.
On the night his fever spiked, he murmured about the nightmare of being locked in a cellar by his father as a child. She held him tightly and kept saying, "I'm here, Lucien. I'm here."
The way she looked at him then was quiet and unwavering, like the only lighthouse in a vast, dark sea.
But in the next instant, the memory shifted to that morning five years ago.
One of his men reported, "Mira submitted a hundred-page report to her brother."
He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, watching her walk out of the apartment, her back resolute.
So all that tenderness had been a lie.
All those promises had been nothing but bait.
He had trusted her so completely. How could she bring herself to betray him?
Lucien had believed she would marry him. He believed in her more than he believed in himself.
But Mira had run. For five whole years, she vanished without a trace, leaving him alone to struggle in hell.
When he saw her again, the hatred was as strong as the joy. He hated her for disappearing for five years, yet he was glad she stood before him again.
Lucien had thought that this time, he would never let her escape again.
But last night, flames had filled the sky.
She had fallen into the rose bushes, blood staining her shoulder. The way she looked at him was filled with shock and pain. "I didn't betray you! Never!"
But he had pulled Selena away first.
In that single second.
The flames swallowed Mira whole.
Lucien hadn't even had the chance to say, "I believe you."
He suddenly hurled the glass at the wall, shards scattering everywhere.
Lucien curled up on the sofa, clutching his head, his knuckles blanching under the strain. A sob was lodged in his throat, but no sound came out.
If he had saved her first…
If he had believed her, just once…
If he hadn't let her leave that morning…
Countless "what ifs" coiled around his heart like venomous snakes.
In the end, the root of his hatred was still love. He would rather have been the one who died.
On the evening of the third day, Selena pushed the door open and walked in.
She was carefully dressed in a black dress, her makeup flawless. "Lucien, stop thinking about it. She was a traitor. It's better that she's gone. The family needs you…"
Lucien slowly raised his head.
There was nothing in his eyes but dead, lifeless ash, yet that gaze sent a chill down Selena's spine.
"Get out." His voice was hoarse. "Say her name again, and you're dead."
Selena's face turned deathly ashen. She finally understood. Even if Mira truly was a traitor, even if she had turned to ashes, Lucien's heart was buried in those ruins forever.
A dead woman was still more worth protecting than she, who was alive.
She stumbled out, her nails digging into her palms.
Selena clenched her fists. "It doesn't matter. Sooner or later, Lucien will forget that woman. And when he does, he'll realize that I'm the only one who's always been by his side."
Inside the room, Lucien curled in on himself, hearing only Mira's final words from the sea of flames the night before. "I didn't betray you…"
His hands trembling, he poured another glass of liquor, but he couldn't bring himself to swallow it. Tears slid down silently, dripping into the glass.
"Mira…" he murmured, his voice shattered. "Come back…"
He collapsed onto the carpet, clutching the charred cufflink tightly in his hand, as if it were the last thing keeping him alive.
