Chapter 4

Six years ago, Marcello found out I was searching for my grandmother’s necklace. He called in favors, tracked it down, and spent ten million dollars to get it back for me.

I was so moved I couldn’t stop crying. I told him I didn’t know how I could ever repay him.

His voice was calm, but his eyes were full of love. “Then just give yourself to me.”

“Lilian, marry me.”

I was so happy I almost fainted.

But now, he says, “I gave you the necklace because I was going to marry you. Now you want a divorce. You’re not my wife anymore, so what right do you have to take it with you?”

“You don’t really think you’re worth ten million now, do you?”

His cruel words shatter my pride.

I fight back the pain and the lump in my throat.

“The ten million… I’ll find a way to pay you back…”

“I don’t need it!” Marcello cuts me off, furious. “Lilian, you think this is about money?”

“...You’re the one who wanted a divorce, who wanted to leave me. So the necklace will go to the woman who is willing to be my wife.”

He turns and drapes the necklace around Camilla’s neck.

Camilla strokes the gem, triumphant. Where Marcello can’t see, she mouths two words at me: Dead woman’s junk.

A white-hot rage shoots through me.

“Give it back!” I lunge forward, desperate to get my necklace back.

But the second my fingertips brush Camilla’s shoulder…

“Ah—!” Camilla lets out a piercing scream and throws herself backward as if she’s been violently shoved.

As she falls, the necklace is ripped apart.

With a sickening crack, the deep blue gem shatters on the hard marble floor.

The hall falls dead silent.

Marcello and I both freeze, our minds blank.

“It hurts… Don, my wrist, it hurts so much…” Camilla cries out, lying in a pile of glittering dust.

Marcello snaps back to reality. He whirls on me, his eyes burning with fury.

“Lilian! Are you insane?!” he roars, shoving me away violently. “You’d destroy your grandmother’s necklace just to hurt Camilla?!”

He’s too strong. I stumble backward, my stomach slamming hard into the edge of a coffee table.

An excruciating, pulling pain rips through me, and my vision goes black.

I gasp, trembling all over. “I didn’t push her… She ripped it herself. She did it on purpose…”

“Enough!” Marcello’s veins bulge in his neck as he cuts me off. His eyes are terrifyingly cold. “I saw you do it with my own eyes, and you still have the nerve to blame her?”

But under the mask of rage, his thoughts are screaming with panic.

It’s broken… The necklace is broken. The only thing I had to keep her is gone.

She’s really going to leave. She’s never coming back.

No! I can’t let her go! I have to keep her here, even if I have to lock her up!

Then, Marcello gives the order, his voice cold. “Men! Drag her to the wine cellar!”

Several large bodyguards rush forward and grab my arms.

“Let go of me!” I struggle, but the pain in my stomach is getting worse, like something vital is being torn from my body.

“Lock her in there for a day. Let her think about what she’s done,” Marcello says, his voice devoid of any warmth.

I’m dragged toward the cold, dark cellar.

BANG! The heavy iron door slams shut in front of me. I hear the lock turn. Darkness swallows me whole.

The cellar is freezing. The pain in my abdomen intensifies, like a thousand knives twisting inside my womb.

I clutch my stomach and curl up on the cold stone floor.

Suddenly, a warm liquid seeps down my inner thighs, quickly soaking the light fabric of my dress.

Blood. My hand comes away sticky and wet with it.