Ella Farmer POV

I spent three days in the hospital. Arthur never came.

Not once.

The only person who kept vigil by my bedside was my grandmother, Hertha. She was seventy years old, a woman of soft hands and iron will, who hated the Mafia but loved me enough to tolerate the darkness that came with it.

She held my hand for hours, humming old lullabies, fiercely shielding me from the reality that my life had imploded.

On the day of my discharge, I noticed something wrong. The Mckay security detail that usually guarded her was missing.

Arthur had pulled them.

He had reassigned the men to guard Diana while she went shopping for shoes.

I was signing the final discharge papers when my phone rang. It was the police.

"Miss Farmer, there's been an accident."

My heart stopped beating.

"Your grandmother was struck by a vehicle crossing 5th Avenue. It was a hit and run."

Panic seized me. I ran to the Emergency Room, my hospital gown flapping around my legs, ignoring the nurses shouting after me to slow down.

The ER was absolute chaos.

I found a nurse behind the desk, frantically typing.

"Hertha Mills," I gasped, gripping the counter. "Where is she?"

"She's in trauma bay four," the nurse said, looking frazzled. "We're waiting for a vascular surgeon. She's bleeding internally."

"Where is the surgeon?" I screamed.

"He was called away to the VIP suite," she said, avoiding my eyes. "Mr. Mckay summoned the entire surgical team."

No.

No, this couldn't be happening.

I sprinted to the VIP elevators, slamming my hand against the button until the doors slid open.

When the doors opened on the top floor, the scene before me made my blood run cold.

Arthur was standing outside a suite, looking visibly annoyed. Diana was sitting in a wheelchair, holding a cloth to her nose.

"Arthur!" I screamed, running toward him.

He looked up, his eyes narrowing in distaste.

"Stop making a scene, Ella."

"My grandmother is dying in the ER!" I yelled, grabbing his lapels and shaking him. "You have the surgeons here! Send them down!"

He pushed my hands away, smoothing his suit jacket.

"Diana fainted," he said calmly. "She hit her nose. It might be broken."

"A broken nose?" I stared at him, horror washing over me. "Hertha is bleeding out! She needs a vascular surgeon now!"

"Family resources are for family," Arthur said, his voice ice. "Diana is family now. Your grandmother is a civilian."

He turned to the chief of surgery standing next to him, dismissing me entirely.

"Check her nose again. I want to make sure there's no deviation."

"Please," I begged, falling to my knees at his feet. "Arthur, please. I'm pregnant. She's the great-grandmother of your child."

He didn't hear me.

Or perhaps he simply chose not to believe me.

To him, it was just another lie, another desperate attempt to get attention.

"Security, remove Miss Farmer," he ordered.

Two guards dragged me backward toward the elevators.

I watched helplessly as the surgeon examined Diana's perfectly straight nose.

I screamed until my throat bled.

By the time I got back to the ER, the room had fallen into a terrible silence.

The monitor above trauma bay four was black.

A young intern walked out, pulling off bloody gloves with a defeated expression.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "We couldn't stop the bleeding in time."

I slid down the wall, the cold tile pressing against my cheek.

Hertha was dead.

Arthur had killed her just as surely as if he had been the one driving the car.

He came to the funeral two days later.

He wore black, looking somber, with Diana clinging to his arm like a parasite.

She whispered a fake apology to me, her eyes completely dry.

"It was an accident," she said. "Maybe if you hadn't distracted the guards with your drama, they would have been there to protect her."

Arthur nodded in agreement.

He pulled a check out of his jacket pocket and tried to hand it to me.

"For the expenses," he said.

I looked at the check.

It was for ten thousand dollars.

The price of my grandmother's life.

The price of my soul.

I didn't take it.

I looked at Arthur Mckay, the man I had planned to marry, the father of the baby growing inside me.

And I realized the man I loved was truly dead.

Only a monster remained.

Ella Farmer POV

The cemetery was quiet, a deceptive peace where the scent of rain and freshly turned earth hung heavy in the damp air.

I had buried Hertha only yesterday. The soil hadn't even settled.

But the peace shattered when my phone rang this morning. The caretaker, his voice trembling, told me there was an excavation order.

I drove my father's old truck like a woman possessed, ignoring speed limits and red lights, my heart hammering a frantic, bruising rhythm against my ribs.

When I arrived, the arrogance of it took my breath away. I saw the McKay family crest emblazoned on the black SUVs parked casually on the grass.

Men in coveralls were digging. They were desecrating the only thing I had left.

They were digging up my grandmother's grave.

"Stop!" The scream tore from my throat, raw and jagged, as I sprinted across the wet lawn.

I threw myself at the nearest worker, grabbing the shaft of his shovel. "What are you doing?"

He recoiled, his face draining of color. "Mr. McKay's orders, ma'am. I just-"

Arthur stepped out from behind a grey stone mausoleum. Diana was with him, wearing a black veil that looked less like mourning attire and more like a costume for a dark play.

"We need this plot, Ella," Arthur said. His tone was flat, as if he were discussing a zoning issue rather than a desecration.

"Diana wants to build a memorial garden for the donor."

"The donor?" I choked out, the words tasting like bile. "You're digging up my grandmother for a man Diana dated for three months?"

"His blood saved me," Arthur recited, mechanically, as if he had been coached. "He deserves the best view. The spot under the oak tree is the best."

He gestured to the workers to continue.

I lunged for the urn they had just pulled from the ground. It was a simple ceramic jar, unglazed and modest, all I could afford.

Diana stepped in front of me.

She snatched the urn from the worker's startled hands.

"Give it to me," I snarled, stepping toward her.

She smiled. It was a cruel, twisted thing that didn't reach her eyes.

"Oops," she whispered.

Her fingers uncurled. Deliberately.

The urn fell.

It hit the pavement with a sickening, final crunch.

Ceramic shattered. Grey ash exploded into the air, a ghost released too soon, caught by the wind and scattering across the muddy grass.

"No!"

The sound that left me wasn't human. It was the cry of a wounded animal.

I fell to my knees, frantically trying to scoop up the ash with my bare hands. I scraped my fingers against the rough pavement until they bled, mixing my living crimson with her grey remains.

I tried to gather her back, to put her back together, but the wind was taking her away. She was slipping through my fingers, just like everything else.

Arthur watched, his face a mask of stone.

Diana laughed. It was a soft, tinkling sound, like breaking glass.

"Look at her," she said to Arthur, her voice dripping with disdain. "Playing in the dirt. She has no dignity."

I stopped.

I looked down at my muddy, bloody hands. I looked at the grey smear on my jeans.

And then, the fire in my chest went out.

Something inside me snapped. It wasn't a loud break. It was a quiet, final severance. The death of the girl who used to care.

I stood up.

I didn't attack Diana. I didn't scream at Arthur.

I reached down and took a handful of the dirt and ash mixture-a slurry of earth and bone-and put it in my pocket.

I walked over to Arthur.

He flinched, expecting a slap. The motion was pathetic.

I didn't touch him.

I looked him in the eye, staring deep into the emptiness where his soul used to be.

"You are dead to me," I said.

My voice was steady. My hands were steady. I was ice.

"You think you survived the cancer, Arthur. But you didn't. The man I loved died in that hospital. You're just the rotting corpse he left behind."

I turned and walked away.

I didn't look back when Diana kicked the shards of the urn.

I didn't look back when Arthur called my name, a flicker of doubt finally cracking his voice.

I walked out of the cemetery.

I walked out of his life.

I had a baby to protect.

And I would burn the world down before I let him touch us again.