Ava POV

The pregnancy wasn't just difficult; it was a war of attrition.

I was sick constantly, my body rejecting food as if it were poison, my energy drained until I felt utterly hollow.

Ethan hired the best doctors money could buy, but he treated them like mechanics fixing a car-he rarely bothered to show up for the appointments.

"Business," David would say, his eyes fixing on the rearview mirror as he drove me to the clinic. "The Don is handling urgent matters."

The "urgent matters" seemed to involve a lot of shouting behind closed doors and late-night phone calls that abruptly stopped the moment I entered the room.

I started to feel like a ghost haunting my own home.

Then the call came.

My father had collapsed. A massive heart attack.

Panic clawed at my throat. I was hysterical.

I ran to Ethan's office, blind with tears, ignoring the guards who tried to stop me.

I burst in, my lungs burning.

Ethan was on the phone, his back to me, staring out the window.

"Make it look like an accident," he was saying, his voice devoid of emotion, cold as steel. "Burn the car."

He turned and saw me.

He didn't look guilty. He didn't even flinch. He just looked annoyed.

He hung up the phone without a word of goodbye.

"Ethan, my father..." I sobbed, the words tearing out of my chest. "He's in the hospital. I need to go."

"David will take you," he said, sitting back down at his desk as if dismissing a subordinate.

"Come with me," I begged, reaching out to him. "Please. I need you."

He picked up a file, not looking at me.

"I have work, Ava. Go. Don't upset yourself, it's bad for the heir."

The heir.

Always the heir.

I left with David, crying silently in the back of the car, feeling smaller than I ever had in my life.

The hospital air was sterile, biting against my skin.

My father was hooked up to machines, his skin the color of ash.

I sat by his bed for hours, holding his hand, praying for a squeeze, a movement, anything.

He woke up only once.

His eyes were hazy, unfocused, searching the room for something he couldn't see.

"Ava..." he rasped.

"I'm here, Papa."

"The box..." he muttered, his voice barely a breath. "In the... library... hidden..."

"What box, Papa?"

"She... looks like... her..."

He drifted back into unconsciousness before I could ask more, leaving his riddle hanging in the antiseptic air.

I stayed for two days.

Ethan visited once.

He stayed for ten minutes, checked his watch three times, and patted my shoulder like I was a distressed employee.

"He had a good life," Ethan said, as if my father were already dead and filed away.

I looked at my husband, really looked at him.

I saw the cold calculation in his blue eyes.

I saw the way he stood apart from the grief, untouched by it, armored against it.

A crack formed in my heart.

A seed of doubt, ugly and thorny, began to take root.

Needing to escape the suffocating room, I went to the cafeteria to get coffee, leaving David at the door.

When I came back, I heard David talking on his phone in the hallway.

He didn't see me.

"Yes, Don Cole," David said, his voice low but carrying in the quiet corridor. "She is still here. No, he hasn't said anything. He is delirious."

Pause.

"Understood. If he wakes up and starts talking about the past... I will handle it."

I froze.

Handle it?

Handle my dying father?

I backed away, my heart pounding so hard I thought it would bruise my ribs.

I wasn't safe.

My father wasn't safe.

I returned to the room, my hands shaking so badly I almost dropped the coffee.

I looked at my father, realizing that the secrets he held were dangerous enough to make my husband-my protector-consider silencing him.

The fairytale was dissolving, revealing the horror story written underneath.

Ava POV

My father died just before dawn.

The heart monitor screamed, a high-pitched wail that sliced through the oppressive silence of the room.

I held his hand until the last dregs of warmth left it, sobbing until my throat felt flayed and raw.

David stood in the corner, a silent, watchful sentinel.

He didn't offer comfort. He offered me a phone.

"You should inform the Don," he said flatly.

I called Ethan.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

Then it clicked over to voicemail.

"He is in a meeting," David said smoothly, as if reading from a script.

"My father is dead!" I screamed, throwing the phone at him. "Tell him his wife needs him!"

David caught the phone mid-air, his expression unchanging. "I will convey the message."

Ethan didn't come to the hospital.

He didn't come to the funeral home.

He sent a wreath of lilies so large it looked obscene next to my father's simple pine casket.

I went back to the estate alone, a hollow shell of a woman.

The house was empty. Ethan was supposedly in London for a "crisis."

I wandered the halls, my grief curdling into a restless, burning energy.

In the silence, I remembered my father's dying words.

The box... in the library... hidden...

Ethan's library.

I had never been allowed in there without him.

But he was in London.

I went to the library. The door was locked, but I knew where the spare key was-hidden in a vase in the hallway, a slip-up I had noticed months ago while observing the staff.

I opened the door.

The room smelled of leather, old paper, and him.

I searched the shelves, pulling books out, running my hands along the dark wood.

Nothing.

Then I saw it.

A panel behind the heavy mahogany desk that didn't sit quite flush.

I pried it open with a letter opener.

Inside was a small, dusty alcove.

And a box.

My hands trembled as I lifted the lid.

Photos spilled out.

Dozens of them.

My breath hitched in my throat.

They were photos of me.

Me laughing. Me walking. Me in a dress I didn't own.

Wait.

I looked closer.

The woman in the photos had my hair. My eyes. My smile.

But the clothes were dated. The cars in the background were from ten years ago.

I turned a photo over.

Olivia. Paris, 2014.

I would have been fourteen in 2014. This woman was in her twenties.

I dug deeper into the box.

There were letters.

My dearest Olivia, I will burn the world to keep you.

Olivia, why did you leave?

I found her. A girl who carries your ghost.

I dropped the letter as if it were on fire.

A girl who carries your ghost.

Me.

I wasn't his love.

I wasn't his queen.

I was a copy. A replacement doll dressed up to play the part of a dead woman.

The necklace. The 'O'.

It wasn't for 'Ours'. It was for Olivia.

I retched, bile rising in my throat like acid.

Every touch, every kiss, every "I love you" had been for her.

He had been making love to a ghost while using my body.

I looked down at my stomach.

The heir.

He didn't want a child with me. He wanted a child with her face.

He was using me to recreate a dead fantasy.

A cold, hard rage settled over me, freezing my tears instantly.

I stood up.

I put the photos back. I closed the panel.

I walked out of the library and locked the door.

I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.

I touched the cold glass.

"You are not Olivia," I whispered.

My father was dead because of this world.

My life was a lie because of this man.

I looked at my stomach.

I loved the idea of a baby. I loved the innocent life inside me.

But this child was the chain that would bind me to this monster forever.

It was the only thing he cared about.

The only thing he needed from me.

If I gave him this heir, I would never escape. I would be trapped in this mausoleum, a broodmare for a man in love with a corpse.

I made a choice then.

A choice that would damn me to hell, but would set me free.

I would not give him his heir.

I would take the one thing he wanted more than anything else.

And then, I would burn his world to the ground.

Ava POV

The photograph in my hand didn't just burn; it branded me.

It was a snapshot of a woman wearing my face, standing before the Eiffel Tower, wearing a smile I had never possessed.

On the back, in Ethan's sharp, angular handwriting: Olivia, 2014.

I was fourteen in 2014.

I wasn't his soulmate.

I wasn't his queen.

I was a ghost.

I was a spare part for a machine that had broken long ago.

I sat on the floor of his office, the secret panel standing open like a jagged mouth in the wainscoting.

My father was dead.

He had died trying to tell me this.

He had died terrified that I would become exactly what I was-a vessel for a dead woman's memory.

I looked down at my stomach.

My hand rested on the slight curve there.

An hour ago, this curve had been my hope.

It had been the only pure thing in a house built on blood and lies.

Now, it felt like a shackle.

Ethan didn't want a child with me.

He wanted a child with her face.

He wanted to breed the ghost of Olivia back into existence, using my body as nothing more than an incubator.

Nausea rolled over me, violent and sudden.

I scrambled to the wastebasket and retched until my throat burned, until there was nothing left but acid and emptiness.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

The tears didn't come.

Sadness is a luxury for those who have hope.

I had none.

I stood up, my legs shaking but holding my weight.

I put the photos back. I put the letters back.

I closed the panel and locked the office door behind me.

I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

Ethan came home two days later.

He smelled of expensive scotch and another city.

"I am sorry about your father," he said.

He stood in the doorway, loosening his tie.

He didn't come to hold me.

He didn't offer a shoulder to cry on.

He watched me like a scientist observing a specimen in a jar.

"It was sudden," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Hollow.

"David handled the arrangements?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Good."

He walked over and placed a hand on my head.

It was a possessive gesture. Like petting a dog.

"You need to rest," he said, his eyes dropping to my stomach. "Stress is bad for the heir."

The heir.

Not the baby.

Not our child.

The heir.

Rage is a cold thing.

People think it's fire, but it's not.

It's ice.

It numbs you until you can do the unthinkable.

I waited until he left for a meeting with the Commission.

I called the private clinic David used for the "girls" at the club.

I didn't use my name.

I used cash I had siphoned from Ethan's wallet over the last six months.

I walked into that sterile white room with a heart that had already stopped beating.

The doctor asked if I was sure.

I thought of the photo of Olivia.

I thought of Ethan's cold blue eyes staring through me, seeing a dead woman.

I thought of this child growing up in a gilded cage, loved only for its utility.

"I am sure," I said.

It wasn't a medical procedure.

It was an act of war.

I walked out of the clinic two hours later, empty.

The physical pain was sharp, cramping and bloody.

But the emotional void was vast.

I had cut the chain.

I sat in the back of the taxi, clutching my stomach, tears finally streaming down my face.

I wasn't crying for the baby.

I was crying because I had just killed the last part of Ava Miller that was innocent.