Ila POV:

The tiger' s growl was a low, vibrating threat that resonated in my bones. It wasn't the sound of a trained animal about to perform. It was the sound of a predator that had scented its prey. My skin prickled with a primal fear.

Then, a memory surfaced. The cloying scent of the lilies Kamila had brought me. It wasn't just sweet; it had a strange, musky undertone. A scent I now recognized wafting from the hay at the bottom of the tiger's cage. It was a lure. A perfume designed to agitate, to provoke. This wasn' t a surprise performance; it was a premeditated attack.

"Jaxon, I want to go inside," I said, my voice tight.

He waved a dismissive hand, his eyes fixed on the magnificent beast. "Don't be difficult, Ila. Kamila went to a lot of trouble for this. Just sit and enjoy the show."

Enjoy the show. My own public execution. The bitter irony was a taste of bile in my mouth. I was so tired. Tired of the lies, tired of the pain, tired of fighting a battle I had already lost.

Kamila, meanwhile, was in her element. She moved with the dramatic flair of an actress on stage, cooing at the tiger, her voice dripping with false affection. Jaxon was captivated, his face alight with an almost boyish excitement. "Look at that, Ila! She has him eating out of the palm of her hand."

But the tiger wasn't looking at Kamila's hand. Its burning yellow eyes never left me. Every muscle in its powerful body was coiled, a spring of lethal intent. I tried to inch my chair back, to put more distance between us, but the stone terrace was slick with evening dew.

Suddenly, Kamila let out a theatrical gasp, stumbling backward with a cry of "Oh!" Her hand, which had been resting on the cage's latch, "slipped." The heavy iron bolt slid open with a sickening click.

The cage door swung wide.

The tiger didn't hesitate. With a deafening roar that ripped through the tranquil night, it launched itself forward.

Jaxon's head snapped around. "Kamila!" He screamed, his voice raw with terror. In a single, fluid motion, he lunged, not towards me, but towards her, tackling her to the ground and shielding her body with his own.

He left me completely exposed.

The world slowed to a crawl. I saw the tiger mid-air, a blur of orange and black fury. I saw its claws, extended like curved daggers. I saw its jaws, wide and cavernous, saliva dripping from its fangs.

And in the split second before impact, my eyes met Jaxon's. I saw him look at me, his face a mask of horror. He was watching me die. He had chosen her.

A scream, thin and reedy, tore from my throat as the beast slammed into me. The force was like being hit by a truck. White-hot pain exploded in my shoulder as its claws sank into my flesh. The world dissolved into a maelstrom of agony, the stench of the animal's breath, and the sound of my own dying shriek.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Jaxon, holding Kamila in a protective embrace, his body a fortress built to save her, while I was left to the wolves. Or in this case, the tiger.

I woke to the sterile smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor. Pain was a living entity, a fire that consumed my entire body. I tried to move my arm and a fresh wave of agony made me cry out.

A nurse bustled in, her face etched with professional concern. "Easy now, Miss Kline. You're very lucky. The tiger's claws missed your main artery by less than a centimeter. But the muscle and tissue damage is extensive."

"Lucky," I rasped, the word a bitter joke.

"The other patient was luckier," the nurse continued, fluffing my pillow. "Just a few scrapes and a sprained ankle. Her fiancé hasn't left her side."

Her fiancé. Jaxon. He was with Kamila. While I lay here, torn apart by a beast she had unleashed, he was tending to her sprained ankle.

The door to my room was slightly ajar. I could hear their voices, hushed and intimate.

"It's all my fault," Kamila was weeping, a delicate, hiccupping sound. "I'm so, so sorry, Jaxon. The latch… it was slippery."

"Shh, my love, it's not your fault," Jaxon's voice was a low, soothing murmur. "It was an accident. These things happen."

An accident.

The word echoed in the hollow space where my heart used to be.

"I just wanted to do something nice for her birthday," Kamila sobbed. "And now… I feel like I should do something to make it up to her. I should apologize."

"You will," Jaxon promised. "But later. Right now, you need to rest. For the baby's sake."

That was the third time she' d mentioned "making it up to me." It wasn't an apology; it was a performance. A way to cement her role as the innocent, caring victim in Jaxon's eyes.

A surge of pure, black rage propelled me upright. I grabbed the water glass from my bedside table and hurled it against the door. It shattered with a satisfyingly violent crash.

The voices outside stopped. A second later, Jaxon burst into the room, his face a mask of concern. "Ila! What's wrong? Are you in pain?"

He rushed to my side, trying to take my hand. I snatched it away.

"Why did the tiger go crazy?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.

He flinched. "Ila, don't upset yourself. It was an accident. The trainer said it must have been spooked by something."

He was lying. He was covering for her. He didn't even bother to investigate. The man who had once beaten a street thug to a pulp for catcalling me couldn't even be bothered to ask a few questions when I was nearly mauled to death.

Any last, lingering ember of hope I might have harbored for him, for us, was extinguished. There was no flicker of the old Jaxon left. He was gone. The man who loved me was dead. This hollow shell of a man standing before me was a stranger.

Three years ago, on a trip to New York, a group of drunk guys had cornered me outside our hotel. Jaxon had appeared out of nowhere. I had never seen such cold fury in his eyes. He didn't just fight them; he dismantled them. He broke one's nose, dislocated another's shoulder, and left them all a bloody, whimpering mess on the sidewalk. He had held me afterwards, his body trembling with residual rage, and whispered, "No one touches what is mine. No one."

Now, I had been touched. I had been torn and broken. And he called it an 'accident'. He hadn't even raised his voice.

Because I was no longer his.

"I need to check on Kamila," he said, already backing out of the room, his duty to me fulfilled with a few placating lies. "She was very shaken up."

I watched him go, my expression blank. I didn't scream, I didn't cry, I didn't rage. I just lay there, a statue carved from ice, and let the silence of the hospital room swallow me whole. He had made his choice.

And now, I would make mine.

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Ila POV:

Jaxon didn't return. Not that night, not the next day. A nurse brought me meals that grew cold on the tray. The pain in my shoulder was a constant, throbbing reminder of his betrayal. Hunger was a dull ache beneath it, but I was too weary to eat. I drifted in and out of a restless, pain-filled sleep, my brow furrowed even in my dreams.

I woke with a start, a sharp, searing pain in my other arm yanking me from a nightmare. I looked down. My uninjured arm, the one I had squeezed my ring into, was now wrapped in a thick, blood-soaked bandage. A new, agonizing fire burned beneath the gauze.

The nurse from before bustled in, checking my IV. "Ah, you're awake. The skin graft surgery went well."

"Skin graft?" I croaked, my mind struggling to catch up. "What are you talking about?"

Her expression was a mixture of pity and professional detachment. "For the other patient. Miss Myers. She had a nasty fall, and the scrape on her leg… well, Mr. Kent was very insistent that there be no scar. He authorized the use of your tissue for the graft. A perfect match, of course." She sighed, shaking her head. "Some people have all the luck, don't they? One gets the best care money can buy, the other… well."

She trailed off, but she didn't need to finish. I understood. Jaxon had harvested my own skin to heal the woman who had tried to kill me. He had taken a piece of my body and given it to her, as if I were nothing more than a collection of spare parts.

A wave of nausea and vertigo washed over me. I clamped my hand over my mouth, my face a ghastly shade of white. He was carving me up, piece by piece, and feeding me to my replacement.

"I want to be transferred," I said, the words barely a whisper. "To another hospital."

Just as the words left my lips, Jaxon appeared in the doorway. He was carrying a bouquet of my favorite peonies and a thermal container of the chicken soup my grandmother used to make. He looked rested, clean-shaven, and utterly oblivious to the fresh hell he had just put me through.

"Ila, darling," he said, his voice smooth as silk. "Look what I have for you. I had a chef work all night to replicate your grandmother's recipe."

He sat on the edge of my bed, spooning a piece of perfectly ripe melon and holding it to my lips. His movements were so familiar, so tender, it felt like a scene from another life. He even blew on the soup, his brow furrowed in concentration, just as he always had.

But my heart was a frozen lake. I saw through the performance. This wasn't love. This was maintenance. He was tending to his broken possession, ensuring it didn't cause him any more trouble.

Over the next few days, I watched him. I watched him bring Kamila the best parts of the bird's nest soup he'd had flown in from Hong Kong, while I got the broth. I watched him kneel by her bed, his hand pressed gently to her stomach, his face lit with wonder as he waited to feel the baby kick. I watched him, through my half-closed eyelids, sneak into her room late at night after he thought I was asleep.

I heard him on the phone, introducing her to a business associate as "my wife, Kamila."

And I did nothing. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I just watched, and I waited. The woman he thought I was would have been hysterical, would have thrown things, would have demanded answers. But that woman was dead. The person who is truly determined to leave doesn't waste time on goodbyes.

When he was out of the room, I used a burner phone Dario' s people had smuggled to me.

"How much longer?" I whispered.

"Two days," the voice on the other end replied. "Your new passport and identity are almost ready. We have a flight booked out of a private airfield."

A smile, the first genuine smile in what felt like a lifetime, touched my lips. It was a strange, foreign feeling.

Jaxon walked in at that exact moment, his own smile faltering as he saw mine. "What are you so happy about?" he asked, a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

"Just thinking of something funny," I said, my face reverting to its placid, blind mask.

He tried to kiss me, but I turned my head at the last second, his lips grazing my cheek. A flash of irritation crossed his face, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

"The doctors say you're well enough to go home," he said, his tone brisk. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, a cold, dry gesture. "Let's go home, Ila."

On the drive back to the villa-our castle, our prison-he kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror. I felt his eyes on me, searching, questioning. He knew something was different, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Jaxon, watch out!" Kamila shrieked from the passenger seat.

I looked up. A large truck, its headlights off, was hurtling towards us from a side road, barreling straight for my side of the car. There was no time to react.

The world exploded in a symphony of screeching tires, shattering glass, and the brutal, deafening crunch of metal. The car was thrown into the air, flipping over and over, before a final, violent impact sent us into darkness.

---

Ila POV:

I was adrift in a long, dark dream.

The dream took me back five years, to a rainy night on a deserted coastal road. I' d found him in a crumpled heap beside his wrecked sports car, a gash on his forehead bleeding profusely, his leg bent at an unnatural angle. He was Jaxon Kent, the untouchable tech god, and he was broken. I, a simple figure skater with a first-aid kit in my trunk, had been the one to save him.

The dream shifted. We were in a hospital. He needed a rare blood type for a transfusion, and I was a match. "Take it," I'd told the doctors without hesitation. "Take as much as you need." He told me later, his eyes dark and intense, that my blood now ran in his veins. "You're a part of me now, Ila Kline," he'd whispered, sealing the vow with a kiss. "And I'm never letting you go."

He pursued me with the same single-minded intensity he applied to his business empire. He filled my small apartment with flowers, he flew my favorite Parisian macarons in daily, he wrote me poetry that was both clumsy and breathtakingly sincere. "My life was black and white before I met you," he'd said, on the night he proposed. "You are my color, my light, my entire universe."

Then the dream soured. The vibrant colors bled to gray. The image of his adoring face was replaced by the tiger's snarling maw. The memory of his vow to never let me go curdled into the reality of him choosing to save Kamila, leaving me to be torn apart.

"No!" I screamed, the sound ripping me from the depths of the dream.

I snapped awake, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was in a dark, damp room. The air smelled of salt and decay. My hands were tied behind my back, and a rough blindfold was tied so tightly over my eyes it made my head ache.

Panic, cold and sharp, seized me.

"Looks like the pretty one is awake," a gravelly voice sneered from across the room.

"Which one?" another voice chuckled. "They look almost identical. Kent certainly has a type."

Their conversation was punctuated by the rhythmic sound of waves crashing against stone. A warehouse. By the docks.

"This is about business," the first voice continued, his tone turning cold. "Jaxon Kent ruined my family. He backed us into a corner, forced my father into bankruptcy. My father killed himself last year. It' s time Kent learned what it feels like to lose everything."

Gilmer Mcgee. A name I' d heard Jaxon mutter with contempt. A ruthless business rival he had crushed without a second thought.

Suddenly, a new voice, distorted by a speaker, filled the room. It was Jaxon.

"Mcgee! Let them go! This is between you and me. They have nothing to do with this." His voice was raw with a fury that vibrated through the floorboards.

Mcgee laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Oh, but they have everything to do with it, Kent. You see, I'm going to make you choose. Let's play a game."

Rough hands grabbed me, hauling me to my feet. Another set of hands did the same to Kamila, who was whimpering and struggling beside me. We were dragged forward and shoved to our knees at the edge of what felt like a pier. The cold, salty spray misted my face.

Through the speaker, I heard Jaxon's ragged gasp. He was watching this on a screen.

"Let. Them. Go," he snarled, each word a low, dangerous threat.

"Game number one," Mcgee announced cheerfully. "A little swim. For every ten seconds you delay transferring the company shares, your ladies get a dunk in the bay. Let's see how much you love them."

I felt myself being lifted, then flung through the air. The impact with the icy water was a shock to my system, stealing the breath from my lungs. The salt stung the open wounds on my shoulder. I was hauled up, sputtering and gasping, only to be thrown in again. And again. The water was a brutal, suffocating fist, battering my already broken body. I could hear Kamila's shrieks beside me, a soundtrack to my own silent agony.

After the third dunk, as I was being dragged from the water, my body limp and trembling, I heard Jaxon' s desperate voice through the speaker. "Stop! Fine! I'll do it! Just stop!"

"Good boy," Mcgee chuckled. "But you were a little slow. You know what that means. You only get to save one of them from the next round. So tell me, Jaxon. Which one will it be? Your precious, blind figure skater, or the mother of your unborn child?"

The world stopped. The sound of the waves, Kamila's sobbing, my own ragged breathing-it all faded away. There was only the static hiss of the speaker, and the weight of the question that hung in the air.

Choose.

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