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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Ila POV:

"Jaxon, please!" Kamila's voice was a desperate, theatrical wail. "The baby! Think of our baby! Save us, Jaxon, save me!" She was playing her part to perfection, the terrified mother protecting her unborn child.

The silence that followed stretched for an eternity. I could hear Jaxon's ragged breathing over the speaker, the sound of a man being torn in two. A part of me, a foolish, masochistic part, held its breath, waiting for him to say my name.

"Kamila," he finally choked out, the single word a death sentence. "Let Ila go. I choose Kamila."

The strength drained from my body. My head lolled forward, my soaked hair plastering against my face. I felt nothing. No shock, no surprise. Just a profound, hollow emptiness. He had made his choice on the terrace with the tiger. This was just the confirmation.

Mcgee let out a bark of cruel laughter. "A predictable choice! The heir over the used goods. Very pragmatic, Kent." He kicked me hard in the back, sending me sprawling. "Your man chose the other one, sweetheart. Looks like you're going for another swim."

He didn't just throw me in. His men held my head under the water until my lungs burned and black spots danced before my vision. They did it five, six, seven times. I lost count. Each time I was dragged up, gasping for air, I could hear Jaxon screaming my name through the speaker, his voice a frantic, powerless roar.

"You said you'd stop!" he bellowed.

"I said you could save one," Mcgee's voice was slick with amusement. "I never said I was done playing." He hauled my limp body back onto the pier. I was barely conscious, my body a trembling, waterlogged sack of pain. "Game number two! Whiplash! Ten lashes. But again, you get to choose who is spared. So, Jaxon? Has your choice changed?"

Jaxon's response was a strangled sob. His hands, I imagined, were clenched into fists so tight his knuckles were white, drawing blood. He was in agony. But it wasn' t enough. It would never be enough to make up for this.

"Kamila," he whispered again, his voice broken. "Spare Kamila."

Kamila, safe on the other side of the pier, let out a sob of relief. "Oh, Jaxon, I knew you loved me!" Then, her voice dropped to a smug whisper, meant only for me to hear. "He chose me again, Ila. He will always choose me."

I didn't even have the strength to react. A profound numbness had settled over me. It was as if I was watching this happen to someone else, a character in a tragic play.

The first lash of the whip felt distant, a dull thud against my back. I grunted, my hands clawing at the rough wooden planks of the pier, my nails splintering. The second lash ripped through the numbness, a line of fire that seared my skin. A low moan escaped my lips.

One after another, the blows rained down. My back became a canvas of raw, bleeding flesh. My thin silk nightgown was shredded, sticking to the open wounds. I was on the verge of blacking out, the world reduced to a haze of pain and the rhythmic crack of the whip.

Jaxon was screaming, a long, continuous howl of pure anguish over the speaker. He was begging, pleading, threatening. But he never changed his choice.

"Stop! Please, for the love of God, stop!" he roared.

Suddenly, Kamila let out a piercing scream. "My stomach! Jaxon, the baby! I think I'm having a miscarriage!"

Jaxon's frantic pleas for me stopped instantly. "Kamila? Is the baby okay?" he asked, his voice tight with a new, more immediate terror.

At that moment, the final lash landed. It was harder than the rest, a brutal, vicious strike that stole the last of my breath. A spray of blood erupted from my lips, warm and metallic.

"Ila!" Jaxon screamed my name, a sound of pure horror. But he made no move. He was still focused on Kamila and his precious heir.

"Well, this is a predicament," Mcgee said, a note of genuine amusement in his voice. "Both of them look like they're at death's door. I've got a medical team on standby, Kent. But they only have enough supplies for one. So, for the final time, who do you choose to save? Your bleeding lover, or your bleeding fiancée and potential heir?"

My ears were ringing. The world was a blurry, distorted mess. I could barely hear the question, but I knew the answer. I didn't need to hear it.

Through the haze of pain, I saw a shape move. I saw Jaxon, freed from his own confinement, rush past me without a second glance. I saw him scoop Kamila into his arms, his face a mask of terror and devotion, and carry her towards the waiting medical team.

He didn't even look back.

Not once.

A sound bubbled up in my throat. It started as a faint chuckle and grew into a full-blown, broken cackle of laughter. The sound was mad, unhinged, the sound of a soul shattering into a million irreparable pieces.

My blood ran cold, a freezing tide that had nothing to do with the icy bay water. It was the chill of a love that had turned to poison, of a heart that had been utterly and completely annihilated.

A seagull landed near my head, its pristine white feathers instantly stained crimson by the blood pooling around me. It chirped once, a lonely, plaintive sound in the sudden silence.

I was dying. On a filthy pier, abandoned by the man I had given my life to. A sudden, sharp cramp seized my lower abdomen, a familiar, sickening pain. Blood, darker and thicker than the blood on my back, began to seep from between my legs.

The baby. Our second chance. Gone. Sacrificed, just like me, at the altar of Jaxon's love for another woman.

I swear, Jaxon Kent, I thought, as the last of my strength faded and the world went black, if there is a next life, I will never, ever love you again.

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