Kacie Oliver POV

"You clumsy, cursed creature!" Carroll shrieked, looming over me. "Look what you've done! You could have scarred her for life!"

My arm was throbbing, the skin turning an angry, blistering crimson. I gritted my teeth, refusing to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

"It was an accident," I said.

"You are a liability," Burt muttered, throwing his napkin on the table with a sneer. "Cedric should have married a woman of his own standing, not a charity case."

They left me there, amidst the wreckage of the dinner.

I went to the kitchen alone. I stood at the sink and ran my arm under cold water for twenty minutes, watching the steam rise from my skin.

No one came to check on me. The house was silent, vast, and hollow.

Hours later, the front door opened. I heard Cedric's heavy footsteps, followed by the lighter, uneven tap of Jayden's heels.

They came into the living room. Jayden was wearing Cedric's suit jacket. It swallowed her small frame, drowning her in fabric so she appeared fragile-the perfect image of a victim. Her foot was bandaged.

"How is she?" I asked, staying seated on the sofa. I had wrapped my arm in some spare gauze I found in the pantry.

"Second-degree burn on her toe," Cedric said, his voice clipped. He placed a takeout bag on the table. "I brought food. The soup is ruined."

I looked inside the bag. It was leftover bean soup from the hospital cafeteria.

"I'm allergic to beans," I said quietly, staring at the container. "Anaphylactic."

Cedric paused. He looked at the bag, then at me. A flicker of something-annoyance? Indifference?-crossed his face.

"I forgot," he said. "You're always so difficult with food."

"I'm not being difficult, Cedric. I'm trying not to die."

"Just order something else," he said dismissively, turning his attention back to Jayden. "Jayden needs rest. You'll stay home tomorrow and help her. She can't walk up the stairs."

"No," I said.

The word hung in the air, heavy and absolute.

"Excuse me?" Cedric turned slowly.

"I said no. I am not her nursemaid. And I am not your servant." I stood up, cradling my burnt arm against my chest. "I want a separation, Cedric. We haven't filed the civil papers yet. It's just the church ceremony. We can annul it."

Cedric crossed the room in two long strides. He towered over me, his presence sucking the air out of the room.

"There is no separation in this life, Kacie. You belong to me."

"She told me about the betrothal contract," I said, my voice trembling but loud. "She told me you were supposed to marry her."

Cedric's face hardened into stone. "That is a lie. There was never a contract."

"She whispered it to me right before she dropped the soup! She provoked me!"

"Stop lying!" Jayden cried from the sofa, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "Why do you hate me so much? I just wanted to be friends!"

Cedric looked at her tears, then back at me. His expression shut down completely.

"Jayden doesn't lie," he said coldly. "You are paranoid. And you are cruel."

"I'm cruel?" I laughed, a broken, jagged sound. "Look at my arm, Cedric! Look at the burn!"

He barely glanced at it. "You did that to yourself."

Jayden let out a sob and ran toward the stairs, limping with exaggerated theatricality.

"Jayden, wait!" Cedric called out.

He looked at me one last time. "Fix your attitude. Or I will fix it for you."

He turned and chased after her.

The door to the guest room slammed shut upstairs.

The sound echoed in the empty hallway like a gunshot. It sounded like a gavel coming down. A sentence passed.

I touched the bandage on my arm. The physical pain was dull compared to the gaping hole in my chest.

I was done. I wasn't going to spend my last three years fighting a ghost.

Kacie Oliver POV

The silence in the house the next morning was heavy, almost suffocating.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The nebula projector was still there, a cheap, plastic mockery of the stars I would never see with him.

Cedric came in around 8:00 AM. He didn't look at me. He strode straight to the closet and pulled out a suitcase.

"Pack a bag," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"You are going to the Old Family House in the countryside," he corrected, his voice flat. "Just for a few weeks."

I sat up. "You're kicking me out."

"I'm separating you two," he said, throwing shirts into the suitcase with efficient, dismissive motions. "The tension is bad for Jayden's recovery. And I need to stay here to handle business. She needs care."

"So you're choosing her."

He stopped. He turned to me, his face softening with that manipulative tenderness I used to mistake for love. He sat on the bed and reached for my hand.

"I'm doing this to fix us, Kacie. You need space. You're stressed. The country air will be good for your heart."

It was textbook gaslighting. He was exiling his wife so he could play house with his ward without the inconvenience of my presence.

"Okay," I said.

He blinked, surprised by my sudden surrender. "Okay?"

"I'll go."

I lied. I wasn't going to the Old House. I was going to disappear.

I went downstairs. Jayden was in the kitchen, cooking eggs. She was wearing an apron over her pajamas, playing the part of the domestic goddess.

"Good morning," she chirped, her voice sickeningly sweet. "I made breakfast."

Cedric came down behind me. "Smells good."

"You like them runny, right?" she asked, smiling at him. "Just like I used to make when we were teenagers."

"Perfect," Cedric said. He sat down at the table.

Jayden placed a plate in front of him. She leaned over, fixing his tie. Her fingers lingered on the knot, smoothing the silk against his chest. It was an intimate, wife-like gesture that made my stomach turn.

"You know," she said, glancing at me, "Cedric only married you because he felt guilty. About the neurotoxin. He told me. He said he felt like he owed you a life."

I looked at Cedric. He didn't deny it. He just ate his eggs.

His silence was the loudest thing in the room.

"We have the Gala tonight," Cedric said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, oblivious or indifferent to the carnage. He stood up and kissed my forehead. It felt like a brand. "You have to attend. Family Business. After the Gala, the driver will take you to the country."

"I understand," I said.

He left. Jayden smirked at me over the rim of her coffee cup.

I walked to the living room. Our engagement photo was on the mantle. We looked happy in it. Fake happy.

I picked up the frame and dropped it into the trash can.

I went upstairs and packed my bag. Not clothes for the country. I packed cash. I packed my medical records. I packed the fake ID I had bought from a forger in the Lower East Side weeks ago, just in case.

I put on the blue custom gown Cedric had bought me for the Gala. It was the color of the deep ocean, dark and abyssal.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a queen. A dying queen.

Tonight, I would walk into that Gala on the arm of the Don.

And then, I would vanish into the shadows, leaving Cedric Moon with nothing but his guilt and the snake he chose to keep.

My heart beat a steady, final rhythm against my ribs.

One. Two. Three.

Time to go.

Kacie Oliver POV: I stared at the reflection in the mirror one last time. The woman staring back wasn't the fragile rose Cedric thought he bought. She was a thorn. And tonight, I was going to draw blood.

Kacie Oliver POV

The dressing room at the hotel was a chaotic swirl of perfumes and hairspray, but the silence in my corner was deafening.

I smoothed the fabric of the custom blue gown Cedric had ordered for me. It was the color of the midnight ocean, deep and dangerous. For the first time in months, I didn't look like a patient. I looked like a Don's wife. I felt like I finally existed.

A shrill cry shattered the atmosphere.

I turned to see Jayden standing in the center of the room, clutching the bodice of her pale pink dress. A dark, ugly stain of red wine was spreading across her stomach like a gunshot wound. An empty glass lay shattered at her feet.

Cedric was there in a second, his hand pressing protectively against the small of her back.

"Who did this?" he demanded, his voice low and lethal. The seamstresses and stylists froze in place.

"I did," Jayden sobbed, looking up at him with wide, wet eyes. "I was so nervous about tonight. About the threats. My hand just shook."

Cedric's face softened instantly. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the stain, but it was useless. The silk was ruined.

"It is okay," he murmured, his tone soothing. "We will get you another one."

"There is no time!" she wailed. "The opening dance is in twenty minutes. The press is outside. I cannot go out there looking like a mess. I represent the Family too, Cedric."

Her eyes darted across the room and landed on me. Or rather, on my dress.

"Kacie has one," she said, her voice small and hopeful.

I took a step back. My heart hammered against my ribs, an erratic rhythm that reminded me I was running out of beats.

"No," I said.

Cedric looked at me. He looked at the blue gown that hugged my curves, the one thing that made me feel armored against this world.

"Kacie," he said, his tone reasonable, which made it infinitely worse. "Jayden needs a dress. Yours is the only one that will fit her."

"It was made for me, Cedric. You ordered it for me."

"It is just a dress," he said, walking toward me. "The Family image is at stake. Jayden is the daughter of a hero. She cannot be seen stained and disheveled. You can wear the spare black one from the rack."

The spare black one. The one the staff wore.

I looked at him, searching for a trace of the man who had held me in the clinic, the man who had promised to protect me. I saw only the Don, calculating assets and liabilities. I was the liability.

"What about me?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "What about my image?"

"You are my wife," he said, stopping in front of me. "You do not need a dress to prove who you are. Jayden does. She is fragile."

Fragile.

I looked at my hands. My veins were blue maps under translucent skin. I was the one dying. I was the one with the expiration date. But to him, I was just the furniture that could be rearranged to accommodate the guest of honor.

"Fine," I said.

The word tasted like ash on my tongue. I reached for the zipper.

I stepped out of the blue silk and let it fall to the floor. I stood there in my slip, shivering not from cold, but from a humiliation so deep it felt like it was scraping my bones.

Cedric picked up the dress and handed it to Jayden. She beamed, her tears miraculously drying up.

"Thank you, Kacie," she said, clutching the fabric to her chest. "You are a lifesaver."

Cedric turned back to me. He must have seen something in my eyes-the hollowness, the void where my hope used to be-because he flinched. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a velvet box.

"Here," he said, his voice rough. "I was saving this for later. But wear it now."

He opened the box. Inside lay the Moon Family Ruby. A blood-red stone surrounded by diamonds, heavy with history and worth more than this entire hotel. It was an heirloom meant for the matriarch.

For a second, I hesitated.

"Oh my god," Jayden gasped.

She stepped between us, her hand reaching out.

"That matches the blue dress perfectly," she said. "Red and blue. It is patriotic. It is powerful. Cedric, if I am wearing the dress, I should wear the necklace. It completes the look."

Cedric looked at her, then at the necklace, then at me.

I did not say a word. I just watched him. This was it. The final test.

He looked at the ruby, then he looked at Jayden's pleading face. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, exhaling sharply.

"You are right," he said.

He took the necklace out of the box.

I watched as he walked behind Jayden. I watched his large hands manipulate the clasp at the nape of her neck. I watched the ruby settle against her throat, claiming her as the true queen of his world.

"You look beautiful," he told her.

But his eyes were on me. They were pleading, begging me to understand the politics, the optics, the duty.

I understood perfectly.

I walked over to the rack and pulled down the plain black dress. I pulled it on. It hung loose on my wasting frame, swallowing what little was left of me.

"I am going where I belong," I said.

Cedric took a step toward me, panic flashing in his eyes. "Kacie, wait."

I did not wait. I turned my back on the Don and walked out of the dressing room. I left the husband I loved and the woman he chose behind me.