Lilith's POV

On my birthday, Sebastian Crowe sliced off my father’s hand right in front of me.

When my father’s men chopped one of Sebastian’s legs in retaliation, he just lifted his head and smiled with blood shining in the moonlight.

“Go on. Kill me," he challenged. "If you leave me alive, and you lay a hand on her again, I’ll cut off your legs next! Try me!”

From that day forward, my stepfather never touched me again.

Sebastian always claimed women shouldn’t have blood on them, so he took the knife from my hands. With a cold, precise motion, he cut down the men who mouthed a claim to our family fortune.

People said Mr. Crowe was soaked in blood because he wanted to keep his wife clean.

But I knew better.

I had seen the truth hidden in his thousand-page journals, crammed line after line with another woman’s name.

A woman he described as pure and flawless, like some saint.

When I tossed my wedding ring at his feet, it was as if he woke from a dream.

He picked up those journals and set them on fire, smiling through a sadness he couldn’t hide.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There's no chance between me and her anymore.”

But I insistently slid the divorce papers across the table and countered, “There is.”

Still smiling, he tore the papers in half. “You and I alone will be together in life and together in death.”

——

And so, he burned the divorce papers, too.

On our wedding day, we vowed to be together forever. Even laid in our coffins, he said, they would be pried open just enough so we could look at each other.

After the divorce agreement burned completely, he walked away, stepping on the ashes of the paper on the floor.

The next time I saw him was on the news, later that night.

It was raining hard, and the sky was as black as ink. On the steps stood a fair girl in a white dress, eyes rimmed with tears.

The moment she saw the camera, Sebastian pulled her into his arms, lowering his umbrella, so only his chin was visible.

As such, the camera just caught her trembling legs hooked around his arm, her small frame hidden against him.

He never allowed his face to be photographed, let alone hers, because he knew I would dig.

Even with just that fleeting moment, I froze the image, captured it, and handed it to my men.

But nothing came of it, not a single match across global databases.

The closest lead we found was a student photo from Alpine Heights University. But her face there was hidden behind a thick black bar.

Obviously, Sebastian was protecting her.

When I tried to watch the broadcast again, it had been scrubbed from the internet. Every trace of it was erased from the internet.

All I had left was that one screenshot of that girl with watery eyes, staring in fear at the lens, shrinking like a fawn into Sebastian’s chest, his veins standing out as he gripped her.

There had only been two times in his life when he held a woman like that.

The first was when my mother and uncles were slaughtered and their bodies dumped into the river. I had dragged them out one by one, my hands raw, my body trembling in bloodied water. And on the riverbank, that boy held me the same way over and over, trying to warm me with his body, crying and begging me not to close my eyes.

The second was in front of the cameras, shielding that girl from me.

When he came home, I slid her photo across the marble table until it stopped in front of him. Then I sat across from him, staring out the window, blowing a ring of smoke.

“There will be no future for me and her,” he said, tucking the picture away.

I only asked one question. “Those thousand pages of journals, when were they written? Who is she?”

“You wouldn't want to know.” His voice was flat, unreadable.

The moonlight spilled across the marble surface, but it couldn’t touch our faces.

All we could hear was the soft scrape of the divorce papers sliding toward him and the click of a bullet chambering.

I flicked my lighter, and the flame caught the tip of my cigarette, briefly lighting my face.

Lilith's POV

“Sign it,” I said.

Then a gust pushed through the curtains and sent the divorce papers scattering across the floor.

In one quick motion, he tore my dress open, revealing the steel prosthetic that flashed in the moonlight.

“Lilith.” He plucked the cigarette from my mouth. Our prosthetic limbs gleamed side by side in the silver light.

“There are no two people better suited for each other than you and me,” he said.

After all that, he didn’t sign.

For a week, there was no trace of that girl, no name, no lead, only a single name from Sebastian’s journals: Aurora Langley.

Then suddenly, she showed up at my door, impatient and brazen, wearing the same white dress, and as pale as in the footage. The only difference was the bruised pink at the corners of her eyes and the red marks across her neck and chest, which were marks of something more intimate.

Pressing her delicate hand to the small swell at her belly, she announced, “I’m pregnant, and it's his.”

My pen stopped midline on the financial report in front of me, while she sat down in the guest chair facing me as if she owned the place.

“You saw it yourself. Back when I was still in school, my name was in his diary,” she said. “He loves me, not you. If you can’t accept that, I’ll move in with my private medical team. Now, tell me, with me like this, who do you think Sebastian will throw out? You or me?”

The guest chair toppled with a dull crash, followed by the girl’s startled cry as I slapped her.

“You dare hit me!” she shrieked, rubbing the soft pink at her eye. The color flared into a raw red.

I smiled. Sebastian had guarded her well, so this fall, this humiliation, was probably the worst she’d ever known.

“So you came in alone to stage a takeover?” I said, closing the distance between us.

She collapsed to the floor, terror finally plain in her eyes as I advanced.

“Don’t... don’t come any closer!” she barked, her voice breaking.

Her panic stirred something inside me.

As I stood over her and looked into her tear-filled eyes, something clicked.

She was like me.

She was like the girl in the blood-soaked white dress from the night our enemies slaughtered my mother and uncles, the eighteen-year-old who had fallen to the ground and scaredly told them not to come closer. Her scream was the same as mine had been that night.

I grabbed a fistful of her hair, making her scream. Then, I noticed that her scream was identical to the sound I’d made when I was eighteen.

As her neck had been exposed, I unmistakably saw a butterfly-shaped birthmark on it.

So, Sebastian had really found a version of me, huh?

Without my noticing, tears slipped free from my eyes.

He had found a girl whose leg hadn’t been broken, whose birthmark hadn’t been removed, who’d never been through the bloody storms I had.

Looking at the soft curve of her belly, I laughed.

“You think that makes you better than me?” I said, raising the dagger.

Her terrified scream echoed my own from years before.

Unfortunately, the blade didn't reach her unborn child as Sebastian came.

He held the knife, and drops of blood slid down its blade.

“Sebastian!” Aurora cried out.

He stood between us as if he’d done this a thousand times before, natural, protective.

The dagger trembled between both our hands, neither moving an inch.

Glaring at me, he coldly said, “Don’t touch her.”

For a moment, everything felt like it had folded back to that night when the frightened, crying Lilith first met a boy who pressed his hand over the blade aimed at her. Back then, the dagger had pierced his chest and left a pale line across his palm.

Now, I sliced that scar open with my movement, and the old wound bled anew.

Lilith's POV

And just like back then, he looked death in the face without fear.

“Lilith, don’t touch her.”

The knife slipped from his grip, and I didn’t hesitate to drive it toward Aurora again.

Blood smeared across my black dress as he caught my wrist, his eyes locked on mine.

“Lilith, I could turn a blind eye if you do that to other women. But her? Never.”

“Because she’s carrying your child?” I shot back.

For a moment, he froze. His gaze dropped.

“Something more precious than that,” he murmured.

I didn’t know what Sebastian meant by “more precious.” All I knew was that mistresses were all the same in my eyes.

The door burst open, and my men stormed in.

One of them kicked Aurora square in the stomach, sharp and merciless.

Shortly, her white dress blossomed with red.

Seeing that, I laughed wildly. “Now, that looks more like me back then!”

I gripped the dagger, but he seized my hand again.

For a few tense seconds, our hands trembled midair, slicing open the divorce papers scattered on the table.

Only then did we both calm. Our eyes fell on the torn agreement.

Breathing hard, I said, “As long as you refuse to sign, I’ll show zero tolerance for mistresses. If you don’t want me to actually kill her one day, sign it now.”

But Sebastian only smiled. “You’ll never kill her.”

I turned sharply and saw that Aurora was already curled in his arms, lifted and protected.

Before leaving, he looked back at me once more. His expression softened, like the boy he used to be.

“Between us, Lilith, there will only ever be death, not divorce.”

“Sebastian!” I shouted after him, my voice shaking with fury. “Think carefully. I only ever give people three chances, and this is already the second.”

He paused mid-step, then turned. His smile was warm, like sunlight in spring.

“No need for a third. We’re destined to share a grave.”

That last look he gave me lingered through the night. For more than twenty years, I had never seen such a complicated expression in his eyes.

When he said that I can’t kill Aurora, it wasn’t just a threat. There was something else buried in it, something I couldn’t name.

With that, I ordered my men to dig deeper into Aurora’s past. But as always, nothing turned up.

So I decided to go to her myself.

She was pampered, spoiled, and bound to slip up eventually.

At the hospital, I found her in the middle of a fight with Sebastian.

“Why won’t you divorce her?” she demanded, her voice shaking. “I told you, I don’t care anymore! I really don’t!”

He stood by the window, calm as stone. “I care.”

“You—!” Her lower lip trembled until it bled.

“Don’t tell me…” Her voice cracked, choked with disbelief. “You’ve actually fallen in love with her?”

Sebastian kept his gaze fixed outside the window, saying nothing.

But that silence broke her.

She turned around, ready to storm out, but he caught her wrist and yanked her back. As she cried, he pulled her into his arms and lifted her chin, silencing her sobs with a kiss.

And with every kiss, her tears vanished.

Until the knock on the doorframe broke them apart.

“Lilith!” Aurora’s eyes flared with rage as soon as she saw me.

She grabbed the fruit knife from the table and lunged at me. “You bitch! Give me back my child!”

Only then did my eyes flick to her flat stomach, but Sebastian’s arm tightened protectively around her waist.

“Lilith,” he said, holding her close, just like he once held me amid rivers of blood. “Leave.”

“Bitch!” Aurora spat, her eyes swimming with tears.

And in that moment, furious, broken, grieving her unborn child, she looked exactly the way I had, years ago, when I lost my family to my enemies.

“You’re nothing!” she screamed. “Can’t you see? Sebastian doesn’t love you! He’s always loved me!”