Chapter 1
The ropes had long since left angry marks on my wrists, the chill of the balcony wind biting through my thin nightgown like tiny knives. My body trembled–not from cold, but from the weight of fear pressing into my chest. The towering skyline stretched endlessly below, a dizzying drop from the 65th floor.
I’d never feared pain. Never flinched at loneliness. But standing this close to the edge, strapped to a chair with my nine–month–pregnant belly exposed to the elements, my terror was absolute.
Heights.D
They’d always been my undoing.”
Now they were his weapon.”
Lucien’s voice crackled from the phone speaker on the ground beside me, cold and sharp, thick with cruelty.
“She really thinks I’m going to feed her just because she skipped meals for a few days?” His tone dripped with contempt. “She’s not going to die sitting out there. It’s just the balcony, for god’s sake.”
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know he was talking about me. I knew his voice–knew every cruel edge it had taken on lately.)]
My lungs stung with every breath. My baby kicked, restless, and I could only hope the child didn’t feel what I felt. Despair. Exhaustion. “She’s terrified of heights, sir,” came the butler’s nervous voice from somewhere in the background. “It’s been a whole day. Shouldn’t we let her back in?”
But Lucien only scoffed. “Scared of heights? She’s faking it. Just like she faked that innocent act after trying to kill Vanessa.”
Vanessa.
Of course.
She was always the center of everything now. The sweet girl from Lucien’s past who came back like a storm–beautiful, manipulative, and impossibly fragile in his eyes. He never asked for my side of the story. Not after that day in the mountains.
I’d received a text from him, asking me to meet at one of those high–elevation tourist spots. I didn’t question it. Despite my fear of heights, I went. I still had hope. Hope that he was trying to fix what was broken between us.
But it wasn’t Lucien who waited there.D
It was Vanessa.
She greeted me with a sneer masked behind a saccharine smile. “You don’t belong in his life,” she whispered like venom.” And then she screamed.
1
I never laid a hand on her. But she fell, disappearing over the edge of the cliff. Later, I found out she’d survived, cushioned by a tree branch just beneath the ledge. It had all been staged–her fall, her injuries, even the timing. She’d orchestrated it perfectly.
By the time I made it home, my fate was sealed. Vanessa had whispered her lies into Lucien’s ears, and he believed every one of them.” No questions. No defense.
Just punishment.
Strapping me to a chair and leaving me outside, on the edge of my worst nightmare.]
Another crackle from the phone brought me back.
been out there so long. She’s suffering.”
Vanessa’s voice–soft, pitiful, false. “Lucien… maybe she didn’t mean to do it. She’s be Even when she had everything, she still wanted to look like the saint.
Lucien’s voice shifted, gentler now. “She deserves everything she’s getting. You risked your life for me once, even though you hated heights. I owe you everything, Vanessa. I’ll protect you with my life.“}
There was a pause. Then, she asked, “What about Mara?”
Me.D
“She doesn’t matter,” he said without hesitation. “If she ever lays a hand on you again–even if she’s carrying my child–I’ll make her pay
for it.”
The line went dead.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. The pain in my throat was raw from earlier cries that had gone unanswered. My body had reached a state beyond exhaustion.
But something in my heart cracked open.
He didn’t know the truth.
It was me who had saved him once, not her. Me who had stood by him when everyone else disappeared. And now he was willing to kill me for a lie.}
He had chosen his past.
And I was just the disposable present.
But this wasn’t the end. Not for me.
