Chapter 5

Alexia POV

This time, the explosion wasn't made of fire and shrapnel. It was binary.

It took less than forty-eight hours for the fallout to hit the servers.

The headlines morphed with every refresh.

*Cummings Syndicate in Freefall.*

*Mistress Implicated in Massive Embezzlement Scheme.*

*The Tapes: Jacob Cummings' Secret Confessions Leaked.*

My hospital room, by contrast, was silent. Unnervingly so. The rotation of guards outside my door had vanished.

I forced myself upright. My side screamed-a hot, tearing agony where the incision was still fresh-but I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached.

I dressed slowly, every movement a negotiation with pain.

I packed my small bag.

I called a taxi.

I was one step away from freedom when my phone vibrated in my hand.

Jacob.

I slid the answer button across the screen.

"Where are you?" His voice was a guttural growl, barely audible over the cacophony in the background-shouting, the wail of approaching sirens.

"I'm leaving, Jacob."

"You did this," he hissed, the sound wet and frantic. "You leaked the ledgers."

"Cassandra stole from you," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I merely illuminated the truth."

"You ruined us! The Commission is calling for my head! Do you know what they do to traitors?"

"I'm not a traitor," I corrected him. "I'm a survivor. You broke the vow first. *To love and to cherish.* Remember?"

"I gave you my kidney!" he screamed, his voice cracking.

"And in exchange, you took my life," I replied. "You took my music. You took my dignity. Consider the kidney a rental fee."

I didn't wait for a response.

I ended the call, popped the SIM card tray, and snapped the chip in half.

I walked out of the hospital, leaving the plastic shards on the bedside table.

The taxi was idling at the curb.

"Airport," I said.

I didn't head for the chaos of the main terminal. Instead, I directed the driver to a small, private hangar on the perimeter.

The Bell family had cut me off years ago, exiling me for my marriage, but I had one contact left. My cousin. The only one who had looked at me with pity rather than disdain at the last gala.

He had arranged the flight.

I was halfway to Vienna, suspended thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, when the news broke on my tablet.

Jacob was trying to salvage the wreckage. He was holding an emergency press conference.

I tapped the screen to watch the live stream.

He stood on the steps of the courthouse, looking diminished. His tie was crooked, his eyes darting wildly. Cassandra was nowhere to be seen.

"My wife is mentally unstable!" he shouted into the thicket of microphones. "She has been manipulated by our enemies. The evidence is fabricated!"

Then, his expression shifted. The desperation hardened into something cruel.

"To prove my loyalty to the family," he announced, staring directly into the camera lens, "and to punish the betrayal of the Bell name... I have ordered the removal of the traitor's lineage from our sacred ground."

He paused for dramatic effect, letting the silence hang heavy.

"I have dug up her mother's grave. Her ashes have been cast into the sea. There is no place for traitors in our soil."

The tablet slipped from my numb fingers.

It hit the carpeted floor of the cabin with a dull thud.

My mother.

The only person who had ever truly loved me. The woman who had starved herself just so I could afford piano lessons.

He dug her up.

He threw her away like garbage.

A sound ripped out of my throat-a raw, animal noise that didn't sound human.

The flight attendant rushed over, her face pale. "Miss? Are you okay?"

I couldn't breathe. The cabin air felt thin, nonexistent.

He didn't just hurt me. He erased my history. He violated the one sacred thing I had left.

I looked out the window. The clouds were white and fluffy, utterly indifferent to my agony.

And then, the crying stopped.

The tears dried instantly, evaporated by a sudden, searing heat that started in my chest and spread to my fingertips.

I looked down at my right hand.

The claw.

I looked at the scar on my side, the place where his kidney filtered my blood.

"Miss?" the attendant asked again, her hand hovering tentatively over my shoulder.

I looked up at her. My eyes were bone dry.

"I'm fine," I said.

My voice was steady. It was colder than the stratosphere outside.

I wasn't the victim anymore. I wasn't the wife. I wasn't the bird in the cage.

Jacob thought he had buried me. He thought he had destroyed me by destroying my mother.

But he made a fatal calculation error.

He didn't bury me.

He planted me.

And I was going to grow into a nightmare he never saw coming.

"How long until Vienna?" I asked.

"Two hours," she stammered.

"Good," I said, turning back to the window.

"I have work to do."