Chapter 2

The air in the car was a physical weight, thick and scorching. Aliyah' s throat felt like sandpaper and her lungs burned with every shallow breath. The heat was a constant reminder of Leo' s last moments, a torture designed by the man who had promised to love and protect her.

Benedict' s face was a mask of cold satisfaction as he typed the numbers into her phone. "0-5-1-8," he muttered. "Good girl."

He tossed her phone onto the dashboard, its screen now useless to her. Her lifeline to the world, to help, was gone. Her vision swam, dark spots dancing in front of her eyes. She remembered their wedding day, Benedict' s hand in hers, his voice earnest as he vowed to cherish her, to stand by her through anything. That man was gone, replaced by this cold, calculating monster.

"Stop," she croaked, trying to claw at the door handle, her fingernails scraping uselessly against the plastic. "Let me out."

"He was just a kid, Ben," she cried, the words tearing from her raw throat. "He was our son. Our little boy."

"Don' t you dare call her that," Benedict snapped, his eyes flashing with a protective fire she hadn' t seen in years. A fire that was not for her, or for their dead son, but for a twenty-year-old intern. "Don' t you call Kendall a monster."

He turned back to the phone in his hand, his fingers moving quickly. "You were always so busy with work, Aliyah. Always on a plane, in a meeting. When was the last time you even spent a whole day with him? Kendall was great with him. He loved her."

The accusation was a physical blow, knocking the last bit of air from her lungs. It was a lie, a twisted, cruel lie. She had structured her entire life, her entire career as COO of the company they built together, around Leo. She took red-eye flights to be home for breakfast, worked late nights after he was asleep, and sacrificed promotions to avoid relocating. Her life was a constant, exhausting balancing act, one he had never once acknowledged.

"He was just a kid," Benedict said again, his voice softer now, but with a chilling lack of concern. "It' s a tragedy. But Kendall is young. She has her whole life, a whole career ahead of her. We can' t let one mistake ruin that."

Aliyah stared at him, a horrifying clarity cutting through her grief and heat-induced haze. His words weren't a defense of Kendall; they were an admission. He wasn't just protecting an intern. He was protecting his lover.

The realization hit her with the force of a physical impact. The late nights he claimed were board meetings. The weekend "work retreats." The scent of a different perfume on his suits. It all clicked into place, a mosaic of betrayal that was years in the making.

"You' re sleeping with her," she whispered.

A flicker of something-annoyance, maybe shame-crossed his face before it was replaced by cold indifference. "That' s not the point right now."

The last ounce of her strength gave out. She pounded on the window with her fists, a desperate, hopeless rhythm. "Let me out! Let me see my father!"

Her hands were raw, her knuckles bleeding, but she didn' t feel the pain. All she felt was a burning, all-consuming rage.

"I will kill you, Benedict," she hissed, the words tasting like poison. "I swear to God, I will see you and that little bitch burn for this."

For a moment, he looked at her, at the bloody streaks she was leaving on the window, and a hint of unease crossed his features. But it was gone as quickly as it came.

He clicked a button on his phone, and the sound of a man screaming filled the car. It was her father.

"Stop it! Please!" she begged, her body going limp.

With a final, decisive tap on his own phone, Benedict looked up. "It' s done," he said. "The cloud file is deleted. The original dashcam card is already destroyed."

A wave of fresh oxygen hit her as he finally lowered the windows. She gasped, her lungs aching.

"You see?" he said, his voice laced with a condescending calm. "All this drama, for nothing. You should have just cooperated from the start."

He drove them away from the assisted living facility, leaving her father' s fate hanging in the balance.

"I want to see my father," she said, her voice a hollow shell.

"The doctors are with him now," Benedict said dismissively. "He had a little scare, that' s all. You can see him tomorrow. Right now, we need to focus on arrangements for Leo."

He was arranging their son's funeral. The son he had just denied justice to. The hypocrisy was breathtaking.

"And Aliyah," he said, his tone a clear warning. "This conversation never happened. As far as anyone is concerned, Leo' s death was a tragic accident. A faulty car lock, maybe. We don' t know. There is no evidence. There is no one to blame. Do you understand?"

She didn't answer. She just stared out the window, her heart a cold, heavy stone in her chest. She had not only lost her son. She had lost her husband, her life, and her faith in everything she had ever believed in.

And in that moment, in the sterile, air-conditioned silence of the car, a new feeling began to bloom in the wasteland of her grief. It was cold and sharp and hard as diamond.

It was hate.