Chapter 3

Lily POV

The master bedroom was a void of darkness. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my spine a rigid line, staring at the invisible wall.

The ruined blue blanket—a soiled relic of my loss—was sealed in a plastic bag inside my suitcase, hidden away like a disease. But the flash drive was not hidden. It sat in my palm, its cold metal edges biting into my skin like a promise.

The bedroom door opened, casting a hard sliver of hallway light across the floorboards. The soft click of the lock sounded unusually loud in the dead air of the room.

Silas walked in, holding a small medical kit. He sat next to me on the bed, the mattress groaning under his weight.

His movements were slow, almost hesitant. He dipped a cotton swab in antiseptic and reached for my face.

I did not flinch. I let him touch the dark, throbbing bruise he had given me.

"I am sorry I struck you." His voice was low, carrying a heavy remorse that felt rehearsed. "But you forced my hand, Lily. You cannot publicly disrespect an associate of this Family. It undermines my authority."

I looked into his eyes. He still did not believe my parents were dead. He thought it was a cruel lie I had invented to win a fight. The police report was sitting in my bag not twenty feet away, and he hadn't even asked to see it.

"I need you to fix this." Silas gently smoothed the hair away from my forehead, his touch a vile imitation of tenderness. "Mia's reputation is damaged. The civilian customers are talking. I am hosting a celebration for her boutique at the Family hotel tomorrow night. I need you to livestream a public apology to her. It will offer free promotion and clear her name."

He was asking his wife, the woman who nominally shared access to the estate's security grid and held a secondary key to the family's vaults, to kneel before a woman who did not even merit a gate code.

"If you do this, I promise things will change." Silas grabbed my hands, squeezing them tightly. "I will accompany you to all your future prenatal checkups. I will shower you with the protection and luxury fitting for my wife. We will be a real family."

He still didn't know. He was talking about prenatal checkups, and he still didn't know our baby was dead.

I looked at his hands. The same hands that had slapped me. The same hands that had signed the checks to buy Mia her life.

I lowered my eyes, feigning submission from behind the mask of a broken woman.

"Okay. I will do it."

A massive wave of relief washed over his face. He smiled—a genuine, overjoyed expression I had not seen in months. He leaned in to embrace me, tugging me against his chest.

Then, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Silas stopped. He pulled the phone out and checked the screen. The joy vanished, replaced by an urgent, guilty tension. He stood up, putting a sudden distance between us.

"I have to handle something." His tone was already miles away. "Rest your face. I will see you tomorrow at the hotel."

He walked out of the room. Through the window, I heard the estate gates grind open and closed a minute later.

In the silence that followed, a silence so profound I could hear the hum of the electricity in the walls, my phone lit up on the nightstand. Mia was calling.

I answered it, putting it on speaker and setting it down on the bedside table as if it were a venomous spider.

"You failed." Mia's voice dripped with malicious triumph. "You thought you could seduce the Don with your pathetic tears, but he came right back to me."

I touched my flat, empty stomach. The physical pain of the hemorrhage was a dull ache beneath the cold, hardening rage in my chest.

"Silas will never divorce his wife for a low-level associate." My voice was calm, the words measured and clear. "You are a temporary distraction."

Mia laughed sharply, the sound grating through the speaker. "We will see about that when I give him an heir."

"He uses protection with you," I stated simply, a fact, not an accusation.

The line went dead silent.

Silas's severe germaphobia and control issues meant he left nothing to chance. Or so I had always believed. But now I was no longer sure whether his germaphobia was real or simply a performance designed to keep me at a distance. Either way, I knew his habits—the meticulous precautions he took to ensure no illegitimate heirs could ever threaten his bloodline. I had lived with him long enough to know his patterns, and Mia's sudden silence confirmed my deduction.

"His empire, his wealth, and his legacy will go to my legitimate bloodline." I kept my tone even, letting the words cut deep into her insecurities. "You will get nothing but the scraps he throws at you."

"You bitch." Mia's voice shook with pure fury. "You need to divorce him."

The call ended. A second later, a video file arrived in my messages.

I clicked play.

It was a graphic, undeniable recording of Silas and Mia in bed. The angle was deliberate—she had set up the camera to capture his face clearly, leaving no room for plausible denial.

Another message popped up on the screen.

"This video is from his last visit to my bed. We didn't use protection. I'm going to get pregnant, and he will throw you out on the street."

I stared at the screen. I did not cry. I did not scream. I felt a strange, cold immunity settle over me.

The woman I used to be had bled out on the hospital floor yesterday, alongside the child he had promised to protect.

I downloaded the video to an encrypted drive.

I opened my laptop and began writing the code to hijack the Family's secure hotel network. My senior thesis on financial forensics had included a secondary focus on network penetration testing. Sarah had called it overkill at the time. It wasn't overkill anymore. The Family's internal security protocols, which I had helped design during the early years of my marriage, were about to become their undoing.

Tomorrow night, the world would see the truth.

The trap was set.

And Silas had handed me the key to spring it.