The empire I’d forged with blood and iron was crumbling.
And I let it.
In my misery, I checked again.
Not because I expected anything new—just habit.
A final sweep. A pointless double-check.
The kind I’d done a thousand times before closing a file, making sure nothing could come back later.
I told myself it was routine.
Not hope. Not guilt.
But the moment I breached her old phone records again, something felt... off.
There it was—the message. The same incriminating line that had sealed her fate months ago.
The same string of words I’d stared at in righteous fury, convincing myself it was proof of betrayal. Only this time, Ididn’t stop there. I peeled the data back layer by layer, tracing metadata, timestamps, keystroke patterns.
And the truth crawled out of the shadows.
The reply hadn’t been sent by Elena.
The IP signature didn’t match her usage habits.
The typing cadence was wrong—too fast, too careless. Whoever had written it hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t paused the way she always did when she was uncertain. It was crude. Opportunistic.
My blood turned to ice.
I followed the trail further, reconstructing movements, cross-referencing surveillance from the club.
And then I saw him—the sleazy bastard who hovered around her like a scavenger whenever she drank too much.
The one I’d dismissed as insignificant. He’d been close enough to swipe her phone. Close enough to type a sentence that would damn her.
But he hadn’t acted alone.
The deeper I dug, the clearer the web became. Payments routed through shell accounts. Burner phones bouncing signals between continents. And there—like a festering wound that refused to heal—was Harris Thompson.
Her ex-fiancé.
That smug, entitled piece of shit who’d never forgiven her for walking away. Who’d watched her marry me and decided if he couldn’t have her, no one would.
Harris and her sister—still allied, still scheming, still feeding my rage with carefully curated lies.
I broke.
The scream tore out of me without warning, ripping my throat raw as I slammed my fist into the wall.
Once. Twice. Again.
Bone cracked. Pain exploded, white-hot and meaningless. Blood smeared the plaster, but I barely noticed. I welcomed it. I wanted it.
This was the lie.
This was the lie that had condemned an innocent woman to hell.
