Chapter 8

After that day, Luca didn't come into the room, but he still had things delivered every day.

Hot coffee in the morning, soup from my father's restaurant at noon, and a very short note in the evening. Sometimes "remember your pills," sometimes "it's snowing today, stay out of the garden."

I sent everything back. The notes I secretly kept in the drawer.

When Victoria found them, she took the notes out one by one.

"You say you don't want him, and you can't bring yourself to throw away a single one."

"Put them back."

She tore them up in front of me.

I lunged to grab them, and the wheelchair struck the corner of the table. She watched me bend to pick up the scraps and didn't help.

"Luca is only doing his duty. Don't mistake duty for love."

I picked the pieces up one by one, and the edges of the paper cut my fingers.

That night, I taped the notes back together. The words wouldn't piece back together, but I still put them back in the drawer.

I knew how pathetic I was. I had decided to leave, and I still couldn't bear to lose a single word he'd left me.

My painkillers suddenly stopped working.

At first I thought the disease had worsened. Only when Dr. Grant examined the bottle did we find the pills had been swapped for a very low dose of sedatives.

"Who's had access to your medication?" he asked.

I thought of Victoria.

But I had no proof.

Dr. Grant pulled the corridor footage. Victoria had been to my room, but there was no camera inside. She could easily claim she had done nothing.

"Call the police," he said.

"Back up the footage first."

"Eve, this isn't a small thing."

"I know."

I wasn't afraid of offending the Vale family. I was afraid of Luca finding out.

He was dealing with the federal investigation alongside Victoria right now. If I accused her at this moment, Luca would surely come to me. Whether he believed me or not, we would be tangled up again.

I had no time left.

That afternoon, the pain struck again.

I rolled off the bed and hit my arm on the corner of the cabinet. The call button was less than two feet away, and I couldn't reach it no matter how I tried.

I lay on the floor for more than twenty minutes before Victoria pushed the door open.

She didn't call a nurse.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, standing over me.

"Call someone."

"Promise me first that you'll never see Luca again."

"Get out."

She crouched and kicked the call button farther away.

"Why won't you give up? You're already crippled, and now you have cancer. How much longer can you stay with him?"

My head snapped toward her.

"How do you know?"

"My father holds shares in St. Alban's. I can read your file whenever I like."

She finally knew the secret I most feared Luca discovering.

"If you tell him, I'll give the recording to the police."

"You think I'm afraid?"

"Of course you are. If Luca learns I mean to harm you, he'll turn on the Vale family. Without my father's help, he'll be indicted, and his company will go bankrupt."

Victoria smiled.

"And then he'll lose everything because of you."

I was shaking with pain and couldn't find a word to answer her.

She picked up the separation agreement from the table.

"Well done. Keep making him hate you. He'll be safe, and you can die in peace."

After she left, I used all my strength to crawl toward the door.

By the time the nurse found me, I had lost consciousness.

When I woke again, Luca was at my bedside.

There was blood on his shirt, from the wound on my arm.

"Who did this?" he asked.

"I fell."

"Why was the medication switched?"

"I don't know."

"Victoria was here."

I saw the murder in his eyes.

One nod from me, and he would go after her at once.

"She did nothing," I said. "I switched the pills myself. I wanted you to worry."

Luca stared at me as if he were meeting me for the first time.

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I wanted to see whether you'd still come back."

The anger on his face slowly turned to exhaustion.

"Eve, you can't play games with your own life."

"Then don't come anymore, and I won't need to act."

He stood up and took two steps back.

"Fine."

It was the first time he had agreed not to see me again.