Chapter Five: Shattered Face, Sharpened Mind

ELARA

The days that followed the cemetery visit were quiet.

Not peaceful—no, peace was a luxury I no longer recognized.

But still. Muted. Like the world knew something inside me had shifted. Like the air around me was afraid of the thing I was becoming.

I stopped asking questions like "Why me?" or "How could he?" I already knew the answers. Evil doesn’t always arrive in a storm. Sometimes, it slides into your bed and calls itself husband.

Sometimes, it smiles at your child and whispers promises it intends to shatter.

---

The doctors said it was time.

Time to remove the bandages.

I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, my fingers clenched into tight fists. The mirror across the room had been covered with a sheet since the day I arrived. I hadn’t asked why. I didn’t need to. Even before anyone said a word, I knew.

My body remembered every crack of bone. Every splinter of rock that kissed my flesh as I fell. My mind still echoed with the pain. My voice, crushed and distorted, was a ghost of what it used to be.

The sea hadn’t saved me.

It devoured me, chewed me up, and spit me back into the world… broken.

A doctor with soft hands and kind, sad eyes stood beside me. She spoke in gentle Italian, her words slow, almost reverent. Damien stood near the window, translating with quiet precision.

“You may not look the same,” the doctor said. “But you are still here. And sometimes, survival itself is the revolution.”

I almost laughed.

Almost.

Survival?

No, this wasn’t survival.

This was the forging of a weapon.

Damien didn’t move. He simply stepped forward and handed me a hand mirror. I took it with trembling fingers, the metal frame cool against my skin.

But I didn’t look yet.

Instead, I pulled the sheet from the full-length mirror across the room.

And looked.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t scream.

But I saw her.

The girl who died that day.

And the woman who took her place.

My face was a map of healing—a cartography of pain. Jagged lines curved from the corner of my eye down toward my cheekbone. The skin was still pink, fresh and healing. My lips had changed shape, fuller from swelling, their natural curve distorted slightly by the reconstruction. My left eyebrow arched higher than the right due to scar tissue pulling the skin beneath it.

But my eyes

My eyes were sharper.

Colder.

Wiser.

She was gone.

The woman who loved Ethan Cade.

The mother who trusted Sienna Blake.

The wife who believed in second chances.

That girl drowned.

And from her ashes, I rose.

Scarred.

But not broken.

Never again broken.

---

I stood in front of that mirror for a long time.

Long enough for the nurse to excuse herself.

Long enough for Damien to finally step closer.

“You don’t have to like it,” he said softly. “You just have to own it.”

I didn’t respond.

But I nodded.

Because I did.

This wasn’t shame.

This was armor.

And the world? The world would learn to fear me.

Later that evening, Damien returned with a laptop.

He didn’t say a word as he pulled up folders. He wasn’t gentle, but he wasn’t careless either. Just… focused. Controlled.

My name.

My old life.

My death certificate.

“They declared you dead,” he said. “The hospital signed off. No one questioned it. Ethan bribed the local officials. The autopsy report was falsified. He claimed your body washed out to sea.”

I leaned forward.

Photos appeared on the screen.

Ethan and Sienna at a gala.

Ethan shaking hands with donors.

Their engagement announcement.

Already.

He was already replacing me.

My fingers twitched with fury.

They smiled.

They laughed.

They wore black for a week, then painted the world red.

He didn’t just murder me.

He erased me.

I reached for the notepad on my tray and scribbled, How long until I disappear completely?

Damien didn’t hesitate. “Unless we intervene? You already have.”

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I sat by the window and watched the Naples skyline flicker to life with street lamps and headlights. I watched the city breathe, watched people hold hands, live lives, make memories.

I held a pen.

And I made a list.

Names.

Places.

Secrets.

Weaknesses.

Sienna’s former employers. Ethan’s business rivals. Hidden transactions. Off-the-book vacations. Who catered their engagement party. Who they bribed. Who they silenced.

I wasn’t just going to haunt them.

I was going to dismantle them.

And Sienna?

She would wish she’d only been slapped.

Because I wasn’t going for her face.

I was going for her mind.

Her reputation.

Her name.

And when I was done?

No one would remember her without shuddering.

I turned to Damien, who sat on the sofa, quietly watching me like a lion who’d found another predator worth respecting.

I wrote two words:

Teach me.

He raised a brow. “Teach you what?”

I stared at him.

Everything.

---

And so it began.

It started with surveillance—basic tech, coding, burner phones. Damien taught me to encrypt, to wipe my digital footprint, to track without being tracked.

Then came self-defense.

Modified moves at first, tailored for a body still healing. But even pain became background noise eventually. Every time my ribs ached or my lungs protested or my voice refused to come back, I saw Milo’s face.

And remembered why I was still breathing.

To burn them.

To bury them.

To become the woman they thought they’d erased.

Damien drilled me in observation. In threat analysis. In psychological tactics. I learned to read lips. I learned to read intent.

He once told me, “You don’t need to be stronger. You need to be smarter. They won’t see you coming. That’s your power.”

And he was right.

---

Weeks passed.

My voice still hadn’t returned, but my presence had.

The first time I held a knife again, I didn’t tremble.

The first time I walked past a mirror, I didn’t flinch.

And then one day, Damien brought me a picture.

A new identity.

New name.

New life.

I stared at the photo.

My face stared back. Scarred. Calm. Hollow-eyed.

“You pick who you want to be now,” Damien said. “And we build from there.”

Not rebuild.

Reforge.

I placed the photograph down, took the mirror one last time, and whispered, in a voice raspy and broken but real:

“She’s dead.”

And I turned to face my future.

To face vengeance.