NEWS HEADLINE

Chapter One

Christiana's POV

“Chairman of Salazar Empire Arrested for Killing His Wife in Domestic Dispute.”

“Salazar Empire Collapses in Scandal.”

“Billionaire Family Falls from Grace After Tragic Murder.”

I couldn't get a hold of my insanity with all the talks about my family. 

For f*cks sake, I am mourning! Yes, it is true. My father killed my mother but it was all because of me!

That night was practically the worst night of my life. The argument between my parents was just like always, but this time, it was with more intensity. 

I didn’t bother to intervene, because some twisted part of me thought my mother was finally saying everything she’d always held back. 

I blamed myself because I had brought Bella into our lives. I had told my mother she was my best friend, I thought so.

Little did I know that I brought the devil into our home. 

Mother was fed up that night because Father had gone too far with his entanglement with Bella, the affair was now being rubbed to her face and she couldn't take it anymore.

“Giveon, please. I’m asking you... keep Bella away from the company and from our family. She doesn’t belong in your business. She doesn’t belong in our life. She is going to ruin everything!”

My father let out that cruel, dismissive laugh he reserved for anyone who dared to challenge him. “You think you can tell me who belongs where? You don’t know a damn thing about what I need right now. Bella understands me. You are just a selfish woman.”

“Understands you?” My mother’s voice rose, trembling with rage. “She’s twenty-nine, Giveon. She’s younger than your daughter! She’s using you, and you’re too blind to see it.”

“You’re just jealous,” he snapped. “You’ve always hated any woman who genuinely loves me, just like you did with my mother. You hate that she’s smarter than you and she’s not bitter like you.”

“Bitter?” My mother’s voice cracked like glass under pressure. “I gave you my life. I built this home. I carried your child. I stood by you while you built your empire from the ground up. And this is how you repay me? You are evil.”

BANG!

Just by the sound, I knew that the huge table glass in the sitting room had broke.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, the sight froze me.

In the center of the living room, beneath the chandelier she once chose for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary lay my mother. 

lHer hair fanned out like a halo. Her head bent at an unnatural angle against the sharp corner of the glass coffee table.

Blood bloomed beneath her skull, dark and vivid, red pooling like spilled wine across the Persian rug.

My father stood over her, frozen in place. His chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked bursts. His hands trembled. His lips parted, but no words came.

“Grace,” he whispered my mother’s name barely audible, but soaked in urgency

.

Then he dropped to his knees beside her. It was as though he knew immediately that she was gone, because he didn’t bother reviving her, he simply wept. Gut-wrenching, primal sobs that echoed through the hollow space where our family used to live.

Our butler at that time, rushed in also and gasped at the sight of my dead mother, he rushed away immediately, and I knew he went to call for help.

I stood at the edge of the room, heart pounding so violently I thought it might burst through my ribs. My feet were numb. My skin cold. Something inside me that once believed in love, in family, died right there on that floor with her.

The rest of the incident came in merciless flashes.

The police blue and red lights pulsed through the windows like a curse, bathing the walls of our once-perfect home in guilt and judgment.

Officers pushed past me with drawn weapons, shouting commands I couldn’t comprehend.

My father sat on the floor, crumpled, his shirt soaked in blood and tears. When they pulled him up, he didn’t resist. His hands were cuffed behind his back as he sobbed like a man possessed.

“It was an accident!” he wailed. “I didn’t mean to…God, I didn’t mean to!”

They didn’t care. Neither did I.

Reporters had already swarmed the front gate like vultures. Cameras flashed with machine-gun rhythm as they shouted his name, my name, her name.

“Mr. Salazar, did you kill your wife?”

“Is it true you were having an affair?”

“Christiana! Christiana, is it true your father pushed her?”

The mansion that once hosted CEOs, diplomats, and celebrities now reeked of death, disgrace, and betrayal.

Our empire didn’t just fall, it was ash by sunrise.

They say you can hear the sound of a heart breaking, but mine shattered in silence, somewhere between the soft thump of dirt hitting her casket and the echo of the priest’s final amen.

I stood motionless, dressed in black, my heels sinking into the freshly dug earth as if the ground was pulling me in too. 

The framed photo of her trembled in my grasp, her smile still perfect, still warm. She looked alive and happy, but the box beneath my feet said otherwise.

She wasn’t supposed to fu*king die like that. Not at the hands of the man who once told her, forever.

“Chris…”

Tony’s voice broke gently through the fog. 

He reached out and brushed the back of my hand with his fingertips. He stood beside me, quiet but present like a wall I could lean against if I chose to.

My dear childhood friend.

In less than forty-eight hours, everything crumbled before my eyes.

Major investors pulled out like rats fleeing a sinking ship. The board resigned in disgrace. The empire my family had built brick by brick, decade after decade, folded beneath the weight of scandal and shame.

Our name, once printed in gold on magazine covers, engraved in glass atop boardroom towers, now trended with disgust. 

A legacy reduced to a headline. A brand turned into a cautionary tale.

Bella Calamida, the ghost in all of this vanished.

She didn’t show up at the funeral, or at least give herself to the police officers and said she was one of the culprits. She possessed my father and made him kill my mother.

Well, if she had attended the funeral, we may have held another funeral because I’d kill her.

THREE MONTHS LATER

Tony sent me a message this morning.

“Oil Heir Bryan Adams Set to Marry Model-Turned-Socialite Bella Calamida.”

The headline screamed at me from the screen like a slap.

She wore white in the engagement photo. All teeth and innocence, looking immaculate. Like someone who would never seduced a married man or buried a woman with her evil and walked away without a scratch.

I stared at the image until the letters blurred, the grin on her face melting into something monstrous. 

She took everything from me, my family, my peace, my name.

Now, I would take everything from her and I would start with her fiancé, Bryan Adams.