Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Two weeks after the surgery, Valena was still hiding an exhaustion that wouldn't let up, tucked behind a smile she forced every morning. No one asked why she looked paler by the day, because the family's attention had shifted entirely elsewhere.

Even the party she'd once planned had simply been called off, without a second thought. That afternoon, Daniel showed up seething with anger.

"Valena!" He grabbed her arm, hard. "You've started accusing me of things now? What exactly do you think you saw?"

The words shattered the quiet of the Dominique mansion. Valena, who had no idea what her fiancé was even talking about, could only stare back, confused.

"What are you saying, Niel?" She reached for his hand.

But he shook her off. "Stop acting like an idiot, Valena. You're accusing me of cheating just because I sat with Elara at the hospital?"

Valena stepped back. "Niel, I never said anything like that," she said.

Footsteps sounded from the direction of the kitchen Elara, with Leovan beside her. The moment she spotted Daniel, she started walking over.

"Valena, are you jealous just because Niel kept me company? I was so upset that day because Leo still hadn't found a donor," she said, looping her arm through his. "Niel was only comforting me, Valena. I know he's your fiancé."

Elara's face looked ready to crumble into tears. Valena stood frozen, her chest churning. Her body went rigid with a strange, sudden dizziness, her legs weak, her vision beginning to swim.

"Niel, help," she whispered.

"Ugh, Valena. What drama are you putting on now?" Elara said.

Daniel started to pull Elara's arm off his but before he could get to Valena, Elara latched onto him again.

"Niel, ow, my head's spinning, I think I'm about to faint," she moaned.

Daniel caught Elara and guided her to sit on the sofa, leaving Valena to lean against the marble wall on her own. She gripped a nearby pillar with all her strength until the dizziness slowly passed.

But it was her heart that hurt more watching Daniel fuss over Elara while she, his actual fiancée, stood forgotten.

Two days later, Daniel showed up again, unannounced. His expression was stiff, nothing like the warmth Valena was used to seeing from him.

"We need to talk," he said, not bothering to sit even though Valena had offered.

"What's wrong, Niel?" she tried to smile, though a bad feeling was already creeping through her chest.

"I think... we should put the engagement on hold." Daniel avoided her eyes, staring instead at the floor. "You've changed, Valena. You've gotten possessive lately, quick to suspect things. I need time to think this through."

"Possessive?" Valena nearly laughed, bitter. "Niel, I never accused you of anything until you came storming in like that."

But Daniel just shook his head, as if her words no longer meant anything to him. "I've made up my mind. For now, let's just say the engagement is off."

He left without looking back, leaving Valena standing alone in the same living room where, seventeen days earlier, she'd been busy arranging decorations for her own engagement party. She had no idea Daniel's words that night hadn't even really been his own — they were seeds Elara had planted long before he'd ever had the chance to think clearly.

***

The next day.

"Elara said the last place she saw the acquisition contract was in Dad's study," Sera said one morning, her face tense. "But now it's gone."

Jorge clenched his jaw. "That document covers the deal with the investors. If it leaks before it's signed—"

"I'm sure I wasn't the last one to have it," Elara said quietly, her eyes flicking briefly toward Valena, who'd just walked into the room. "But I don't feel right accusing anyone."

Valena stopped in the doorway. "Accusing who of what?"

No one answered her directly, but the looks that settled on her said more than enough.

That night, the house's security system suffered a strange glitch the CCTV footage from the hallway near Jorge's study went dark for a full three hours, right around the time the document was believed to have gone missing. No one knew it was Elara herself who'd disabled it, slipping in to hide the folder exactly where she'd planned.

Ever since Leovan's accident a month earlier, Valena's birthday which should have fallen exactly a week after Elara's arrival had never come up again, not once, until finally, with no formal celebration in sight, Valena decided to mark it herself the next day, quietly, with a small cake she'd bought on her own.

The next day, one day before the date she'd set for herself chaos broke out upstairs.

"Found it!" Leovan shouted, storming out of Valena's room holding a brown folder Jorge recognized instantly. "It was buried in her clothes!"

Valena, who'd just sat down to enjoy the small cake she'd bought to quietly celebrate her own birthday, looked up, baffled. "What are you talking about? I never touched that document."

"Then why is it in your room?" Leovan barked, his face flushed not just with anger, but with a guilt he couldn't explain, as if his own body were rebelling against him.

Elara stood behind him, hand over her mouth, eyes glistening with perfectly timed tears. "I can't believe this. I... I never meant to say that."

"I didn't do this," Valena said, her voice starting to shake. "You have to believe me."

But not a single face in that room showed even a flicker of belief. Jorge looked at her with deep disappointment. Sera turned away. Even Daniel, standing in the corner, said nothing in her defense.

"You've crossed a line," Jorge finally said, his voice cold and final. "Tonight, you're leaving this house."

"Dad—"

Valena's gaze caught briefly on the little cake sitting on the table in the corner, the candles she'd never gotten to blow out. Tomorrow was supposed to be her twentieth birthday a small celebration she'd quietly put together herself, after the grand party and her engagement had both collapsed because of Leovan's accident a month ago. She'd already made peace with the fact that there'd be no ring, no guests, just a small cake as her own private way of marking another year. But the irony of it all cut deep: on the one day that should have still belonged to her, however small, she was about to lose everything at once her family, her fiancé, and the only home she'd called hers for nineteen years.

"I'm not your father," Jorge cut in, the words landing like a blade. "You're nobody in this family."

Rain had begun to fall by the time Valena stepped out of the mansion, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Sera and Jorge stood in the doorway, unmoving, even as Valena turned back one more time, begging with eyes wet from more than just the rain.

"Please," her voice barely surviving the downpour. "Just listen to me. Just this once."

The door shut, and stayed shut.

She walked with no destination, her bare feet moving over the wet pavement, her chest growing tighter with every step. The world around her began to blur, the sound of the rain mixing with her own heartbeat, which was starting to slow.

Her steps gave out at the edge of the road

, and the darkness swallowed everything.