Chapter 2

Mila's POV

By the time I reached the dock, the rain was coming down hard.

The kidnappers told me to park 1,000 feet from the warehouse and walk the rest of the way in.

My heels sank into the mud with every step, and the white hem of my dress became filthy within seconds.

If this had been earlier, I would have been shaking and telling myself not to be afraid. I would have reminded myself that Leander was waiting for me.

I only felt contempt for my own blind and foolish trust.

Inside my bag was the ransom I had taken from the safe, along with the final operation plan. The page read, "If Mila Carver is willing to trade her life for Leander Croft's, the Carver family's old debt will be considered settled, and the wedding will proceed as planned."

"The wedding will proceed as planned."

When I read those words, I nearly laughed.

Leander had finally agreed to marry me. It was not because he felt guilty about the miscarriage that left me unable to conceive again, and not because he lay awake at night thinking about the child we lost. He simply felt it was time to finish his revenge.

As long as I proved with my life that I truly loved him, he would be gracious enough to wipe the slate clean.

I looked down at my right hand. Rainwater slid across the back of it, and the old scars prickled faintly.

After the fire 3 years earlier, I had gone through months of rehabilitation. On the worst days, my fingers could not even hold a pen.

I locked myself in the music room and placed my right hand on the keys again and again, but it would not obey me. Melodies I once played easily came out broken beyond recognition.

Leander walked in one day, and I scrambled to hide my hand behind my back. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

"Mila, it is okay if you do not play anymore. I will take care of you for the rest of your life."

I leaned into his chest that day and cried until I could not speak. I believed he said it because it hurt him to see me like that.

Clipped to the side of the final operation plan was an older page of notes. "After the fire incident, Mila Carver's emotional dependence on Leander Croft increased significantly. Objective achieved."

My dream died in that fire. To him, it was nothing more than a successful experiment in making me need him more.

I wiped the rain from my face and kept walking.

My phone buzzed. It was a message from Katrina.

"Mila, where are you? Leander's hurt badly. Hurry."

A second message came a few seconds later. "But do not push yourself too hard. You just had a miscarriage, after all. If something happened to you, Leander would be devastated."

I stared at those words, and my vision went black for a moment.

Three months earlier, I had fallen down a flight of stairs. The pain in my lower abdomen felt like something tearing apart from the inside. Leander carried me into the hospital, and his voice shook so badly it barely sounded like him.

"Doctor, save her. Save her first."

When I woke up, the baby was gone.

Leander sat at the edge of the bed, and his eyes looked raw and red. "Mila, let us get married."

I believed that after losing our child, I had finally received the proposal I had waited for.

I had seen the report on the stairwell "accident" in the safe. The original objective was to have someone knock the documents out of my hands to test whether I had uncovered the old case between the Carver and Croft families.

They had not intended for the baby to die, so the report summed it up in two words.

"Unplanned miscarriage."

There was not a single line of regret.

My child never saw the world and was written off as acceptable collateral in their plan.

I stopped in the rain, pressed my hand to my stomach, and laughed until tears ran down my face.

Another message from Katrina. "Mila, do not tell me you are scared."

I turned off my phone.

Scared?

I had been scared 7 years earlier when Leander was kidnapped. I had been scared 3 years earlier when he was trapped in the fire. I had been scared 1 year earlier when the knife came down, and I feared my mother would never wake up again. I had been scared 3 months earlier under the surgical lights when I feared I could not save the baby.

I had been scared so many times. Every single time, the one who lost a piece of herself was me.

This time, I was not scared.

I had already decided that Mila Carver would die here that night.