Chapter 3

Katherina 

"BP’s crashing! We’re losing her!”

I heard it, even though everything else was dark. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t feel my body. But I heard that voice, urgent, afraid, almost desperate. I wanted to tell them I was still here, still fighting, but I couldn’t move a muscle. It felt like I was trapped inside a glass box, screaming silently as the world moved on without me.

Time passed, though I had no sense of how much. I drifted somewhere between life and death, held down by pain, by weight, by something I couldn’t name. Every now and then, I heard voices again, faint, muffled, like I was underwater. Machines beeped. People whispered. Sometimes I felt a warm hand on mine, sometimes I felt nothing at all.

Then suddenly, I gasped.

Or maybe I imagined that I gasped, because the pain was the first real thing I felt. It surged through my chest like fire. My throat burned raw. My limbs ached. My head pounded like someone had smashed a brick against my skull. I opened my eyes slowly, and for a moment, I couldn’t see anything clearly. Everything was white, too white, too bright. I blinked hard and forced my vision to focus.

The ceiling above me was unfamiliar, covered in hospital panels and fluorescent lights that hummed faintly. Tubes and wires were everywhere, running in and out of my arms, chest, and nose. The dull beeping of the heart monitor beside me became louder, steadier, and it told me one thing, I was still alive.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I felt the strain in my throat immediately. I reached for it weakly, confused by the tightness and the stinging pain, only to realize my hands were too weak to move much at all. A wave of fear crashed over me. Was I paralyzed? Had I lost my voice forever?

Before the panic could rise any higher, a figure leaned over me. It was Ryan.

His face looked tired, like he hadn’t slept in days, but the moment our eyes met, relief flooded his expression. “Katherina,” he said softly, “you’re awake. Thank God. You’re going to be okay.”

I tried to speak again. My mouth opened, but the only sound that came out was a faint scratch, like metal scraping against concrete. My throat was raw and burning, and my voice, my voice was gone. Ryan noticed the fear in my eyes and quickly reached out to hold my hand gently.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You had massive damage to your throat during the crash. You’ve had two surgeries already. The doctors say you might be able to speak again, but it’ll take time. Don’t try to force it.”

I blinked slowly, processing his words.

Then it hit me all at once.

The crash. The storm. The betrayal. The baby.

My baby.

My chest tightened. My hand twitched again, this time more desperately. I looked at him, eyes wide, asking the question I couldn’t speak out loud.

His expression shifted immediately. Pain flickered across his face.

I already knew the answer, but I had to hear it. I needed to.

Ryan looked down at our hands for a moment before whispering, “I’m so sorry, Katherina. The baby... he didn’t make it.”

Everything inside me collapsed. My world shattered for the second time.

I turned my face away and stared at the wall. I didn’t want him to see the tears that started falling, slow and endless. There was no sound, just the unbearable weight of loss. I had carried that child for nine months. I had spoken to him, sung to him, loved him before I ever saw his face. He was mine. He was my reason to hold on.

And now he is gone.

Days passed in a blur after that. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I barely ate. I barely moved. The nurses came in and out, changing my bandages, adjusting machines, checking vitals, and none of it mattered. I didn’t want to look in the mirror. I didn’t want to see what the crash had done to my face. Ryan told me the injuries had been bad, and that surgeons had done their best to repair it, but I knew I wasn’t the same. I didn’t need a mirror to know that part of me had died in that car.

Then, one morning, Ryan walked in carrying a tablet in his hand and a strange look on his face.

“I didn’t know whether to show you this,” he said quietly, sitting beside me. “But I think you need to see it.”

He placed the tablet in my lap and pressed play.

It was a news broadcast three months ago. The headline read: “Tragedy Strikes, Billionaire Heiress Katherina Vance Confirmed Dead in Car Crash.”

I stared at Ryan, shocked. Why hadn’t he told anyone I was alive?

He held my hands gently. “I only found out a week ago,” he said. “The firefighters saved you just in time. Your doctor, my friend, only started on this ward last week. He mentioned an unidentified woman transferred from County General after months in a coma”.

Tears filled my eyes as I looked at the tablet screen.

The screen shifted, and I saw Lysander.

He was seated in a chair, dressed in a black suit, looking as calm and calculated as ever. His tone was smooth, his eyes focused as he spoke.

“The news of Katherina’s death has shaken me deeply,” he said, his voice trembling just enough to seem real. “She was… my world. My everything. Her loss is something I’ll never recover from.”

Lies. Every word scraped against my skin like glass.

He didn’t flinch as the questions shifted to Vance Pharma and its future. Calmly, almost proudly, he said, “Due to unforeseen personal circumstances involving Katherina's legacy, circumstances I’ll reveal when appropriate, I’ve decided to claim the remainder…”And Seraphina, her sister, supports this decision.”

My hands began to shake. My chest tightened with a pain so sharp, I could hardly breathe. Rage bubbled beneath my skin, hot and wild. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip the microphone from his hand and tell the world everything—that he was a liar, a thief, a murderer cloaked in charm.

But I stood there, helpless, drowning in silence.

I wished I could make him feel even a fraction of the pain he caused me. I wanted to destroy him with the same ease he used to destroy me.

And yet… all I could do was watch.

For now.

Ryan didn’t pause the video. The screen changed again, showing clips from my fake funeral. There was a large crowd dressed in black, a closed casket adorned with white roses. Photographers snapped pictures. Guests dabbed their eyes.

And then I saw her.

Seraphina.

Wearing my emerald-green Valentino dress I’d saved for my wedding lunch... and our mother’s diamond teardrop necklace that she gave me on my last birthday, the one Dad gave her when I was born."

She stood at the front of the crowd, fake tears glistening on her cheeks as she clutched the microphone.

“My sister was beautiful, strong, and full of love,” she said, voice shaking with well-practiced grief. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

Seeing her draped in my life, sent a wave of nausea so strong I thought the heart monitor would scream."

“She’s with Lysander now,” Ryan said softly. “I never thought Seraphina could be so heartless. She didn’t even wait to mourn you before going after your man.”

I grabbed the notepad and pen beside my bed with shaky fingers and scribbled the words: Check my phone. Read the last message from her.

He found my phone in a sealed evidence bag, cracked but still working. He unlocked it, then began scrolling through the texts.

When he read the message from Seraphina, his jaw clenched.

Ryan looked up at me, horror in his eyes.

“She did this,” he whispered. “She did all of this. It wasn’t an accident. She tried to kill you.”

I nodded once, a slow and deliberate movement.

Ryan’s hands trembled slightly as he set the phone down. “Katherina, I swear, I didn’t know. I thought the crash was because of the storm. I had no idea she... I’m sorry.”

I didn’t write anything back immediately. I stared at the screen, that message still visible. I could hear her voice in my head. I could see her face at that funeral.

Seraphina didn’t just want my life,she wanted to erase me from existence.

But I survived.

And now, I would return on my own terms.

I picked up the pen again, and I wrote something slowly, clearly, letter by letter.

“Erase Katherina Vance. Build me someone new. Someone who can destroy them.”

Ryan read the note.

His eyes stayed locked on mine.