Chapter 3

It should have been a minor thing, but the Ashfords sank their teeth in and wouldn't let go.

I didn't have to guess who was stirring it up from behind. Camilla wanted me humiliated.

So the whole circle heard about it, until it grew bad enough to force a meeting of the family heads.

In the meeting room, every face that turned to me was cold.

I knew they'd never liked me to begin with.

After the circus at my wedding, my name had been mud out there.

Now that something like this had happened, they had all the more reason to come after me.

Someone gave a cold laugh.

"She really is that man's daughter. She can blow a nothing incident up until the whole world knows, clearly just to put the Graves family on the spot."

Then he turned to me, his voice dripping with mockery.

"Take your revenge if you must, Donna, but could you not pick somewhere with no witnesses?"

"Going after a child in front of everyone is beyond reckless."

The room went still for a beat.

"Let's focus on a fix. This has blown up, and the Ashfords won't budge."

"Wasn't the Donna hospitalized for psychiatric issues before? We could say she was triggered, lost control, and made a mistake in the moment. That gives the Ashfords their explanation and makes it easy to sell outside too."

My fingertips went rigid, and it was a long time before I slowly lifted my head to look at them.

"So what?"

"You're going to nail me down as a madwoman?"

When I finished, the room fell silent.

I looked at Lucian.

He sat at the head of the table, quiet for a moment, then finally said, flatly:

"It's not a bad idea."

When the meeting broke up, people filed out one by one.

I stayed where I was, hands and feet cold, unable to move for a long time.

The deputy paused as he passed me, his voice full of contempt.

"Thankfully, the Don keeps business and personal apart."

"Otherwise, if this had really blown up, who knows how far you'd have dragged the Graves family down."

Then he gave me a cold look.

"If the Donna's so worried about her reputation, she shouldn't have done it in the first place."

"Marrying you was the worst deal the Don ever made."

In that moment, it felt like the biggest joke I'd ever heard.

Business and personal?

If the woman across the table had been anyone but Camilla Sloane, he'd never have treated me like this.

The one who betrayed the family first was him.

Not long after, Lucian found me.

"Stay in your room for a while. Let the heat die down."

Then he had things sent up: books, records, art supplies, several sets of expensive jewelry.

All the things I used to love.

At the end, he touched my hair, his voice tired. "Vivian, be good. Stop causing trouble."

It took me a few days to realize that letting the heat die down really meant two guards posted outside my door.

I couldn't even walk down to the garden without Lucian's say-so first.

Three days in, Dr. Reed messaged me.

"Miss Lockwood, are we still going ahead with the thing you asked about?"

Yes. Of course we were going ahead.

The problem was, I couldn't even get out the door.

First I said my condition had relapsed and I needed to see Dr. Reed at once.

But half an hour later, the house doctor and the psychiatrist walked into the villa together instead.

Then I took a fall down the stairs and said the private doctors weren't enough, that I needed a hospital.

But they checked me over and only said it was nothing serious, a few days of rest and I'd be fine.

That was the moment my patience finally ran out for good.

That night I broke everything in the room I could break, letting them see the state I was in.

The guards had no choice but to call Lucian, and the voice on the other end was edged with impatience.

"Vivian, I'm in the middle of cleaning up the mess she left behind."

"Can you not make my life harder?"

Then the line went dead.

I sat in the wreckage, hair in my face, my eyes blank.

Cleaning up her mess?

Then what were these, the photos the investigators had just sent me?

In them, Lucian had taken Camilla and her son to an amusement park, even letting the boy ride on his shoulders.

In another, the two of them sat on a bench by the water at dusk, watching the sun go down, their silhouettes exactly like a couple in love.

He'd even traded his usual black suit for the kind of pale coat Julian always wore.

And he'd never had any use for Julian Ashford.

I glanced at the calendar. It was March seventh.

He was probably busy celebrating Camilla's birthday.

So this was what he meant by handling it.

The maid took one look at the state of me, sighed, and turned to leave.

The next second, someone let out a cry of alarm.

"Donna! What are you doing?"

Blood ran from my wrist and dripped off my fingertips to the floor.

There was a broken shard of the vase still in my hand.

I leaned back into the wreckage and stared up at the ceiling, hollowed out.

"Now. Can I go out now."

The maid's screaming carried, and the whole villa went into chaos.

They got me into a car fast.

The guards meant to take me to the private hospital the Graves family always used.

But the moment the car pulled out, I grabbed the sleeve of the man beside me, my voice shaking so hard it was barely audible.

"Dr. Reed."

"Take me to Dr. Reed."

The men in the car traded a look.

They all knew Dr. Reed had handled my therapy from the start, so they thought nothing of it and turned the car around at once.

Half an hour later, they wheeled me into the emergency room.

When the doors of the emergency room shut, the corridor went dead silent.

I didn't know how long it was before Dr. Reed came out and pulled down his mask.

"I'm sorry."

"We did everything we could."

Every face in the hall went white.

When they called Lucian, the line rang a long time before he picked up. He was fastening that gemstone necklace around Camilla's neck.

His voice was thick with the irritation of being interrupted.

"Acting up again?"

"Tell her I'll come see her later."

The guard held the phone, his voice shaking so badly it barely held together.

"Don…"

"The Donna. She took her own life. We couldn't save her."

The other end went suddenly silent.