CHAPTER FOUR

​Lysandra’s POV

​The silver SUV drove through the quiet streets for several minutes, and I wrapped the thick blanket tightly around my shivering shoulders, looking over at the elderly woman sitting right next to me while the city lights flashed across her face.

​"Where exactly were you running to in the middle of the night in a hospital gown, Lysandra, and who is trying to hurt you?" she asked, her voice calm and steady as she looked at me, waiting for an answer while the car kept moving through the dark.

​The words tumbled out of me in a desperate rush, and I explained how Atlas had announced he was single on live television, how our entire apartment had been emptied of every single piece of furniture, how my father had sold me out for cash, and how two men had just tried to kill me in my hospital bed, but as I finished speaking, I noticed a strange, cold look in her eyes, and she did not look surprised by a single word of my story.

​"You aren't shocked at all by what I just told you, are you?" I asked, my voice cracking with absolute exhaustion as I stared at her, but she just shook her head slowly, looking out the window as she replied, "The Devereux family is capable of terrible things when they want to protect their reputation, dear, so you need to rest for now and we will talk more in the morning."

​"I can't just rest while my whole life is being erased," I said, my chest tightening as the anger inside me began to boil over, and I looked at her firmly, adding, "I need to look Atlas in the eye and make him explain this to me, because there is no way he can just look at me and pretend I don't exist."

​"Going to see him right now is a mistake, Lysandra, because they are prepared for you and you don't have any power against them," she warned, turning her head back to look at me with a serious expression, but I was completely fed up with running, so I ignored her advice and demanded to be taken to a hotel so I could dress myself properly for the morning.

​The very next morning, I refused to accept being deleted from existence, so I walked straight into the lobby of the Devereux corporate headquarters, demanding to see my husband at the front reception desk

I managed to reach the executive elevators before two large security guards stepped in front of me, and just then, the elevator doors opened and Atlas walked out into the lobby, looking immaculate in a tailored suit alongside his manager.

​"Atlas! Please, look at me! Tell these people who I am and stop this insane joke right now!" I screamed, trying to push past the arms of the guards, but Atlas stopped for only a brief second, his face completely expressionless as he turned to the chief of security and said, "Get this crazy woman out of my building immediately, and make sure she is barred from the property permanently because I don't want her disturbing my staff again."

​The guards shoved me out the doors onto the plaza, and I completely broke down on the long walk back to the elderly woman’s house, weeping openly on the sidewalk because I could not understand what had gone wrong, or how the man who loved me could look right through me like I was a complete stranger.

​When I finally walked through her front doors, the woman found me sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing over my old college notebook where I kept all my technical sketches, and she walked over to take a closer look at the pages.

​"What are these drawings, Lysandra?" she asked, pulling a chair out and sitting down next to me, and she pointed to the detailed diagrams on the paper, asking, "Are these tracking sensors for hockey gear?"

​"Yes, it is a project I started in college for designing hockey performance technology that tracks player speed and impact data in real-time, but it doesn't matter anymore because my life is over," I muttered, wiping my wet face with the back of my hand, as she picked up the notebook, studying the math and the schematics with intense focus.

​"My name is Evelyn Villeneuve, and I know exactly how valuable this technology is because my family built our fortune in the tech sector," she said, looking me dead in the eye with a fierce expression, and she continued, "You have a rare brilliance, Lysandra, and if you want to survive, protect your unborn child, and eventually get your revenge, we are flying to Europe tonight so you can build an empire where they can never touch you again."

​"Why are you doing all this for me, Evelyn? You don't even know me," I asked, looking at her in total disbelief, but she just offered a sad smile and replied, "Let's just say I have an old score to settle with the Devereux family, and I see a lot of myself in you, so pack the few things you have because the plane is already fueled and waiting."

​Seven years passed in exile across the ocean, and I completely changed my physical appearance by coloring my hair dark, adopting the Villeneuve name, and pouring every single waking hour into building a massive sports-tech corporation while raising my beautiful daughter, Lysara, all on my own. 

I became one of the youngest and most successful CEOs in the entire global industry, securing major contracts with European sports leagues, and I swore to myself that I would never set foot in the country that destroyed me, but my entire world shattered one evening when the police called to inform me that Evelyn had been brutally murdered inside her home office.

​I rushed back to the estate, my heart breaking into pieces over the sudden loss of the only woman who had protected me and later legally adopted me as her own daughter, and the family lawyer met me in the library, handing me a heavy, sealed manila envelope.

​"Miss Villeneuve, your mother wanted you to have this private letter immediately if anything ever happened to her, and she strictly ordered that no one else should see the contents," the lawyer stated, handing it over before leaving the room so I could be completely alone.

​I tore the paper open with trembling fingers, expecting a standard legal document or a final business instruction, but the words written in her familiar handwriting made my breath catch in my throat as I read the unbelievable truth about our lives.

​The letter explained that we were actually connected by blood, and that I had grown up believing my mother died in childbirth because my father had hidden the truth from me after taking a massive payout decades ago, but Evelyn had actually been forced to flee the country to escape the Devereux family's dangerous games. She wrote that she had spent years searching for her lost baby, always believing that my father had let me die, and she truly did not know I was still alive until that exact rainy night when she spotted me running for my life down the street and pulled me into her car.