Chapter 4

My mind went blank. I grabbed Kyle's wrist and shouted, "I didn't do this!"

"Not you?" Ilona sneered, looking down at me. "I specifically told them not to put mango in it when I placed the order. Besides you, the delivery girl, only Kyle and I have touched this cake.

"So if it wasn't you, who was it? Kyle? Or did I do it to myself?"

Ilona's eyes gleamed with challenge, and everything clicked into place for me all at once.

The mango in that cake had almost certainly been her own doing, planted there herself to set the whole scene.

But what good did knowing the truth do me?

Kyle wasn't going to believe me. He only ever believed Ilona.

I swallowed the pain and gave Kyle a bitter smile. "Why don't you just check the security footage and find out for yourself who did this? With the power you have, finding the truth would take nothing more than a phone call.

"But I don't think you actually care about the truth. You just want an excuse to pin all of this on me."

I stared him down, my eyes flat and cold, and the whole room went tense.

Everyone was watching us. The hall had gone dead silent.

Kyle's expression froze, like he was working something through in his head, until Ilona let out a scream that shattered the standoff between us.

"Kyle! You'd rather believe her than me? Do you actually think I put mango in my own cake to try and kill myself?"

Ilona grabbed a fistful of Kyle's shirt, her eyes red and rimmed with tears, completely unraveling.

"Do you like this homewrecker that much? Is that why you're protecting her? Are you trying to help her kill me?"

Kyle panicked instantly and pulled her into his arms, murmuring soft reassurances.

"Of course not. You're my mate..."

"I don't believe you!"

Ilona pointed out at the bottomless black water beyond the deck, her eyes locked on me like she was a demon.

"Unless you throw her into the sea, I won't believe you don't care about her!"

Ilona turned and gave Kyle's subordinates a flat, emotionless order.

"Throw the homewrecker into the ocean."

My vision went white, my ears rang, and I stared at her in disbelief. "Ilona, have you lost your mind? I can't swim. I'll drown!"

Kyle hesitated for a second, but the moment he saw how worked up Ilona was getting, he turned to soothe her instead. "Ilona, calm down. Don't get upset. It's bad for your condition."

A massive wolf hauled me up and carried me toward the water.

I fought with everything I had, clawing at Kyle's shirt as they dragged me past him, my eyes red and desperate. "Kyle, please! Don't throw me in, I'll die..."

But he was too busy comforting Ilona to even glance my way.

They threw me into the sea like a sack of garbage, without an ounce of mercy.

The moment the water closed over me, it felt like it was flooding every organ in my body.

I couldn't breathe.

Then my mind sank into a darkness deeper than the ocean itself, and I lost consciousness completely.

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on the yacht's deck. I was soaked from head to toe, coughing up seawater.

"Leora, have you lost your mind?"

A bonding certificate landed on my face.

"You knew Ilona was struggling mentally, and you still brought our bonding certificate onto this boat and slipped it into the ballroom!" Kyle roared.

"Are you trying to drive her completely insane?"

The certificate fluttered to the ground, soaked through with seawater from my clothes.

The names we'd once signed with our own hands blurred into smudges, two dark stains bleeding across the page.

I used to believe that as long as I stayed with Kyle, I'd eventually make him fall in love with me.

For a while, I'd even believed that I already had.

But only now did I finally understand that in his heart, I would always come second to Ilona.

I laughed coldly, picked up the ruined certificate, and tore it clean in half.

"It doesn't matter whether this paper exists or not. If you think it upsets Ilona so much, just tear it up and tell her it was fake."

Kyle's face went rigid.