Chapter 8

Eva sat quietly in the underground vault, flipping through the love letters Leo had once written to her by hand.

They were penned in military-grade invisible ink on black-market anti-forgery paper. In the end, she fed every single one of them into the shredder.

The morning she planned to leave, Leo stood by the bed, his expression grim as he stared at the notification on her phone.

"Your account just received a deactivation confirmation," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "Eva, what did you delete?"

Eva calmly took back the phone and pressed her fingerprint on the screen. The screen flashed a single message. "Identity deactivation successful."

"My old account was hacked. I had to shut it down," she answered smoothly, a faint smile on her lips.

Leo studied her for a moment, then wrapped his arms around her. "Guess what I brought back for you?"

She answered flatly, "Strawberry cupcake from Wendover Street."

Leo paused. "How did you know?"

He remembered that night vividly. She had been angry at him. He had botched a mission and still ran through the pouring rain across Wendover just to buy her favorite cupcake.

That night, she had looked at him and said, "It's not that I'm easy to please. It's just… I still love you. But if the day comes when I stop loving you, even putting a gun to your head won't make a difference."

Leo pulled out the cupcake from the insulated bag, and she took it without a word.

"My wife is too smart. I can't hide anything from you."

Just then, he got an encrypted call and left in a hurry.

Eva followed him to the hallway but stopped at the door.

Outside, Cleo stood there in a long trench coat. Underneath it, a provocative black lace dress clung to her curves.

Leo's face instantly darkened. "Are you out of your mind? I told you not to show up when Eva's home."

Cleo threw herself into his arms, her eyes red with unshed tears. "I can't take this anymore… Even the baby misses you."

She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her belly.

Leo froze. He quickly pulled away. "Go home. I'll deal with this in a few days."

But Cleo leaned in and kissed him. He resisted, yet his hand instinctively slipped under her coat.

A second later, he pushed her back gently. "Just tonight. One time. That's it."

Cleo smirked victoriously and dragged him toward the car.

That night, when Leo returned to the villa, he spoke to Eva in his softest voice. "Something came up at the company. I need to take care of it, but once it's handled, I'm all yours. Okay?"

Eva looked at him and replied with gentle concern, "Go ahead. Be safe."

After he left, Eva stared at the untouched box of cupcakes on the table. She didn't take a single bite.

A single tear slipped down her cheek silently.

She picked up the suitcase she had packed days ago and sent one last message. "Two weeks are up. You can open your anniversary gift now."

Leo responded almost immediately. "Wait for me. Let's open it together."

Eva smiled faintly. She found the word "together" almost laughable.

She forwarded Leo every last message, photo, and video Cleo had sent over the past few days, each one dripping with spite and shameless provocation.

Then, she snapped her SIM card in half and went completely offline.

She boarded a flight bound for Felnor, under a new name, ready for a new life.

At that moment, Leo had just stepped out of Cleo's house. When he returned home, the place felt hollow.

"Eva, I'm back…" he called out.

His voice echoed through the silence.

The photographs were gone. Their wedding portrait had disappeared. The cherry trees in the backyard had been uprooted.

The maids were planting roses in their place.

"Who told you to touch that?" he roared.

One of the maids flinched. "Mrs. Sereno gave the order three days ago… and you told us her instructions always take priority…"

Leo stood frozen in place, like the ground beneath him had crumbled.

For the first time, he realized Eva wasn't acting out of anger or impulse. She had really left him.

She had ripped out the trees they had planted together, even the one that bore her name. It was as if she were burying their past, roots and all.

"Where did she go? When did she leave?" Leo's voice was low and hoarse.

He stood at the threshold like a man unraveling.

The bodyguards and maids lined up silently. No one dared meet his eyes. "Don Leo, Mrs. Sereno left early this morning with a suitcase. She didn't say a word or leave a note."

She was gone.

He ran half the criminal underworld of Veritas, yet he couldn't even trace where his wife had gone.

Eva would never go to her parents. Those cold, distant people had remarried years ago and even cut ties with her.

Leo began making calls, starting with her closest friends, then his informants, and finally the lowlife runners in the underground network.

"Is Eva with you?"

"No, and if she were, do you think I'd dare lie to you?"

He made call after call, but nothing turned up. Eva had vanished without a trace.

In a fit of rage, Leo ordered the entire Sereno syndicate's intel division to track her. However, not a single camera caught which train she boarded or which street she crossed.

"Eva, this isn't funny," Leo muttered, slumped in his office chair, his fingers digging into his scalp. His voice cracked into a growl.

For a moment, he was yanked back to his youth. He was standing frozen at a street corner, and his parents lay lifeless in a pool of blood, their blood smeared across his face.

Just then, Leo's phone rang. It was an encrypted line—an emergency alert from one of his insiders. He answered.

A frantic voice came through on the other end. "Don Leo, we just got a tip. Someone reported finding a woman's body out by the outskirts this morning. Female. Her age and build… match Mrs. Sereno's."

Leo's face turned ashen. "What the hell did you just say?"