Chapter 3

"Who's out there?!" Mateo barked sharply.

With nowhere left to hide, I simply pushed the door open and stood before them, my spine ramrod straight. The harsh light cast over my bloodless face, making me look like a vengeful ghost.

Isabella instinctively shielded the child behind her. A flash of panic crossed her face, but it was quickly replaced by that same condescending hypocrisy. "Maya... what are you doing down here?"

"If I didn't come down here, how would I have ever known that my fiancé and my best friend already share a child?" I stepped into the room, my voice eerily calm.

Mateo's gaze darkened. "Maya, since you know, I won't hide it from you anymore. Leo is my flesh and blood, and Isabella is his mother. But my promise to you still stands. You are my wife. Leo is innocent..."

"Innocent?" I let out a cold, hollow laugh, my eyes brimming with pure mockery. "And what about me? When you and she were using Navajo to plot how to sacrifice me to the Rojas family, when I was being repeatedly tortured by those death-row inmates... did you ever think I was innocent, Mateo?"

At those words, the color instantly drained from both of their faces.

"You... you understand Navajo?" Mateo's eyes widened in sheer disbelief.

"Are you that surprised? To keep your little conspiracy under wraps, are you going to silence me right here and now?" I snatched a heavy letter opener from the desk, aiming the blade straight at Isabella. "You wear a police badge, yet you do filthier work than anyone else!"

"Maya, calm down!" Isabella cried, shrinking behind Mateo's broad back.

"To hell with your calm!" I screamed, lunging toward her with the blade.

"Maya! Calm down, drop the knife!" Mateo lunged forward with bloodshot eyes, his voice cracking in agonized pleading. "Everything is my fault! I was too greedy, I deserve to die! You can torture me, punish me however you want—I'll spend my whole life making it up to you! But please, don't dirty your hands, don't hurt the child!"

I didn't actually want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to mercilessly tear away their masks.

But hiding behind Isabella, little Leo let out a shriek of absolute terror.

Hearing his son's cry, Mateo instinctively pulled Isabella and the child into his embrace and shoved me forcefully away.

"Enough! Drop the knife!"

He had used entirely too much force. My already battered, fragile body flew backward like a kite with a snapped string, crashing violently against the hard corner of a heavy wooden cabinet.

An excruciating, tearing pain ripped through my lower abdomen, as if something fundamentally essential had just shattered inside me. I curled up on the carpet in absolute agony, cold sweat instantly soaking through my clothes.

Right at that moment, Isabella's police radio crackled frantically: "Rojas remnants just launched a heavy-weapons assault on the North District warehouse! The perimeter is collapsing!"

Isabella's face twisted in alarm. She scooped up the screaming Leo. "Mateo! It's not safe here. The Rojas men could breach at any second, and Leo will be terrified!"

Mateo looked at me, curled into a ball of agony on the floor, and then at his son who was crying so hard he was gasping for air. A violent, torturous struggle flashed in his eyes.

"Take her to the safe house in the suburbs! No one is allowed to let her out without my orders!" he roared at the guards rushing in. Snatching the crying Leo into his arms, he stormed out of the basement without looking back.

Long after they left, a surge of warm liquid gushed down my inner thighs.

Clutching my stomach in despair, I let out a desolate, hollow laugh.

A delayed, profoundly absurd realization exploded in my mind—I was pregnant.

A few hours later, I was dumped at the suburban safe house.

As night fell, muffled gunshots suddenly echoed outside. The agonized screams of the bodyguards pierced the night sky.

The heavy door was kicked open, and several Rojas hitmen wearing skull masks stormed into the room.

The leader looked at my deathly pale face and sneered. "Finding you took some real effort. But it seems someone on the inside is more than happy to see you dead."

He raised his gun, his tone dripping with cruel mockery. "That woman, Isabella, asked us to send her regards. She said as long as you take your last breath, Mateo will completely break. For us, that's a damn good deal."

So that was it. Isabella wouldn't even spare my half-dead life.

"Get it over with," I whispered, closing my eyes.

The gunshot roared. The bullet tore straight through my chest. The massive kinetic impact flipped my body backward, sending me crashing through the shattered second-floor window. I plummeted straight down, smashing into the roaring, pitch-black rapids of the river below.

Meanwhile, at the North District warehouse shootout.

Mateo, drenched in blood, had just blown the brains out of the last Rojas straggler when his most trusted lieutenant stumbled over, his face pale as a sheet.

"Boss... something happened! The safe house was attacked! Miss Maya... she was shot and fell into the river!"

The gun in Mateo's hand slipped, clattering into a pool of blood. He stared blankly at his subordinate, his mind instantly going utterly white. The woman he had so ruthlessly abandoned in the name of "responsibility" had, in the end, been pushed by his own hands into a bottomless, irredeemable abyss.