Chapter 3

Three days later, I held a painfully bare funeral for my mother in a desolate graveyard just outside the city.

No family. No friends. No flowers.

Just me, standing alone in the biting wind, watching the gravediggers lower her urn into a narrow plot.

The cold air stung my eyes, but I didn't have a single tear left to shed.

Just as I was about to drop the last handful of dirt over the grave, a deafening mechanical roar shattered the dead silence of the cemetery.

I whipped my head around.

A massive yellow bulldozer was aggressively barreling straight toward me.

The machine ground to a halt, and Declan vaulted down from the cab.

"Declan, what the hell are you doing here?" I stared at him, my voice like ice.

"Ending your sickening little game," Declan snapped, striding toward me. His eyes burned with a rage so violent it looked like he wanted to rip me apart. "Hand it over."

"What are you talking about?"

"Still playing dumb?" Declan lunged, grabbing me fiercely by the collar. "Blair swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills last night! If the maids hadn't found her in time, she'd be dead!"

He pointed a vicious finger at the half-filled grave, his jaw clenched. "I get that you're toxically jealous, but to steal her most prized memory box—the one with her late mother's keepsakes? You texted her, threatening to bury it in the dirt just to mentally destroy her and push her to suicide?!"

"Push her to suicide?" I was shaking uncontrollably, my nails digging so hard into my palms they drew blood. The sheer absurdity of it nearly broke me.

"What could possibly be worth using my own mother's death as a cover?!" I screamed. "That is my mother's ashes in there! Declan, just because of a few lies from that woman, you're going to dig up my mother's grave?!"

"I checked the medical records Blair showed me. Your mother was transferred to a sanitarium in Geneva last week! Stop using a living person to play the victim!"

Declan couldn't hear a word I was saying. To him, this was just another one of my bottomless lies.

He shoved me away so hard I stumbled, then turned to the bulldozer operator and gave a sharp hand signal: "Dig it up."

The massive steel bucket was raised high, carrying an apocalyptic momentum before it slammed down onto my mother's headstone.

"No! You can't do this!" I threw myself forward recklessly, trying to block the machine with my own body.

"Get out of the way!" Declan grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked, throwing me brutally to the ground.

My head struck the hard stone steps, and my vision blacked out for a second.

Close on its heels came the sickening crunch of shattering stone. Under the relentless crush of steel, my mother's newly erected tombstone was instantly ground into dust.

The freshly turned soil was violently scooped away. The urn was ripped brutally from the earth, tumbling into the muddy puddle beside it.

The urn cracked wide open.

The ashes spilled everywhere, instantly soaked by the freezing rain. They mixed with the cemetery mud, turning into a foul, indistinguishable sludge.

I scrambled on my hands and knees in the puddle, clawing desperately at the dirt, trying to scoop her ashes back up. But it was pouring. The rushing water mercilessly washed the ashes away.

No matter how hard I tried, all that remained slipping through my fingers was mud.

"Mom..." I mumbled. There were no tears, only a profound, bone-deep exhaustion.

Declan looked down at my wretched state and sneered coldly. "You brought this on yourself, Serafina. Behave from now on, and don't ever upset Blair again."

With that, he turned, climbed back into his vehicle, and drove off without looking back.

I carefully scraped what little ash-mixed dirt was left and pocketed it.

Then, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.

It connected quickly. A deep, smooth male voice came through the speaker.

"Serafina? Well, this is a rare pleasure. What, have you finally figured it out?"

"Alexander," I said, staring at the bleak, heavy sky. My voice was completely flat, devoid of any emotion. "You've always wanted the 40% absolute controlling stake in Declan's family corporation, haven't you?"

Alexander. Declan's most ruthless rival in the business world.

"Oh? And what are your terms?"

"Arrange an accident for me," I said coldly. "I want to disappear completely—physically and socially. In exchange, I will transfer all the shares under my name to you, for absolutely nothing."

"Deal."

......

Three days later. Dead of night, on the winding coastal cliffs of California's Highway 1.

An out-of-control red sports car smashed through the guardrail, plunging hundreds of feet from the cliff into the Pacific Ocean.

Mid-air, the gas tank ruptured, engulfing the car in a massive, blinding fireball.

At that precise moment, in his private study, Declan's phone buzzed.

He frowned and answered it. From the other end came the grave, heavy voice of a state trooper:

"Mr. Declan, I regret to inform you. Your wife's vehicle drove off a cliff in California and exploded. We have confirmed there are no survivors. However, near the wreckage, we recovered a few of her personal effects..."