Chapter 9
965words
His hot tears soaked into my cold skin, making the embedded ring throb with renewed pain.
"Elena... I'm so sorry..."
He repeated endlessly, voice raw and broken like a dying animal.
I looked down at him.
I felt no satisfaction from my revenge.
"Get up," I said coldly.
"Your tears disgust me."
Damon froze, then slowly raised his head.
His bloodshot eyes swam with despair as he tried to touch my scar, his hand trembling uncontrollably.
"Your wound..."
"Don't touch it."
I slapped his hand away.
"Damon, if you think tears will save you, I'm walking out that door."
"No!"
Damon panicked.
He clutched at my skirt desperately, like a guilty man desperate to confess.
"I never made it to the manor that night because of Marcus."
He knelt there, words tumbling out as if I might vanish if he paused even for a breath.
"I was heading out when he burst in with lawyers, claiming there was a critical flaw in the family trust—that all assets were frozen.
"Said if we didn't fix it immediately, my father's entire inheritance would disappear overnight."
"He took my phone and locked me in the conference room for four hours."
"I was a fool... so damn greedy... for worthless money, I left you to burn..."
The truth finally emerged.
A twenty-year-old kid, manipulated like a puppet by his cunning uncle.
For the sake of a "future," he lost everything that mattered.
"That's what you owe Elena."
I stared at him without emotion.
"What about Vera?"
Damon froze.
Memories of that rainy night flooded back.
How he'd forced my face into the mud.
Made me eat filth.
How he'd sneered that I wasn't worthy to tie Elena's shoes.
"Crack!"
Damon slapped himself hard across the face.
Blood welled from his split lip.
"I'm a monster."
"I didn't know it was you... thought you were desecrating her memory... I was out of my mind..."
"Don't make excuses."
I crouched down, seized his chin, and forced him to meet my eyes.
"You humiliated Vera because you're a coward. You took out your helpless rage over losing Elena on someone you thought was innocent."
"You think you loved deeply? No. You're just cruel."
He finally realized that the gentle, smiling girl from his memories—the one who played piano and painted—had died three years ago.
Standing before him now was an avenger who'd clawed her way back from hell and seen through to his core.
"You've changed, Damon."
I sighed, the ice in my voice melting into profound weariness.
"The boy I remember once whispered on a rainy night that he didn't want to be some corporate shark—he just wanted to take me somewhere quiet, where nobody knew us, and open a little bookstore."
"That boy was kind and gentle. He would never have tortured someone because of his own pain."
I studied the man before me, wrapped in his expensive suit, reeking of whiskey and rage.
"That fire didn't just kill me—it killed that innocent boy too."
I exhaled deeply.
We could never go back.
All the necessary confessions had been made.
The room fell deathly silent.
Suddenly, Damon's gaze dropped to the raised flesh below my collarbone.
The area was angry red and swollen from our earlier struggle.
"Rejection reaction..."
His fingertip hovered above the ring.
"Metal embedded in living tissue... your body must be constantly fighting it..."
"Of course it is."
I smiled thinly.
"For three years it's inflamed, festered, triggered fevers that nearly killed me."
"Doctors wanted to remove it. I refused."
"Why?" Damon's eyes were raw with tears.
"Because the body is so predictable."
"When it realized it couldn't expel this foreign object, it compromised—growing a thick cocoon of scar tissue around it."
"Just like my hatred for you."
"Damon, while you were sobbing against me, did you consider that this metal is grinding against my bone with every breath?"
Damon crumbled completely.
The blade of guilt finally pierced him through.
"I'll help you remove it," he sobbed. "Even if I have to cut off my own flesh for a graft, I'll get it out..."
"That's for later."
I stood, smoothing my skirt.
"First, let's take out the trash."
Damon wiped his face.
He rose, slipping back into his cold-blooded executive persona.
But now, there was steel in his eyes.
I opened my email app, ready to forward all evidence to the police.
Suddenly, he caught my wrist.
"Damon?" I looked at him with surprised contempt. "What? Can't bear to see your uncle face justice after all?"
"No."
"This kind of dirty work shouldn't soil your hands."
He picked up the desk phone and dialed an extension.
"Security, lock down the mansion."
"Alert the police—the Economic Crimes Unit can enter now. Suspect Marcus Sterling is on the first-floor terrace."
"Also, prepare a press statement. Acknowledge serious financial irregularities within the group—all personal actions of former CFO Marcus Sterling. Confirm our full cooperation with authorities."
"And contact Homicide. The Valentine mansion fire three years ago was Marcus's work. We have evidence."
He hung up.
I studied him.
He moved too quickly, too urgently—as if afraid I'd act first, or desperately trying to prove something to me.
To prove he wasn't like Marcus.
To prove he had the courage to excise the cancer from his own family.
Police sirens wailed outside, filling the night.
The three-year nightmare was finally ending.
"It's over."
I whispered.
The hatred that had sustained me for three years suddenly drained away.
All that remained was a vast emptiness and bone-deep exhaustion.
I turned toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Damon's panicked voice followed me.
"Vengeance is served. We're even."
I opened the door without looking back.
The door clicked shut behind me.
