Chapter 8

Ivana's face paled further.
"Dad… didn't die accidentally?"
Mrs. Priscilla shook her head.
"That was the story I told… to protect us."
Ivana's face crumpled, tears pouring down.
"Why?"
"Why lie?"
Mrs. Priscilla looked at her daughter with profound guilt.
"Ivana, your father was gone, but you and I still had to live!"
That single sentence held a lifetime of helplessness.
The crowd's fury reignited—not at me this time, but at the situation itself.

"So the mother knew the whole time?"

"She let an innocent girl take the fall for a decade?"

"Selena was sixteen! She lost everything!"

Mrs. Priscilla turned to face the crowd. She didn't flinch under their stares.

"Yes," she said. "I let Selena suffer. I let Lucy's parents suffer. Because I was a coward."

"Mom, stop—" Ivana tried to pull her back.

"No." Mrs. Priscilla gently removed her daughter's hands. "Selena bore the weight of my cowardice for ten years. The least I can do is bear this shame for the rest of mine."

She knelt before Lucy's parents.

"Adam. Maya. The man who hurt your daughter was my husband. I knew. I said nothing. And I let you blame an innocent girl."

Adam stared at her. His jaw tightened. His fists clenched.

Then they unclenched.

"Get up," he said roughly. "Kneeling won't bring Lucy back."

Mrs. Priscilla didn't move. "Nothing will bring Lucy back. But you deserve the truth. You've always deserved the truth."

The live broadcast had reached two hundred million viewers.

Across the country, people watched in stunned silence as the narrative they'd believed for a decade unraveled completely.

Selena wasn't the villain.

She was the only one who ever kept her promise.

Ivana crawled across the stage floor to where I lay in Adam's arms. Her mascara was ruined. Her hands were covered in my blood from when she'd shaken me earlier.

"Selena."

I opened my eyes. Barely.

"I built an empire," she said, voice breaking. "I invented technology that can read minds. I became the richest woman in the country. And the first thing I did with all that power was torture the one person who loved me enough to ruin her own life for mine."

"You didn't know," I said again.

"Stop saying that!" She grabbed my hand. "Stop forgiving me! I don't deserve it!"

"You're right," I whispered. "You don't."

Her breath caught.

"But Lucy would want me to."

Ivana broke. Completely, irrevocably broke.

She pulled me into her arms—gently, so gently, as if ten years of violence could be undone by one careful embrace.

"I'll fix this," she promised. "I'll fix everything."

"You can't fix me, Iva." I smiled faintly. "I'm dying, remember?"

"Then I'll make sure the world knows who you really are. What you really did."

She turned to the cameras, tears streaming, and said:

"My name is Ivana Priscilla. And I am publicly apologizing to Selena—the bravest, most selfless person I have ever known. For ten years, I believed she was protecting a monster. The truth is, she was protecting me."