Chapter 4

The day after our wedding, Damian launched his first counter-attack. He joined forces with the senior members of the Hart family to prove I had lost my mind.

I sat in a cold, glass-walled conference room. The elders looked at me with pity and suspicion. Their goal was simple: suspend my right to manage my assets by claiming I was suffering from trauma or manipulation.

A lawyer slid a document across the table. It was a summary of a twelve-year-old internal accident file.

"According to testimonies, Lila Vale successfully evacuated the fire, but re-entered at the request of Evelyn Hart "

My fingers turned ice-cold. For twelve years, I thought this was just a cruel rumor. I never knew it was written down as an official "fact".

I took a steady breath, fighting the urge to cry. I looked at the paper again. It was a summary—unsigned, unverified, and missing witness names.

"This is not evidence," I said, my voice sharp. "If this file is legitimate, why is it missing signatures? Why is there no chain of custody?".

Damian’s lawyer frowned, caught off guard by my demand for legal rigor. "The original file is in the archives, but it's—"

"I don't care about 'it's'," I interrupted, staring directly at Damian. "If you are going to accuse me, do it with real evidence. Or are you afraid of what the original file might actually say?".

Damian’s jaw tightened. "Fine. Get the original files," he snapped at the lawyer, confident that the fake narrative was buried too deep to be found.

I looked at Damian’s fake, composed face and pushed my phone to the center of the table.

"Since you are so worried about my sanity," I said, hitting play, "let’s see how 'sane' you were the night before our wedding."

The recording echoed through the closed conference room:

"Once the wedding is over, I will take her family's trust fund. I will strip her of everything, piece by piece."

"Death is too cheap for her. I want her to pay for Lila for the rest of her life..."

The elders’ faces turned ashen.

Yet, Damian did not collapse. He leaned forward, flashing a cold, mocking smile.

"Do you hear this, everyone?"

Damian shouted, pointing at me. His voice dripped with feigned betrayal.

"She spied on me in my private study! She took a conversation I had about hostile takeovers and spliced it together to ruin my reputation!"

He stepped toward me, his presence looming and aggressive.

"Evelyn, you are sick. You have a severe persecution complex. You cannot face the guilt of killing Lila, so you hallucinate that I am out to get you! You’re even faking evidence to justify your betrayal!"

"She is delusional!" Damian turned to the elders. "She needs an immediate psychiatric hold!"

The room shifted. To the elders, a heartbroken, manipulative woman looked far more dangerous than a composed, successful businessman. Rebecca’s hand slipped from my wrist; she looked away, defeated.

Damian looked at me with a cruel, victorious smirk. He was telling me without words: You can never escape me.

But I didn't break. I stood up, meeting his aggressive gaze head-on.

"Forged? Delusional?" I laughed. I walked around the table until I was inches from his face.

"Damian, why are you so desperate to bury me in mud?" I whispered, low enough that only he could hear. "You keep saying I killed Lila. You keep saying I can't handle the guilt... fine. Everyone is here. Tell them. How did I kill her?"

Damian’s eyes turned murderous. "Stop acting like you have amnesia! If you hadn't forced her to go back—"

"Who told you that?" I cut him off, my voice sharp enough to draw blood. "How did I make her go back? Did I kneel? Did I use a knife? Did you actually see me force her into that fire?"

He had controlled me for twelve years. He was used to my silence and my tears. He could not handle me pushing back. His chest heaved, his ego shattering under the pressure of my questions.

"Are you all blind?!" Damian slammed his fist onto the table, his eyes bloodshot with rage. "The place was burning! If it wasn't for you, she wouldn't have been a lunatic, running back in to pull that damn master alarm—!"

His roar echoed against the walls.

Then, total silence.

His mouth stayed open, but no sound came out.

The room went dead silent.

I stared at him. The missing pieces of my memory screamed inside my head.

"What master alarm?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Because I lost my memory of those last few hours, no one had ever told me the truth. No one ever told me Lila went back for an alarm.

I stood up slowly. I did not look away from him.

"Damian," I said, my voice cutting through the quiet room like a knife. "If you always firmly believed that I made Lila go back..."

I paused, watching the color completely drain from his face.

"...how do you know what she actually went back to do?"

Damian's face changed completely.