“Tell me, could the fact that you can’t conceive now, that even IVF won’t work, be because this child resents you?”
Her words pierced my heart, tearing flesh and blood as if with claws.
I slammed her onto the table, drew my dagger, and sliced across her face.
“Did the priest tell you that today you would meet a blood calamity?”
“Evie, I had originally wanted to let you go, but you are asking for death!”
With a flick of my wrist, blood blossomed across her face like a cruel, dark flower.
Just as the dagger neared her neck, Zavier kicked it away with a sharp force.
“Enough! How long are you going to keep making trouble?”
Before his words faded, I drew a gun and pressed it to Evie’s forehead.
The fury in his eyes deepened. “Tiffany! Was what Evie said wrong?”
“Look at what you’ve become! How are you any different from a lunatic?”
“If it weren’t for you insisting on going out to kill that night, would the child have died? When will you ever reflect on your own mistakes?”
The gun in my hand trembled violently, almost firing. I shook uncontrollably, every fiber of me quivering.
He knew as well as I did why our child had died. Those enemies, hunting revenge, were after him.
First, they found my parents’ villa and slaughtered them, then strung their bodies in front of the house to lure Zavier out.
When that failed, they dragged me from the basement and used the child as leverage, forcing me to call him. I called, but he didn’t answer.
They thought I was only his lover, so they chose to vent all their hatred on me. Hundreds of thugs came, planning to humiliate me, to film it, and send it to Zavier.
But they underestimated a mother’s will to protect her child. They all died, horribly.
That night, I wept endlessly, clutching my parents’ corpses. With my bare hands, I dug them a grave in front of the villa until my ten fingertips were shredded and bleeding. Through the long hours of digging, Zavier knelt beside me in silence.
By dawn, the child had been cut out, already without breath.
He cradled the child and knelt before me for three days and three nights. “Tiffany, from this moment, this life is yours. My blood will only flow for you.”
I pressed a cigarette butt into Evie’s chest, my smile cruel and jagged.
“You’re right. It’s all my fault. My gravest mistake was trusting your lies.”
Evie wailed and threw herself into Zavier’s arms. “She’s already lost her mind!”