Chapter 211
Lila gritted her teeth, staring at the faint reflection of her face in the dark hospital TV screen.
Her hair was a mess, her skin ghostly pale. Not the perfect, camera ready Lila Zhao the tabloids loved.
This Lila looked… broken. Defeated. And she hated it.
“Pathetic,” she whispered to herself.
Her throat tightened, the word tasting like venom.
The tabloids were already having a field day, she’d overheard the nurses gossiping. Ethan Zhao accused of domestic violence. Zhao heir’s wife hospitalized after altercation. Lila Zhao’s mysterious fall.
The headlines were everywhere, her name now paired with pity instead of glamour. She’d clawed her way to the top, into the spotlight, into Ethan’s world, and now, one accident, one scandal, and it was all slipping away.
And Ethan wasn’t even here.
She slammed her fist weakly against the mattress, the motion sending a pulse of pain through her head, but she didn’t stop. She wanted to feel something, anything other than the sharp sting of betrayal.
“He’s hiding,” she muttered under her breath. “Coward.”
A bitter laugh escaped her lips, low and humorless. “Of course he is. Can’t even face what he’s done. Can’t even look at me.”
Her eyes darted toward the table beside her bed, a bouquet of lilies sat there, too pristine, too polished. The tag read, From the Zhao Family, Get Well Soon.
Not from Ethan. From the family.
She scoffed, ripping the tag off and crumpling it in her fist. The flowers smelled too sweet, the kind of sweetness that made her sick.
“Oh, you’ll come crawling back,” she whispered darkly, staring out the window where the city lights glittered against the night. “You always do. You’ll realize I’m the only one who’ll stand by you when this is over.”
But deep down, a voice she couldn’t silence whispered otherwise, he’s already gone.
Her jaw clenched. No. She refused to accept that. Ethan owed her. He owed her loyalty, devotion, everything she’d sacrificed. She wasn’t some disposable scandal he could sweep away like dust.
If he thought this was over, he was wrong.
Very wrong.
Lila’s hand went to the phone on the side table. Her fingers hovered over Ethan’s number, but she didn’t press it. No. Not yet. Let him stew. Let him panic. Let him wonder what she might say to the press if she decided to open her mouth.
If Ethan Zhao wanted to disappear, she’d make sure the world dragged him back out, bloody, broken, and begging.
Her lips curved into a slow, dangerous smile as she whispered to herself, voice quiet but deadly calm, “Enjoy your silence, Ethan. Because when I’m done healing, I’ll make sure it’s the last peace you ever get.”
Lila lay there in that sterile hospital room, completely oblivious to how much the world outside her walls had already shifted.
She still thought she had cards to play, her charm, her victimhood, her pregnancy. She still believed that the right photo, the right headline, the right tearful appearance would pull Ethan back in.
She still believed she held some kind of power. But she didn’t know that power had already slipped through her fingers.
Across the city, the Zhao Group, once a towering name of pride, prestige, and old money, was crumbling from within. The shareholders had been blindsided. Overnight, controlling stakes had shifted.
A quiet, strategic acquisition had taken place under the public chaos of the scandal.
And now, the one name whispered with awe and disbelief through the Zhao boardrooms was Serena Lin.
The same woman Ethan once humiliated. The same woman he let the world mock. The same woman who had loved him once, and had now taken his empire.
While Lila slept, sedatives dulling the ache in her head, Ethan Zhao was living through a waking nightmare.
He sat in his father’s office, the heavy silence pressing down like a storm about to break. His mind still reeling from the hospital, from the doctor’s words that had shattered whatever scraps of denial he had left.
There was no pregnancy.
No baby. No heir.
All those sleepless nights, the guilt, the obligation that had kept him tied to Lila, built on a lie. A lie that had cost him everything.
Now, he’d lost both women. And worse, he’d lost his company.
The Zhao Group had been bought out, swallowed whole by a single quiet investor. It wasn’t until the morning meeting, when the board announced the new majority shareholder, that Ethan felt the floor vanish beneath him.
Serena Lin.
He could still hear the way the room fell into stunned silence. The look on his father’s face, shock first, then cold, furious calculation.
And Lila… she had no idea.
She didn’t know her fabricated pregnancy had detonated the last of their credibility. She didn’t know her hospital scandal had sent the Zhao name spiraling, making the shares plummet.
She didn’t know her accident had opened the perfect door for Lucien Feng and Serena Lin to walk in and take everything.
Back in the hospital, she shifted slightly, wincing, her hand brushing over her abdomen, a reflex born of her own lie. She thought of Ethan, imagining him torn, frantic, guilt ridden.
If only she knew.
If only she knew that, at that very moment, Ethan wasn’t thinking of her at all, he was thinking of Serena. Of the look in Serena’s eyes the last time they’d met. Of the woman who’d once trusted him completely, and the way she’d walked away without ever looking back.
Lila’s lips curved faintly in her sleep, a smug ghost of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. She thought the game was still hers. But outside that hospital window, the Zhao empire had already fallen.
And Serena Lin, the woman they’d once destroyed, was sitting on the throne.