Chapter 153

Every photo, every video, landed like a hammer blow to Dean's skull.

"See it now?" Donna pulled the phone back and fixed him with a cold stare. "The Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition gold medal? Hestia's. Principal dancer at the National Classical Dance Open? Hestia's."

She paused, her voice dripping with mockery as she shattered his last illusion. "And that code name 'N' you're so proud of? That was Hestia's alias—one she chose to keep a low profile."

Dean stood paralyzed.

The air around him seemed to evaporate. His mouth hung open, but no sound came out.

His mind went blank. Only Donna's words echoed on a relentless loop.

'N' was Hestia.

The untouchable idol he'd worshipped. The genius he'd loved for years. The perfect image he'd sacrificed his dignity for, content to play the backup, the shadow—all of it was a lie.

Clio hadn't just stolen his heart. She'd stolen Hestia's entire life story, draped it over herself without a shred of guilt, and basked in his adoration.

And he—he'd come here to attack the real owner on behalf of the thief.

Dean slowly raised his head and looked at Hestia, standing a few steps away.

She was the same as ever. Cool. Detached. Her expression hadn't shifted once.

She hadn't even bothered to explain it to him herself. Because in her eyes, he was nothing more than a complete and utter joke.

Dean stared at the photos on Donna's phone, his eyes webbed with red, his chest heaving violently.

"Fake." He ground the word through clenched teeth, his voice dragged from somewhere deep in his throat—the desperate stubbornness of a dying man clinging to a lie. "All of it. Doctored photos. Fabricated videos. Hestia, you'd really go this far to destroy Clio."

He refused to believe it.

Because the moment he did, every sacrifice he'd made over the past five years would become the punchline of a joke.

He shoved his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a navy blue velvet box.

The edges were worn smooth from years of anxious fingers.

Dean opened it carefully. Inside lay a vintage pearl hair clip.

Along its side, tiny crystal stones were arranged to form a single letter: 'N.'

"Clio gave this to me herself, years ago." Dean held the clip up in front of Hestia's face, his eyes blazing with the manic intensity of a man clutching his last lifeline. "This was her personal token as 'N'! She gave me something this intimate—are you going to tell me this is yours too?"

Donna's expression hardened the instant she saw the clip.

She stepped forward and snatched it from his hand, examining it closely.

"What are you doing? Give it back!" Dean lunged for it.

"Give it back?" Donna let out a sharp, humorless laugh. She opened a hidden folder in her phone's photo album. "Where did you steal this from? Open your damn eyes and see who it really belongs to."

She tapped on a video and shoved the screen in his face.

In the video, a younger Donna sat at a workbench, tweezers in hand, carefully gluing tiny crystals onto a pearl hair clip.

In the background audio, she beamed at the camera: "Today's Hestia's birthday, and I made her a custom hair clip by hand. It has her code name 'N'—one of a kind in the whole world. See this crystal right here? I accidentally set it a little crooked, but that just gives it more handmade soul, right?"

At the end of the video, Donna placed the clip in Hestia's hair.

Hestia turned toward the camera and gave a faint, quiet smile.

Dean turned to stone.

His eyes darted between the phone screen and the clip in Donna's hand.

That crooked crystal.

An exact match.

Irrefutable.

Dean's face went white as paper. His lips trembled violently.

He felt a rusty, dull blade slowly carving the heart from his chest.

Clio had lied to him.

She hadn't just stolen his feelings—she'd taken someone else's birthday gift and passed it off as her own keepsake to give him.

The treasure he'd guarded for years, the proof he'd clung to as iron-clad evidence that Clio was 'N'—it was nothing more than something Clio had stolen from Hestia.

His flawless, sacred idol was a thief. Through and through.

"No... that's impossible..." Dean stumbled back two steps. His back slammed against the wall.

Five years. He'd spent five years playing her knight in shining armor.

He'd confronted Aaron for her. He'd stormed in here to attack Hestia for her. And all along, the person he was protecting was nothing but a liar and a thief.

He couldn't face Hestia's cold, indifferent gaze. He couldn't face his own five years of blind stupidity.

He spun around and staggered down the hallway like a man losing his mind.

Donna watched his retreating figure with open disgust.

"Serves him right." She tossed the hair clip into a nearby trash can, dusted off her hands, and shook her head. "Used as someone's weapon for years and couldn't even figure out who he actually loved. Honestly, you can't fix stupid."

She turned to Hestia and let out a long sigh, feeling the injustice on her behalf.

Years ago, Hestia had risen to prominence in the international ballet world under the code name 'N.'

But just as she was preparing to return home to develop her career, she'd been hit with a devastating wave of suppression from the Rogers family's financial empire.

Claire, determined to elevate her own protege, had deployed every weapon at her disposal to blacklist 'N' from commercial opportunities—even paying off media outlets to spread fabricated stories.

To protect the fledgling dance company she'd just founded, Hestia had been forced to bury her identity as 'N.' She'd essentially replaced her own resume, re-entering the industry as a newcomer, starting from zero.

No one could have predicted that before the identity issue was fully resolved, Clio—calculating and cunning to her core—would exploit the gap.

She hadn't just stolen Hestia's hair clip. She'd paraded around with 'N's' entire resume in front of outsiders like Dean who knew no better, building herself a fraudulent persona as a prodigy.

"If the Rogers family hadn't been breathing down your neck back then, you never would've had to put up with this kind of humiliation." Donna scowled, her voice bitter with resentment. "And now even idiots like him have the nerve to come screaming in your face."

Hestia's expression remained calm.

"What's fake can never become real." She turned and walked back into the rehearsal room. "Let him go."

---

The outskirts of the city. A run-down apartment.

The room reeked of instant noodles and mildew. The curtains were drawn tight, sealing out every trace of light.

A knock at the door.

Clio grabbed a paring knife from the table, her body pressed flat against the wall, eyes wide with terror.

"It's me." Dean's hoarse voice came from the other side.

The tension drained from Clio's body in an instant.

She dropped the knife and yanked the door open.

The moment she saw Dean, she threw herself into his arms like a drowning woman clutching the last piece of driftwood.

"Dean! You finally came!" Tears streamed down her face, pitiful and desperate. Her fingers clawed at his jacket. "I knew you wouldn't abandon me! Aaron—that bastard—left me. Claire blocked me. You're all I have left!"

Dean stood there and let her hold him.

His arms hung limp at his sides. He didn't wrap them around her the way he always had before.