Chapter 156

His heart felt like it was being sawed apart with a rusty blade, over and over.

Aaron doubled over, clutching his chest, a strangled, animal sound tearing from his throat.

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Three days later. The Harvey Group underground parking garage.

Cold wind swept through the concrete expanse. Aaron had just stepped out of the Maybach when a dark figure lunged from behind a support column.

"Aaron!"

Clio wore a threadbare dark coat, her hair tangled, her face white as chalk.

She'd slipped past security. She latched onto the sleeve of his bespoke suit like a drowning woman seizing her last hope.

"Aaron, please help me. The police are looking for me everywhere—I have nowhere left to go..." Her eyes were rimmed red, tears falling on command, her voice trembling with practiced fragility. She made herself as small and pitiful as possible. "For the sake of everything we shared these past five years—just give me enough money to disappear. I swear I'll never come back."

Aaron stopped.

He looked down at the woman before him.

Watched her squeeze out tears with expert precision. Watched her perform this helpless, broken-bird routine she'd perfected over the years.

Once, it had worked every time. One tear from her and he'd cave, no matter how far he had to bend.

Now, looking at that face, all he felt was his stomach turning inside out.

"Get off me." Aaron's voice was ice. He wrenched his arm free with open revulsion, as if he'd touched something filthy beyond description. "Don't touch me."

Clio stumbled back a step. She froze.

She assumed he was still angry—or embarrassed by the online scandal. That was all.

"Aaron, did Hestia say something to you?" Clio bit her lip, falling into her old habit of deflection. "Don't believe her! She's trying to turn you against me! She's jealous of how good you are to me—she posted all that stuff online just to make you hate me!"

"Shut up." Aaron's gaze was glacial, his eyes fixed on her like she was a corpse. "Don't let her name come out of your mouth. It's disgusting. Get out. Now. And never let me see you again."

Clio's composure shattered. She couldn't leave. Walking out of this garage meant the end of the line.

Convinced that Hestia had poisoned his mind, she dropped to her knees on the concrete with a sharp crack.

"Aaron! You can't do this to me! I saved your life!" Clio screamed through her sobs. "The car accident—I risked everything to drag you out of that wreck! I still have the scars on my hands! Have you forgotten?"

Aaron's eyes went dead cold. The air around them seemed to crystallize.

"You saved me?" A laugh scraped out of him—the sound of something crawling up from the depths of hell.

He pulled out his phone, opened the grainy convenience store footage, and hurled it at her face.

The phone hit the ground, screen up, the video looping.

Clio looked down. Every trace of color bled from her face. Her lungs forgot how to work.

On screen, Hestia—hands slick with blood—hauled Aaron from the burning wreckage. And there was Clio, lurking in the shadows like a common thief, waiting until Hestia staggered away before creeping forward to pick up the bloodstained scrap of fabric.

"And this." Aaron pulled a photocopied university record from his pocket and flung it at her feet. "That winter, you were overseas on exchange. The person in that rehearsal room was Hestia."

Clio's entire body convulsed. She collapsed onto the freezing concrete.

Every lie. Every mask. Shredded beyond repair in a single moment.

The evidence was irrefutable. She didn't have a shred of defense left.

"Why?" Aaron advanced on her, step by step, his eyes burning crimson, the vein at his temple pulsing violently. "Clio, tell me why. Why would you tell a lie this massive? Why did you deceive me for five years and make me lose the person I truly love?"

Clio retreated until her back was pinned flat against the support column. Nowhere left to run.

"No... that's not..." She shook her head, still grasping at straws.

Aaron's reason snapped. His hand shot out, closing around her throat, lifting her clean off the ground and slamming her against the pillar.

"Ghhk—" Clio's feet dangled. Her hands clawed frantically at his fingers. Her face flushed a violent purple-red, her eyes bulging.

Aaron's grip tightened. Veins roped across the back of his hand. His eyes were flooded with raw, murderous fury.

"You stole her life. You stole her achievements. You played both of us like fools. You deserve to die." His teeth ground together, his fingers aching to crush her windpipe.

Oxygen drained away, fraction by fraction.

Clio's brain starved for air. The primal terror of death engulfed her completely.

She could smell it. Death was right there.

"S-sorry..." The word came out in broken shards, barely forced past his grip. Tears and snot smeared across her face. "Let... let go..."

Aaron's hand loosened a fraction—but his fingers still locked around her throat.

"Talk!" he roared. "Tell me why you did this!"

Clio gasped, sucking air in greedy, ragged gulps. Teetering on the edge between life and death, every wall inside her finally crumbled. She abandoned every pretense.

"Because she never cared about any of it!" Clio's voice was raw, shredded, a scream soaked in jealousy and twisted bitterness. "Hestia was so talented—she won all those awards—and she never once showed off! She treated those honors like they were trash, just tossed them aside like they meant nothing!"

Her eyes turned wild and unhinged.

"I was jealous! Why did she get to be born with everything? Why could she effortlessly have everyone's attention without even trying? I was vain—I wanted that spotlight. So I stole her hair clip. I took her identity as 'N.'"

She stared at Aaron, her smile more grotesque than tears, dirt-streaked and wet.

"You think I wanted to learn ballet? I tortured myself to keep the lie alive—so none of you would find out. Every day I danced until my toes bled raw. I killed myself trying to learn, trying to copy her!"

Her voice dropped, hollow with absolute despair and bitter defiance. "And after all those years of trying? I still couldn't match her. I could never capture what she had when she danced. The only way I could keep up the perfect image in your eyes was to lie. To steal."

Aaron stared at her.

At that twisted, ugly, jealousy-ravaged face. And he felt nothing but a crushing, bone-deep exhaustion.

He had destroyed his own life for a vain, pathetic thief.

Aaron stared at Clio's tear-soaked face, veins standing rigid across the back of his hand.

His fingertips dug into the fragile column of her neck. The urge to kill seeped from his marrow.

He genuinely wanted to end her.

Five years.

For five years she'd played him like a blind man—puppeted him while he trampled the woman who'd saved his life, while he drove the only person who truly loved him out the door with nothing.

Every stupid, blind thing he'd done across those five years lashed him across the face.