Chapter 156

Chapter 156
Olive's POV
Gordon's words sent me over the edge.
I slapped him across the face. "Gordon, we are married! Do you remember who your wife is? It's me! I'm your wife!"
He stared at me, jaw tight—then turned and walked toward the door.
Oh, hell no. I had just been humiliated in front of everyone, and he was going to leave me here and walk away?
"If you walk out that door, I swear I'll take Nydia's body and—"
"Shut your mouth."
Gordon spun around and came at me so fast I barely had time to register it. His palm cracked across my face. "You're the disgusting one. You are the most pathetic, disgusting person in this room."
"You hit me?" I pressed my hand to my cheek, staring at him in disbelief. "You actually hit me?"
"Yeah. And I'll do it again." He did. "I have had enough of you."
I screamed and launched myself at him—clawing, swinging, anything I could reach. We crashed into each other in a tangle of fists and fury.
From somewhere behind me, I heard Zoe's voice cut across the room: "Nobody step in."
Unbelievable. Every single person in this place was against me.
It was over fast. I never had a chance. Gordon was stronger, angrier, and he wasn't holding back. Within minutes my nose was throbbing, my lip was split, and one eye was already swelling shut.
He grabbed me by the throat—not enough to stop my breathing, but enough to make every step hurt—and dragged me out of the boutique. Through the lobby. Across the parking lot.
He shoved me into the trunk of his car and slammed it shut. A moment later I heard him leaning against the bumper, and through the metal I could make out the slide of his sleeve being rolled back.
"Tell me where Nydia is." His voice was flat. Terrifyingly calm. "Where's the body, Olive?"
I curled into myself, shaking my head even though he couldn't see me. "I'm not telling you."
Nydia was the only leverage I had. The moment I gave that up, Gordon would have no reason to show up at the wedding—no reason to do anything I asked. And then I'd become the laughingstock of every party, every event, every room I'd ever tried to belong to.
I would not let that happen.
"You're not going to tell me."
It wasn't a question. His footsteps were slow and deliberate as he came around to the back of the car. When the trunk opened, the look on his face stopped the breath in my throat. I had seen Gordon angry before. I had seen him guilty, weak, spineless. I had never seen him look like this—like something cold and merciless had moved in behind his eyes and settled there.
"Gordon—" My voice came out smaller than I intended. "What are you doing?"
He answered with his hand.
"Where is she?"
"You can kill me," I spat. "I still won't tell you."
"Fine." The word came out almost cheerful. "Then I will."
And he meant it. Hit after hit, open-palmed, relentless, until my face went numb and my ears started ringing and I felt something warm running from my nose, the corner of my mouth, the shell of my ear. He showed no sign of stopping.
For the first time in a long time, I was genuinely afraid.
"Okay!" The word tore out of me. I was sobbing now, ugly and broken. "Okay—she's in the cellar! Our cellar, at the house—just stop, please—"
He went still.
"You'd better not be lying to me."
He said it quietly—almost gently—and then slammed the trunk shut.
Darkness. Complete and suffocating. I pulled my knees to my chest and lay there shaking as the engine turned over and the car began to move.
I couldn't stop trembling.
I had never been scared of Gordon before. Not once in all the time I'd known him.
I was scared now.
---
Gordon's POV
I had no one to blame but myself.
Every bit of it. I'd made every wrong choice with perfect consistency, and I'd known—somewhere underneath all the ego and the denial—exactly what I was doing. Olive hadn't tricked me. I'd let her in. I'd liked being wanted by two women at the same time. I'd liked knowing Nydia was mine while still taking everything Olive offered, because some sick, vain part of me had believed I could have both without ever losing either.
Nydia had always been the one I wanted. She was the one I came home to in my head, the one I measured everything else against. I'd told myself she'd accepted the situation. That she understood. That we had something too deep and too permanent to break.
I'd been wrong about all of it.
And then she was gone. Married to Vincent. And then gone again—really gone, the kind of gone you can't negotiate your way out of.
I kept going over it. Every moment I'd wasted. Every time I'd taken her for granted. I thought I'd have the chance to fix it—to get her back, to finally be the man she deserved.
And then she died.
She died, and I hadn't even gotten to apologize.
What I felt for Olive in those days was something beyond hatred. She was the wrecking ball I had swung myself into Nydia's life. Every rotten consequence I was living with had Olive's fingerprints on it. Especially when I found out she'd been hiding the body—talking about destroying it, treating Nydia like she was nothing more than evidence to be disposed of.
I had pressed the accelerator to the floor and barely registered the drive home.
I yanked Olive out of the trunk and shoved her ahead of me into the house, down to the cellar door. The smell hit us before I even got it fully open—thick, sweet, putrid. Olive gagged beside me. I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth and breathed through it.
"She's in there," Olive managed between retches. "Go see for yourself."
The image of Nydia lying in a cellar like this, in the dark, in the cold, left to rot—it broke something in my chest that hadn't already been broken. I turned to Olive and hit her again. She yelped, staggered, clutched her side. I felt a grim, hollow satisfaction and nothing else.
I left her there and walked in.
The body was on the floor. No box, no covering except a white sheet that someone had thrown over it carelessly. I stood over it for a long moment, steadying myself.
This is Nydia.
I had to hold onto that. I had to do this for her.
I crouched down and pulled back the sheet.
What I saw made me flinch hard. The body had been in the water. The bloating, the discoloration—she was barely recognizable. It was brutal to look at. I sat with it anyway, forcing myself to stay present, to give her at least that much dignity.
And then I looked at her arm.
The right one. Just above the elbow.
There was a patch of scar tissue there—unmistakably old, silvery-pink and tight against the surrounding skin. A burn scar. It had healed years ago, maybe decades.
I went completely still.
Nydia didn't have a burn scar. Not anywhere on her arms. I knew her body. I would have noticed.
I stared at it. Reached out and looked more carefully, half convinced I was seeing things.
I wasn't.
This wasn't Nydia.
The realization moved through me like a current—first disbelief, then something so sharp and sudden it nearly knocked me sideways.
She might be alive.
If this wasn't Nydia—if this had never been Nydia—then what had actually happened to her? She'd gone into the water. There'd been chaos, gunfire, a boat. And someone had pulled a body out and assumed, and no one had looked closely enough, and—
She could be alive. She could be somewhere right now.
I laughed. I actually laughed, out loud, alone in a cellar that smelled like death, because it was either that or collapse.
Vincent was gone. The one person standing between me and any chance at getting Nydia back was gone—lost at sea, declared dead. And if Nydia was alive, if she'd survived and was somewhere waiting to be found—
I was on my feet and moving before I'd finished the thought. I ran past Olive without looking at her. Didn't hear whatever she shouted after me.
Nydia.
I was going to find her. I was going to bring her home. And this time—this time—I was going to get it right.