Chapter 179

Chapter 179

Angela, though, just watched them in silence.

Then she gestured for them to raise her bed.

Her lips moved slightly, and she shook her head with quiet certainty.

"I'm not going."

The panic in Lucas's eyes broke through all at once.

"Why? It's the only chance you've got!"

Angela slowly looked away and let her gaze settle on Lucas's face, which was written all over with despair.

Her eyes were calm — no hatred, no bitterness, just the hollow stillness of someone who had already made peace with death.

"Lucas, there's a world of difference between merely living and surviving."

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"I'm not going to Novaria. I don't want to spend whatever days I have left trapped inside a cold, sterile chamber, tubes running through my body, barely hanging on with machines and medication like some kind of monster. There's no dignity in that."

The corner of her mouth curved into a tired, self-mocking smile.

"That's not living. That's just your body taking longer to give out. I'm done, I really am."

"That won't happen! Angela, I promise it won't!" Lucas dropped to his knees in front of the bed, his eyes full of desperate pleading.

"I'll be right there with you, every single step. Just give the treatment a chance, and once you're out of that chamber, I'll take you anywhere you want to go. You want to see snow, the northern lights — anywhere at all. Please, don't give up. Don't leave me..."

But no matter how much Lucas begged, Angela simply closed her eyes, tired and distant, and shut everyone out with her silence.

In the days that followed, the ward fell into a heavy, deadlocked quiet.

Angela had almost no will to fight, and her condition kept getting worse.

Alan sat at her bedside — this boy who had once been all sharp edges and defiance — now red-eyed, his voice cracking with barely held-back tears. "Angela, are you just giving up on me? Even if it's just for me, please try. Just this once, okay?"

Frances kept breaking down in the corridor, furiously wiping her tears before going in, forcing herself to smile. But the moment she took Angela's hand, the tears came anyway, falling hard and fast. "Angela, you've always been the strong one. We got through everything before. We can get through this too."

"Everyone is running around trying to help you. You can't just give up like this..."

Edward looked at her, his eyes heavy with grief. "Angela, your talent deserves more than this. Your life doesn't have to end here."

One by one, they all tried to reach her.

Watching the people she loved wearing themselves down for her sake, Angela felt something stir inside her chest — something sharp and tender at once, cutting through the numbness she'd wrapped herself in.

Was she really being that selfish?

But she was so tired. Every hurt from the past was like a dull blade, and together they had carved her heart into pieces long ago.

Then on the afternoon of the third day, the door swung open again.

Lucas walked in, and behind him — of all people — were Edith and Bianca.

Edith, who had made Angela's life difficult at every turn, looked as though she had aged ten years overnight.

And Bianca, who had always been spoiled and contemptuous, walked in with her head down.

Before Angela could process it, Bianca dropped to her knees at the bedside with a thud.

"Angela... I'm sorry. It was all my fault. I let that horrible Cora get in my head and I treated you terribly..." Bianca choked out through her tears.

Edith spoke too, her voice stripped of its usual sharpness. "Angela, it was my fault. Lucas told me everything. You've been through so much, and I was wrong. I'm apologizing, and I know I have no right to ask for forgiveness. But please, you have to keep fighting. Lucas can't lose you."

", I was wrong. I know I was wrong." Bianca seemed shaken to her core.

She had never imagined things would come to this.

"I shouldn't have gone after you. I shouldn't have said those things to you. I deserve whatever I get. Please, save my brother. Save yourself."

Angela watched the whole thing unfold and felt only a strange sense of absurdity.

Once, she had bent over backwards trying to earn their approval, and all she ever got back was cold looks and humiliation. Now, with her life hanging by a thread, these same people were on their knees asking for her forgiveness.

"Lucas..." Angela turned her head slowly, her voice completely flat.

"You didn't have to do this. I told you — I don't hate them anymore. And I don't, because I stopped caring."

She had no interest in staging some tearful family reconciliation scene on her deathbed. Just the thought of it exhausted her.

Lucas waved them out.

The room went quiet again, the kind of quiet that felt like the absence of everything.

He walked to her bedside and knelt at the head of her bed.

This man who could move entire industries with a word — right now he was crying like a child who had lost his way home.

He buried his face deep in Angela's cold palm, and his burning tears soaked into her pale skin.

"Angela... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

He wept so hard he could barely breathe, his shoulders shaking, his voice shattered with despair and regret.

"I didn't bring them here to make you forgive them. And not to make myself feel better either. I just... I didn't want every memory you have of me to be pain. To be shame."

"I know I deserve nothing. I've owed you so much for so long — more than I could ever repay in a lifetime. I don't even have the right to ask you to forgive me..."

Lucas slowly lifted his head, his gaze raw with something close to desperation.

"But Angela, please. Please stay alive. Even if you live just to hate me, to make me pay for everything — I'll take it. Take my life if you have to. Just don't go."

"Don't give up. Give me a chance to make it right. Please..."

His tears carried all the guilt and love he had been holding back for so long.

Angela looked at him quietly.

Then she looked toward the door, where Alan and Frances stood outside the glass, eyes red, faces full of hope.

If she closed her eyes and let go right now, maybe she would find peace.

But the people left behind would spend the rest of their lives in pain, blaming themselves.

Lucas most of all — he would carry this debt that could never be repaid, trapped inside it, suffering for the rest of his days.

In the end, she couldn't bring herself to let the people who truly loved her cry themselves hollow over her.

And there, in that heart of hers that had been frozen and silent for so long, something shifted — slowly, faintly — a thin, fragile thread of will to live.

Angela let out a long, slow breath.

It felt like it carried something with it — the weight she had been holding for years, the exhaustion, the bitterness.

She turned back and looked at the man in front of her, undone by tears.

And almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

"...Okay."

She gave in, without a sound.

Lucas heard it and broke down all over again — this time with relief.

Outside the door, Alan and Frances finally smiled, for the first time in what felt like forever.

This time, Angela chose to be brave one more time — for everyone who loved her.