Chapter 168 Chapter 168

Chapter 168 Chapter 168
Dominic’s POV
The rain hasn’t stopped in three days. It drips down the windows of my rental car, blurring the neon lights of the small coastal town I’ve been circling for hours. 
The GPS says I’ve arrived, but the clinic looks deserted,  a single-story building tucked behind a row of closed shops, the kind of place people come to erase what they can’t live with.
The sign reads Dr. L. Corwin, Reconstructive Surgery.
He’s the last thread. The name that kept surfacing in Eden’s encrypted files, in Stanley’s offshore transfers, in the gaps Elia left behind.
I kill the engine and sit there for a moment, listening to the rain. My hands tighten on the steering wheel. I’ve faced killers, corrupt executives, the ghosts of my own mistakes but this feels different. 
This feels like standing at the edge of something I’m not ready to see. If I’m right, then everything,  the grave, the files, the years of guilt has been one long deception and if I’m wrong… then she’s really gone.
Inside, the clinic smells faintly of antiseptic and rain-soaked carpet. The waiting room is dark except for a small lamp behind the reception desk. A voice drifts from the back hallway.
“Closed for the night. Come back tomorrow.”
I step forward, letting my voice carry. “I won’t take long.”
A man appears in the doorway, the kind of careful posture that comes from years of handling secrets. He frowns when he sees me.
“You’re Dominic Smith.” He knows me. That’s either good or very bad.
“You performed surgery for a woman named Elia Smith,” I say. “Six years ago. I need to know what happened.”
His expression hardens. “I don’t discuss patients.”
“This isn’t about confidentiality.”
He folds his arms. “It’s exactly about confidentiality.”
I pull a photo from my jacket, Elia before the disappearance, smiling at some gala neither of us wanted to attend. “She was my wife.”
The doctor studies the picture for a moment. Then, with a quiet sigh, he gestures toward his office. “Five minutes. Then you leave.”
The office is lined with medical degrees and photos of reconstructed faces, the irony isn’t lost on me.
He sits behind his desk and steeples his fingers. “I know why you’re here. You’re not the first to ask.”
“Then tell me what they didn’t find.”
He hesitates, eyes flicking to the door as if expecting someone to interrupt. “You have to understand, what she asked of me went beyond medicine. It was an act of mercy.”
“Mercy?”
“She came to me terrified,” he says quietly. “Not of dying of living as herself. She said she’d made enemies she couldn’t escape, that her name had become a weapon. She wanted to vanish, not to hurt anyone, but to breathe again.”
My throat tightens. “So you helped her fake her death.”
“I performed a full facial reconstruction,” he says. “Changed bone structure, altered voice resonance, fingerprints everything. She was unrecognizable when she left my operating room.”
“Left for where?”
He studies me for a long time, and for the first time, I see pity in his eyes. “You don’t want that answer.”
“I’ve spent six years digging through graves, lies, and blood for that answer,” I say. “You’re damn right I want it.”
He exhales slowly, as though releasing something heavy he’s carried too long.
“She’s alive, Mr. Smith.” The words hit like a punch.
The air goes out of me, replaced by something disbelief, relief, rage, all tangled together.
“Where?” I whisper.
He hesitates again. “She made me swear I’d never tell. She paid enough to ensure it. Said she’d only stay hidden if I kept that promise.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I can’t.”
I slam my fist onto the desk, voice breaking. “You think I’ve spent half my life chasing her ghost just to stop now? ”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “And she chose not to be.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. The rain outside sounds like static.
Finally, he says, “She’s safe. She’s living under a new identity far from all of this. Somewhere she can finally be more than the woman you lost.”
My heart pounds. “Where is she?”
He shakes his head. “If I tell you, you’ll find her. And if you find her, you’ll drag her back into a world she ran from.”
I grit my teeth. “You think I’d hurt her?”
“I think you’d remind her of everything she was trying to forget.”
He stands and walks to a filing cabinet, pulling out an envelope. “She asked me to give you this, if you ever came.”
My pulse stops. “She knew I would?”
“She said you’d never stop looking.”
He sets the envelope on the desk and steps back. I stare at it, afraid to open it, afraid of what the handwriting might do to me.
The paper smells faintly of ocean air and lavender,  her scent, faint but real. I unfold the single page inside.
Dominic,

If you’re reading this, then you found the doctor and I’m sorry. I asked him to protect me from everyone, even you. Especially you.

Please stop looking. I’m safe. I’m alive. And I need to stay gone.

E.
I read it three times, the ink blurring as rainwater seeps from my sleeve. The last line breaks something in me, not because of what it says, but because I can hear her voice saying it.
The doctor watches me quietly. “She didn’t want to die, Mr. Smith. She just wanted to live on her own terms.”
I fold the letter carefully, slipping it back into the envelope. “You said she’s safe. That means she’s not alone.”
He nods once. “A small town, somewhere by the sea. She teaches, paints, volunteers. She laughs again. That’s all I’ll say.”
New Zealand. I remember the one place she used to talk about, the islands, the cliffs, the ocean that never ends. The only place she ever called home without irony. It’s enough to know.
When I leave the clinic, the rain has stopped. The air smells like wet earth and salt. I stand there for a long moment, letting it sink in. She’s alive.
For years, I carried her death like a scar I couldn’t stop touching. Every investigation, every sleepless night, every thread I pulled, all of it built on a lie she created to save herself and somehow, I can’t even hate her for it.
I walk back to the car and sit there with the letter in my hands. The paper is soft from the rain, fragile like memory. For the first time, I don’t feel the need to chase it anymore.
I start the engine and drive toward the highway. The clouds are breaking open over the ocean, the horizon glowing faintly gold. Somewhere beyond that, she’s watching the same sunrise. That’s enough.
“Goodbye, Elia,” I whisper.
And for the first time in years, the word goodbye doesn’t feel like loss. It feels like peace.