Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Then Julian swept Rosalind up in his arms, turned, and strode away in the opposite direction.

He didn’t look back at me even once.

“Ha… haha…”

The blood in my veins went ice-cold. My laughter came out broken and hopeless.

Ninety-nine lashes on my back were nothing compared with the tearing pain in my chest.

The setting sun bled across the sky. A seagull landed beside me, and its white feathers turned red in an instant.

Julian, so this is what meant to be means to you. This is what life and death together is worth.

I struggled for breath, down to my last one.

Julian, if there’s another life after this one, I will never love you again.

I don’t know how much time passed before the shriek of sirens tore across the sky.

I was rescued.

At the hospital, they patched up my wounds. I refused to stay, and went back alone to the empty castle.

Julian had designed this place himself to make me happy. He’d drawn the plans with his own hands and stood over the builders every day.

Rosalind had been here barely two months, and already there were traces of her everywhere.

My dressing room and my practice studio were piled high with her things.

Even the set of wooden carvings I’d made for him by hand had been tossed on the floor in a jumble.

He’d once told me, red-eyed, that he would treasure them forever.

More than half a day had passed, and he still hadn’t come back. He must still be at Rosalind’s side.

I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and dropped a manila envelope into the mailbox by the castle gate.

There were three things inside.

The first was the lab report on the bouquet. All he had to do was open it to learn that the “accident” that night had been someone trying to kill me.

The second was the report the hospital had just given me. It said I’d had a miscarriage.

While he was choosing to save Rosalind.

While he stood and watched the sea close over my head.

While he let me take ninety-nine lashes to protect her.

It was the second time he’d let our child die for Rosalind.

The third was the broken diamond ring.

When he proposed five years ago, he’d flown to South Africa to choose the rough stone himself, then spent six months in Antwerp learning to cut it at an old master’s side.

A love that pure and that certain had been the talk of San Francisco.

The man who’d treasured me above everything was him.

The man who’d let my eyes go untreated for years was him too.

The man who threw me to the beasts and stood by while I was drowned ten times and whipped ninety-nine times—was still him.

For five years, no matter how badly we fought, I had never once taken off that ring.

Now, Julian, it’s yours again.

The roar of a helicopter came down out of the sky.

I squinted up. A familiar face was leaning out, chin propped on his hand, looking down at me.

“Not coming, Alice?”

I smiled at him suddenly. “Got a lighter, Nick?”

He whistled and tossed down a box of matches. “Only these. And what you asked for—Vito’s taken care of it. It’s in the master bedroom on the second floor. The necklace is on her.”

An unclaimed body from the morgue, about my height and build. Around her neck was the pearl necklace I hadn’t taken off in five years.

I nodded. “That’ll do.”

Aching all over, I walked back to the castle one step at a time, struck a match, and threw it inside.

With a whoosh, the flames swallowed the whole castle.

The warm “home” I’d lived in now looked like a cage built to devour people.

“Goodbye.”

I turned, climbed into the helicopter, and never looked back.

…

At the same moment, Julian had just heard that Vivian had been rescued, and was driving back like a madman.

A Maybach tore across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Faster. Faster. He had to see her. He had to know she was all right.

Ten hours earlier, by the sea.

Julian had drained almost every dollar of the Blackwood Group’s cash reserves before Victor finally gave in.

“You promised me. Your medical team treats Vivian, right now.”

“Sure. And she can stay here as a hostage until the Blackwood Group wires the money.”

“I’ll be your hostage. Let her go.”

Victor blinked, then laughed. “Even better. But this one stays too—she’s carrying your kid.”

“Fine.”

He picked Rosalind up and was marched into a pitch-dark warehouse.

From where Vivian lay, it looked like he’d simply carried another woman away without a backward glance.

In the darkness, her bloodless face kept rising before his eyes.

“Julian, why did you agree to it? Five billion dollars…” Rosalind bit her lip.

He didn’t answer. He just stared at the thin line of light under the door until it went dark.

Then the sirens came. He was rescued, and learned that Victor had never let the medical team lay a finger on Vivian—and that she’d already left on her own.

She was hurt. The only place she could have gone was the castle.

He floored it. The speedometer climbed to a hundred and fifty.

A corner of the castle appeared on the hillside ahead. A smile tugged at his mouth.

A second later, it froze on his face.

The castle was in flames, lighting the night sky as bright as day.

He remembered the way she’d looked at him before he walked away.

So final. As if she were turning her back on the whole world.

His hands began to shake.

No. Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

At that moment, on a cliffside bend of Highway 1 in the Marin hills, a deer leaped out of nowhere.

He was going too fast. It was too late to brake.

He wrenched the wheel left and just missed it—but the car shot clean off the road.

He reached for his phone to call for help, but the crash came first—

The car slid over the edge and plunged off the cliff.