Chapter 7
Elena POV
I went back to the penthouse for one last time.
I didn't want to be there, but necessity outweighed my dread. I had to pack. Not just clothes-I needed the essentials of my identity: my passport, my birth certificate, the few pieces of jewelry that had belonged to my mother.
I needed to erase myself from this place so completely that even the ghosts wouldn't know I had ever existed inside these walls.
I was zipping up my suitcase when the front door didn't just open-it exploded inward.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway, eating up the distance between us in seconds.
"Elena!"
Jackson burst into the room. His face was flushed a deep, violent crimson, his eyes wild. He wasn't the calm, detached businessman anymore. He was a storm made flesh.
"Where is he?" he shouted, his voice cracking with rage.
I stood up, my knuckles white as I gripped the handle of my suitcase. "Who?"
"Joey! What did you say to him?"
"I didn't say anything to him. I was at the gate. I didn't even speak to the child."
"Liar!"
He crossed the room in two massive strides and grabbed my shoulders. His fingers dug into my flesh, vise-like and punishing, bruising the skin through my blouse.
"He's hysterical! He says the 'scary lady' came to take his daddy away. He's having a panic attack because of you!"
"I didn't touch him, Jackson! Get off me!"
I tried to shove him away, but he was immovable. He shook me, my head snapping back painfully.
"You did this on purpose," he spat, venom coating every syllable. "You came to the villa to terrorize my son because you lost yours."
The cruelty of his words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.
"I didn't lose my child," I whispered, staring dead into his eyes, refusing to blink. "You killed him."
His grip loosened for a fraction of a second, shock flashing across his face like lightning. But then the anger returned, darker and more defensive than before. He didn't believe me. Or worse-he didn't care.
"You're sick," he said, sneering. "Candida was right. You're unstable."
"Candida is manipulating you! She's using that boy to control you!"
"Shut up!"
He shoved me backward with a brutal force. I tripped over the suitcase and fell onto the bed, gasping.
"I gave you a chance to leave with dignity," he said, his voice dropping to a menacing growl that vibrated in the small space. "But you had to push it. You had to threaten my family."
He turned to the door, his posture rigid. "Security!"
Two men in dark suits walked in. They were his private detail-hired muscle with dead eyes. They looked at me with zero emotion, as if I were a piece of furniture to be removed.
"Take her," Jackson commanded.
"Jackson, what are you doing?" I scrambled backward on the bed, panic finally piercing through my shock.
"You need to cool off," he said coldly. "And you need to learn your place."
The men grabbed me. One on each arm. They dragged me off the bed and out of the bedroom before I could find my footing.
"Let me go! Jackson!"
He didn't look at me. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink, his back turned resolutely to my screams.
The men dragged me through the living room and opened the sliding glass doors to the terrace.
It was raining. A cold, biting rain that slashed sideways in the wind. We were forty floors up, and the wind howled like a dying animal.
They threw me onto the concrete slick with rain.
"Stay here until Mr. Medina says otherwise," one of them said, his voice devoid of humanity.
They stepped back inside and locked the doors with a definitive click.
I ran to the glass, pounding on it with my fists. "Jackson! Open the door! It's freezing!"
Inside, the apartment was warm and golden, a cruel diorama of comfort. I saw Jackson sitting on the sofa, sipping his whiskey. He looked at the TV. He didn't even glance at the window.
I was shivering violently within minutes. My clothes were soaked through, clinging to my skin like ice. The wind cut through the fabric like knives.
I huddled in the corner of the terrace, trying to find shelter from the wind, but there was none. My teeth chattered so hard my jaw ached.
Minutes turned into hours. The cold seeped into my bones, replacing the shivering with a dangerous numbness. My fingers turned blue. My vision started to blur at the edges.
I watched him inside. He picked up his phone. He smiled. He was probably talking to Candida.
He had locked his wife out in a storm like a disobedient dog.
My body began to shut down. The shivering stopped, replaced by a terrifying lethargy. I knew what this was. Hypothermia.
I slumped against the glass railing. The city lights below blurred into streaks of neon, dizzying and distant.
It would be so easy to just close my eyes. To just let go.
No.
A spark of rage ignited in my chest. It was small, barely an ember struggling against the damp cold, but it was there.
I dragged myself up, forcing movement into limbs that felt like lead. I grabbed a heavy ceramic planter near the edge of the terrace.
I couldn't break the glass door. It was reinforced. But the railing...
No, I couldn't escape that way. That was death.
I looked back inside. Jackson was standing up now. He was leaving. He was turning off the lights.
He was going to leave me here all night.
"Jackson!" I screamed, but the wind swallowed my voice whole.
He walked out of the room. Darkness swallowed the apartment.
I was alone.
My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the wet concrete. The rain felt like ice needles piercing my skin.
I cannot die here, I thought, the words echoing in my fading mind. I cannot let him win.
I crawled toward the door, curling into a ball against the glass, trying to steal whatever phantom warmth might be leaking through the seal.
As my consciousness faded, slipping into the black water, I had one final, crystal-clear thought.
If I survived this, I would burn his entire world to ash.
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