Chapter 7
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Chapter 7
To my shock, just two days later, Mark dragged a bound and battered Sofia to my doorstep.
Her face was swollen with bruises, her exposed skin covered in welts and cuts.
Mark yanked her hair, forcing her to kneel before me. His grip was so brutal that blood quickly stained the marble floor beneath her.
“Via,” Mark snarled, eyes crazed, “this filthy woman admits she was wrong. I’ll kill her right here, right now, if you’ll forgive me. Will you?”
Sofia’s eyes widened in terror. She dropped to her knees, sobbing.
“Miss Anderson, please… have mercy. I was wrong… Please forgive me… I still have a sick mother to care for… I’m begging you…
Mark kicked her aside like trash. “If you hadn’t lied-if you hadn’t told me Via caused your miscarriage, I never would’ve turned against her! This is all your fault!”
His kick landed with brutal force. Sofia coughed up blood as her body crumpled to the floor.
The scene triggered a wave of nausea, flashing me back to the moment in my previous life when Mark killed me.
“Enough!” I snapped.
Mark’s face lit up, hopeful. “Via… you’ve forgiven me?”
I glared at him, voice cold as steel. “Mark, I used to think you were just scum. Now I realize… you’re worse. You’re a monster.”
His smile collapsed into a broken, hollow laugh as he dropped to the floor, tearing at his hair like a madman. “No… no… Via… you’ve loved me for so many years. You can’t just stop… you can’t!”
Robert stepped forward, wrapping an arm around my waist. With a subtle nod, our bodyguards rushed in and dragged Mark out.
Robert’s voice was low but laced with warning. “If you ever come near my wife again… I’ll make sure you disappear from New York. Permanently.”.
Intimidated by Robert’s icy presence, Mark fled, humiliated and defeated.
Once he was gone, I ordered someone to take Sofia to the hospital. After her injuries were treated, I handed her a sum of money.
“Leave New York. Don’t ever come back,” I told her.
As she stood at the threshold, no trace of her former malice remained. Her swollen eyes blinked in disbelief.
“After everything I’ve done to you, why are you still helping me?”
I shook my head. “Just go. And don’t look back.’
As I watched her broken figure fade into the distance, Robert draped his jacket over my shoulders.
ར ཐ ར བ ཐ ཇ བ བ ཇ བ
“I thought you’d let her rot,” he said quietly. “After all… she did everything she could to hurt you.”
I sighed. “She’s already paid for what she’s done. The one who truly deserves to fall… is Mark.”
I believed, foolishly, that it was finally over. But I had underestimated just how deep Mark’s insanity ran.
The next morning, while I was out for my usual run in Central Park… he kidnapped me.
I struggled wildly in the backseat of his car. Mark ripped the tape from my mouth and stroked my face with sickening
tenderness.
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“Via… you belong to me,” he murmured.
I jerked away, disgusted.
“Mark, kidnapping is a federal crime. That’s twenty years in prison!”
“Prison?” His smile twisted into something deranged. “You think I care about prison now?”
His eyes gleamed with madness as he continued. “We’ll leave this place. Go somewhere no one knows us. Start over. Have kids. Lots of them. Tell me… Via, do you want a boy or a girl?”
Panic surged through me. “You’re insane. Completely insane. Let me go! Robert won’t let you get away with this!”
The second Robert’s name left my lips, Mark’s face contorted with rage.
“Don’t. You. Dare. Mention. Him!” he roared, hands locking around my throat.
As I gasped for air, vision blurring, I still managed to choke out a sneer. “You’ll never… be half the man he is…”
Mark snapped. With a scream, he shoved the driver aside and slammed his foot on the gas. The car shot forward like a missile, careening wildly through traffic. I was tossed around the backseat, struggling just to stay upright.
Mark laughed like a man possessed.
“If you won’t be with me… then we’ll die together!”
At that critical moment, the roar of helicopter blades cut through the chaos. Robert was in pursuit.
I lunged for the steering wheel, desperate to regain control, but Mark shoved me back. In the next instant—
Bang!
A gunshot rang out from the helicopter. The bullet struck Mark squarely in the forehead.
His laughter stopped. His eyes froze-wide, glassy, and lifeless-as blood splattered across me. His body slumped forward, dead
before he hit the wheel.
Fighting the trembling in my limbs, I scrambled into the driver’s seat and wrestled the out-of-control car to a halt just as Robert landed the helicopter.
He sprinted over, yanked the car door open, and crushed me into his arms. Feeling his warmth, his heartbeat… the adrenaline drained, and everything went black.
When I woke up, Robert was sitting at my bedside, grinning from ear to ear.
“Via… you’re pregnant.”
My breath caught. “Really?” My hands flew instinctively to my belly.
Tears of joy and relief streamed down my face. I remembered the child I’d lost… in that past life where Mark had stolen everything from me.
This time… this time, my child had come back to me. I’d rewritten my fate.
My mother and Robert’s parents entered the room, their eyes red but filled with relief. After endless warnings from the doctor, they were finally allowed to see me,
Wrapped in Robert’s arms, surrounded by family, I realized that happiness was never as complicated as I once believed. It was simply… this.
