---- Chapter 10 Julian Gallegos POV: Helena' s skin was soft beneath my fingertips, her scent a sweet perfume that was supposed to be intoxicating. We were on my private jet, halfway to a secluded island in the Caribbean where no one, not the FBI, not the SEC, could touch us. "Are you sure we'll be safe here, Jules?" she murmured, tracing a finger down my chest. "I'm sure," | said, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears. "I've prepared for every contingency." | had woken up that morning to a storm of fire. News alerts screamed about a massive fraud investigation into my company. The FBI was raiding my office. My assets were being frozen. And in the middle of it all, a smaller, more personal headline: Khloe Rojas, wife of disgraced mogul Julian Gallegos, dead by suicide. The report said she had driven her car off the cliffs near our old proposal spot. They hadn't found a body, but the note she'd left was damning. A strange, unsettling feeling had been gnawing at me all day, a sense of profound wrongness that | couldn't shake. | should ---- have felt relief. Khloe was gone. The divorce was final in the most permanent way possible. | was free to be with Helena, the woman | was supposed to have been with all along. But all | felt was a cold, gaping emptiness. | had spent the day in a frantic haze, moving money, shredding documents, getting us out of the country before the authorities closed in. Now, in the quiet of the jet, the silence was deafening. "| can finally be the real Mrs. Gallegos," Helena whispered, pressing a kiss to my jaw. "We can get married as soon as we land." "Of course," | replied automatically. But as | looked at her, an image of Khloe flashed in my mind. Her face, tear-streaked and broken, in the hospital. Her eyes, full of a hatred that had once been love. A sharp pain lanced through my skull, so intense it made me gasp. "Jules? Are you okay?" Helena asked, her brow furrowed with concern. "I'm fine," | lied, rubbing my temples. "Just a headache." But it wasn't just a headache. It was a memory, a ghost trying to break through a locked door in my mind. We landed on the island, a paradise of white sand and turquoise water. | had bought us new identities, a new life. We ---- were safe. We were free. My assistant, Mark, met us at the villa. He looked pale and shaken. "Sir," he said, his voice low. "There's something you need to see." He handed me a tablet. It was an internal security report. The whistleblower who had leaked the files to the Feds... the trail led back to an encrypted email. An email sent from a burner account, but the source of the funds used to pay for the account was unmistakable. It was a transfer from one of Khloe's private bank accounts, made the day before she died. She had done this. She hadn't just left me. She had systematically, methodically, and brilliantly destroyed me. The emptiness inside me turned into a raging inferno. The quiet, submissive woman | remembered, the one who had loved me so foolishly, had played me for a fool. She had orchestrated my downfall from beyond the grave. "That bitch," | snarled, the tablet cracking in my grip. "Sir," Mark said, his voice hesitant. "There's more." He swiped the screen. It was a grainy photo, a morgue photo from a Jane Doe case file. The police report said the body had washed ashore a hundred miles down the coast from the cliffs. The time of death matched. The woman in the photo had been in the water for a while, her features bloated and ---- distorted, but the delicate tattoo on her shoulder blade was still visible. A phoenix, rising from the ashes. The air rushed from my lungs. | stumbled back, my legs giving out from under me. The world tilted, spun, and went black. A flash of light. The screech of tires. Khloe' s face, her eyes wide with terror, not for herself, but for me. Another flash. Our wedding day. Her smile, so bright it outshone the sun. "I love you, Julian. Always." Flash. Her, asleep in my arms, her breathing soft and even. Flash. Her, laughing as we danced in the kitchen. Flash. Her, on her knees in the chapel, her face a mask of agony as my men broke her legs. Flash. Her, in the hospital, her voice gone, typing on her phone: | want a divorce. Flash. Her, cornered on the terrace, my voice offering her up as a sacrifice: "Take her. She's the one you want." Nine years. Nine years of memories, of love, of laughter, of a life | had completely and utterly forgotten, came crashing down on me like a tidal wave. The locked door in my mind didn't just open; it was blown off its hinges. The pain was unimaginable. It wasn't just a headache; it was ---- the splitting of my soul. | screamed, a raw, guttural sound of a man being ripped in two. My wife. My Khloe. The woman who was my entire world. What had | done? The last thing | saw before | passed out was the image on the tablet. Her dead, broken body. The body | had created. The woman | had murdered.