---- Chapter 12 When Blake finally emerged from the self-imposed darkness of his stateroom, he was a changed man. The frantic energy was gone, replaced by a chilling, dead-eyed calm. He gave the order to end the private search. He flew back to New York, a ghost returning to his own haunted house. The Wallace mansion, once a symbol of his power, was now a monument to his guilt. Every room held a memory of Ellen, a whisper of her presence. The scent of the jasmine she loved to keep in the living room seemed to linger in the air. The small, worn armchair in the library where she used to read for hours sat empty, an accusation in its silence. He couldn't bear it. But then his gaze fell on a silk shawl draped over a chair, a vibrant, gaudy thing that Celesta had left behind. His eyes landed on the crystal "energy wands" and other mystical junk she had placed all over the house. And the grief, the despair, the self-loathing-it all coalesced into a single, focused point of pure, unadulterated rage. She was the cause. The serpent in his Eden. The poison that had corrupted his soul and destroyed his life. He had been a willing accomplice, a fool, a monster-but she had been the architect of it all ---- "Get it out," he snarled at the terrified staff who had assembled in the foyer. "Sir?" the head butler asked, confused. "All of it!" Blake roared, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. He swept a crystal pyramid from a side table, sending it shattering against the floor. "Every trace of her. Burn it. Throw it away. | don't care. | want this house back to the way it was. Before her." The staff scurried to obey, their faces pale with fear. They had never seen him like this. The cold, arrogant master was gone, replaced by a man unhinged by grief. As they were frantically clearing away Celesta's belongings, the front door opened. Celesta herself swept in, dressed in another one of her flowing white gowns. She had been staying at a luxury hotel, waiting for Blake to come to his senses and summon her back. Her patience had run out. "Blake, darling," she began, her voice a mixture of petulance and relief. "| knew you couldn't stay away from me for long. This whole grieving act is so tiresome. Ellen is gone. It's time for you to focus on me, on us..." She stopped, her eyes widening as she took in the scene. She saw her clothes, her jewelry, her precious artifacts being unceremoniously stuffed into trash bags. ---- "What is the meaning of this?" she shrieked. Blake turned slowly to face her. The look on his face was one she had never seen before. It was a look of utter loathing. "The game is over, Celia," he said, her real name a slap in the face. She flinched. "Don't call me that." "Oh, | think | will," he sneered, advancing on her. "The pampered princess, the last descendant of a mystical lineage. What a joke. You played me for a fool." He grabbed her by the chin, his grip painfully tight, forcing her to look at him. "You know what the real joke is? | let you. | let you poison my mind. | let you turn me into... this." His voice broke on the last word, raw with self-hatred. "And because of you," he whispered, his voice trembling with a rage that was terrifying in its quiet intensity, "she's dead." He flung her away from him. She stumbled back, catching herself on a table. "Get her out of my sight," he ordered the bodyguards. "Take off that ridiculous costume. Take every piece of jewelry, every designer item | ever bought her. Dress her in a maid's uniform and lock her in the basement storage room. Let her see what it feels like to be nothing." Celesta stared at him, her face a mask of disbelief and terror. ---- "You can't do this to me! | am a celestial being! You will be cursed!" "The only curse in this house was you," Blake said, his voice dead. "And now I'm breaking it." He turned his back on her as his men dragged her away, her screams and threats echoing through the hall until they were finally silenced by the slamming of a distant door. The revenge brought him no satisfaction. It was a hollow, empty gesture. It couldn't bring Ellen back. He was alone now, truly alone, in the echoing silence of his guilt. He began his penance. He stopped sleeping in the master bedroom, the bed a cold, vast continent of loss. He moved into the small, stark room in the servants' quarters where Ellen had spent her final weeks. He slept on the hard, narrow bed, clutching a small, worn teddy bear he had found in her closet, a relic from her childhood. He would press it to his face, trying to find some lingering trace of her scent, a ghost of a memory to cling to in the dark. He set up a charitable foundation in her name-The Ellen Strong Foundation-dedicated to helping victims of domestic abuse and manipulation. He poured billions into it, but he did it silently, refusing all publicity. It wasn't about clearing his name; it was about trying, in some small, futile way, to balance the scales of his own monstrous actions He sought out the best doctors in the world to work on his damaged hand, enduring excruciating physical therapy. Not to ---- compete again, but to punish himself. He got back on a motocross bike and drove it recklessly on a private track, pushing his body and the machine to their limits, again and again, chasing the oblivion of a crash that might finally end his torment. He would come back from these sessions bruised, bleeding, his hand a swollen mess, and in the pain, he would find a fleeting moment of relief. A friend, horrified by his self-destruction, tried to intervene. "You have to stop this, Blake," he said, finding him in the garage, cleaning his bike, his hand wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. "You're killing yourself." Blake looked up, his eyes empty. "| deserve to die." "This isn't what she would have wanted!" his friend insisted. A harsh, broken laugh escaped Blake's lips. "What she would have wanted? She would have wanted to live. She would have wanted her father to be alive. She would have wanted a husband who didn't leave her to die in a fire and then send her to her death in a plane crash. Don't you dare talk to me about what she would have wanted." He looked down at his hands. "I didn't just lose her," he whispered, his voice raw with a pain that five years had not dulled. "| killed her. With these hands. | am her murderer." And with that, he turned back to his bike, his shoulders slumped under the crushing, eternal weight of his sin.