---- Chapter 13 13 Liam's fingers tightened around Maya's old phone. He replied to Ava's taunting message instantly. "Who is this?" Ava, clearly not expecting him to have Maya's phone, responded with smug arrogance. "Just a concerned citizen, wondering if poor, abandoned Liam needs some company. Maya always was a bit of a cold fish, wasn't she?" Liam's fury was a living thing inside him, coiling, waiting. "You seem to know a lot about Maya. And Liam." "Oh, | know everything," Ava texted back, her words dripping with malice. "| know he's better off without her. | know he's going to marry me. We're having a baby, you know. He's ecstatic." Liam's control snapped. He typed, his thumbs flying across the screen: "This IS Liam Goldstein, you stupid bitch. And you just made the biggest mistake of your miserable life." Ava's next message was a jumble of panicked emojis. Then, "Liam? Baby? Is that really you? | was just joking! Trying to make Maya jealous if she ever saw her old phone!" "You think this is a game?" Liam typed, his voice dangerously ---- low as he spoke the words aloud to the empty room. He got up, grabbed his keys. He knew where Ava lived. The condo he'd stupidly, briefly, considered buying for her. "You sent those messages to Maya, didn't you? The sonogram. The pictures. All of it." Ava tried to backtrack, to manipulate. "Liam, | was just... | love you! | wanted her to know how serious we are!" "You wanted to torture her," Liam corrected, his tone icy. "And in doing so, you helped destroy my marriage. My life." He was already in his car, speeding through the city streets. He needed to see. He needed to know the full extent of her treachery. He parked outside her building, strode into the lobby. He called her from the lobby phone. "Come down. Now." Ava appeared, looking terrified, her bravado gone. "Liam, | can explain..." "Give me your phone," he commanded. She hesitated. He snatched it from her hand. He scrolled through her messages, her photo gallery. The sheer volume of her taunts to Maya, the cruel, calculated nature of her campaign, stunned him. Details of their encounters, distorted and exaggerated. Mocking comments about Maya. Photos of herself in Maya's clothes, in Maya's home, wearing Maya's jewelry. Each message, each photo, was a fresh stab of guilt, a ---- deeper understanding of the pain Maya must have endured. Pain he had allowed. Pain he had, in his ignorance, facilitated. Liam looked up from Ava's phone, his eyes blazing with a cold, murderous rage. Ava flinched, shrinking back. "You did this," he said, his voice barely a whisper, yet more menacing than any shout. "You drove her away." "No, Liam, it was you! You wanted me!" Ava cried, tears streaming down her face. "| wanted an escape," he snarled. "A distraction. You were a symptom, Ava, not the cause. But you... you poured gasoline on the fire." He felt a chilling transformation within himself. The doting husband, the charming CEO, was gone. In his place stood a man consumed by vengeance. A man who had lost everything. And who had nothing left to lose. Ava Sinclair was about to learn what happened when you cornered a powerful man and took away the one thing he truly valued