---- Chapter 13 Eliza POV: Catherine Yang looked like a ghost. The vibrant, self-assured socialite was gone, replaced by a woman consumed by a frayed, anxious energy. She paced the hospital corridor outside the pediatric ICU, her designer clothes rumpled, her hair scraped back in a messy bun. Motherhood had not been kind to her. Cash arrived in a flurry of panic, his face pale. He rushed past Catherine and peered through the glass at the tiny, fragile baby in the incubator. The child, named 'Elias'-a name so painfully close to my own it was a deliberate cruelty-was small for his age, his skin translucent. A flicker of something-pity, perhaps-stirred in Cash's eyes. He had been an absent father, but the sight of his sick son seemed to touch a dormant part of him. "How is he?" Cash asked Catherine, his voice rough with emotion. Catherine launched into a frantic, tearful explanation of fevers and tests, her hands fluttering nervously. She had poured all of her thwarted ambitions, all of her desperate need for Cash ' s affection, into this child. He was her anchor, her justification, her only remaining claim to the Robinson name. ---- The baby started to cry, a thin, reedy wail. Cash reached into the incubator, his large hand clumsy and uncertain as he tried to comfort the child. But the baby only cried harder, unused to his touch. Catherine gently pushed him aside, murmuring soft words in the baby's ear until he quieted. The scene was a portrait of a broken family. "| have to get back to the office," Cash said after a few minutes, the flicker of paternal concern already extinguished by the fires of his corporate war. As he turned to leave, Catherine's voice, sharp and laced with poison, stopped him. "Is it true? Is Dane Wells getting married?" Cash froze. "That wedding will never happen," he bit out, his voice a low growl, and then he was gone. A moment later, Alton Thornton appeared at the end of the corridor. He offered Catherine his condolences about the baby, his voice laced with a grandfatherly concern that was utterly false. It was a performance, and Catherine, desperate for an ally, played her part. She poured out her heart to him, a torrent of grievances about Cash's obsession with me, about my return, about her fear of losing everything. "She's coming back here, isn't she?" Catherine asked, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and hatred. "If she does," Alton said, his voice dropping to a chilling ---- whisper, "she won't be leaving." A week later, | visited my mother's grave. It was a simple plot in a quiet cemetery overlooking the sea. As | placed a bouquet of white lilies on the cool marble, a black van screeched to a halt beside me. Two large men grabbed me, a cloth was pressed over my mouth, and the world went dark. | woke up on a boat. The smell of salt and diesel filled the air. My hands were tied behind my back. Catherine Yang stood over me, her face twisted with triumphant hatred. "Why did you come back?" she shrieked. "You've ruined everything!" She slapped me, hard, across the face. My head snapped back, but | just smiled, tasting blood in my mouth. "This has your father's fingerprints all over it," | taunted. "Kidnapping. A bit clumsy for a man like Alton Thornton, don't you think?" "How did you-" she started, her eyes widening in panic, before she was cut off. "| asked her to come," a voice said from the cabin door. Alton Thornton stepped out onto the deck, his face a cold mask. "I thought it was time we had a final conversation." "Illegal confinement is a serious offense, Mr. Thornton," | said, my voice steady. "With your company's current legal troubles, | doubt you can afford another scandal." He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "Who said anything ---- about confinement? There are a thousand ways to have an accident at sea. A tragic, unfortunate accident." | was going to die. This was their plan all along. To get rid of me, once and for all. It was sloppy. It was desperate. They were cornered animals, and they were lashing out. It was exactly what | had been waiting for. They left me in the cabin, tied to a chair. Soon, | felt the boat begin to list. Water began to seep in under the door. They were sinking it, with me inside. Calmly, | bit down on the fake molar in the back of my mouth. A tiny, waterproof GPS tracker, a precaution Dane and | had implemented before | returned to Hong Kong. | bit down, activating the emergency signal. Minutes later, the cabin door burst open. It was Dane. He cut my ropes, his face pale with a fear that went beyond our business partnership. "Are you insane?" he demanded, pulling me out onto the deck of his own speedboat, which had pulled alongside the sinking vessel. "Letting them take you? You could have been killed!" "It was a calculated risk," | said, my teeth chattering from the cold and the adrenaline. "To catch a big fish, you need the right bait." | held up the tiny lapel pin on my jacket. "And | have everything," | said, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across my face. ---- "High-definition video and audio. Every threat, every confession. It's over, Dane. We've won." He pulled me into a fierce hug, his arms a warm, solid shield against the cold sea spray. In that moment, | realized that for him, this had stopped being about business a long time ago. "Don't you ever do that again," he murmured into my hair, his voice rough with an emotion | wasn't ready to name.