---- Chapter 23 Clara screamed, yanking her hand back. "No! It's mine! You gave it to mel" she lied, her eyes wide with panic. The ring was her last trophy, the ultimate symbol of her supposed victory. She would not give it up. "| never gave you that ring!" Liam roared. "That ring belongs to Ava! You stole it, you pathetic thief!" He grabbed her hand again, trying to wrench the ring from her finger. But her fingers were swollen, and the ring wouldn't budge. She fought him, kicking and scratching like a cornered animal. "Get it off her," Liam snarled to his security men, who had followed him into the room. "I don't care how you do it. Cut it off." He turned and stalked out of the room, unable to look at her anymore. He couldn't hear her screams over the roaring in his own ears. He stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall, his body trembling with a mixture of rage and a profound, soul-crushing grief. He thought of me. He pictured me, alone in a hospital room, grieving the loss of our child. He pictured me discovering Clara's lies, her taunts, her theft of my wedding ring ---- He imagined the pain and humiliation | must have felt. And he had been the cause of it all. He had enabled it, he had allowed it. He had chosen the lie over the truth, the fake over the real. His self-loathing was a physical entity, a black hole in his chest, threatening to swallow him whole. Later that night, he returned to the Kane estate. His grandfather was waiting. George took one look at his grandson's bloody knuckles, his haunted eyes, and the small, blood-stained diamond ring clutched in his hand, and he knew. He didn't say a word. He just walked up to Liam and struck him hard across the face. Liam stumbled but didn't fall. George hit him again, a backhand strike with all his strength. "This," the old man said, his voice trembling with a lifetime of disappointment, "is for the shame you have brought upon us. And this," he said, his voice breaking, "is for what you did to that sweet girl." Liam took the blows without a word. He deserved it. He deserved so much worse. He spent the next two days in his old bedroom, shivering with a fever he didn't know he had. He refused to see a doctor. He lay in the dark, clutching my ring, drifting in and out of a delirious state. In his fever dreams, he saw me. He saw me smiling, he heard my laugh. He saw the future they were supposed to have, the family they were supposed to be. ---- And in his waking moments, he was haunted by one, recurring thought: he had lost me forever. He had killed our child. And it was all his fault. In the dark, he wept, calling my name over and over again, a broken man in a self-made hell.