---- Chapter 14 Hector Porter POV: | watched, frozen, as Almeda systematically dismantled Helene. It wasn't a frenzied attack; it was a cold, calculated execution. Each slap was precise, deliberate. When she was finished, she stood over Helene's sobbing form, not with triumph, but with a chillingly calm finality. "Take her away," Almeda said, not to me, but to my security team, who had followed me in. They hauled a hysterical Helene to her feet and dragged her out of the restaurant. | rushed to Almeda's side, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket. "Here," | said softly, reaching for her hand, the one she had used to hit Helene. It was red and already starting to swell. "Let me." She snatched her hand back as if my touch had burned her. "Don't," she said, her voice sharp. "Don't touch me." The rejection was a physical blow. "Almeda, I..." "Are you going to sign the papers or not?" she cut me off, her eyes hard as diamonds. "| will pay for the damages," | said, my voice desperate. "I will triple whatever this place is worth. I'll fund a second location, ---- a third. I'll get you a Michelin star. Anything. Just... don't do this." "This isn't about money, Hector," she said, her voice laced with weary frustration. "Why don't you understand that? This is about my life. A life that doesn't include you." "But | love you," | blurted out, the words tumbling out before | could stop them. The truth, raw and terrifying, hung in the air between us. "I think... | think | have for a long time. | was just too stupid, too obsessed with the past to see it." She looked at me, and for the first time, | saw a flicker of something other than anger in her eyes. It was pity. "No, Hector," she said softly. "You don't love me. You love the idea of me. You love the stability | brought to your life. You love that | was good for your son. But you don't love me." "That's not true," | insisted. "The night we... the first time..." | trailed off, remembering the night years ago that | had, in a drunken haze of grief, mistaken her for Geneva. | had been cruel to her the next morning, dismissive. | thought she had been trying to trap me. "You called me Geneva," she said, her voice flat, confirming my wretched memory. "You were drunk and grieving, and you called out your dead wife's name. And the next morning, you looked at me with such disgust, such regret. Do you have any idea how that felt?" | had no answer. The shame was a physical weight, crushing ---- the air from my lungs. "It doesn't matter," she said, turning away. "It's all in the past. Just like us." She began directing her staff, who had cautiously re-emerged, to start cleaning up the mess. She was already moving on, leaving me behind in the wreckage. | stood there, useless and lost, as she rebuilt her world around me. The next few days were a blur. | paid for the restaurant repairs, a sum so large it was meaningless. Helene, facing charges for assault and property damage, tried to use her resemblance to Geneva as a bargaining chip one last time. "You can't let them do this to me, Hector!" she'd cried at me over the phone from her lawyer's office. "| have her face! Don't you care about her face?" "I'm tired of looking at a copy," | had told her, my voice dead. "l want the original. And she's gone." | hung up and let the lawyers handle the rest. Helene was sentenced to community service and a hefty fine, then she disappeared from our lives. | received a new set of divorce papers via courier. | let them sit on my desk for two weeks, a symbol of my impending doom. Almeda didn't call. She didn't press. She just waited, her silence more unnerving than any threat. Then, the call came that changed everything. It was from Jacob's school. ---- "Mr. Porter," the headmistress's voice was tight with panic. "There's been an accident. Jacob... he was on his way to his car, and... there was a speeding vehicle. It hit him." My world went white. The next thing | knew, | was in a hospital, the smell of antiseptic burning my nostrils. Jacob was in surgery. | was alone in a waiting room, my universe shrunk to the size of a swinging door. When the surgeon finally came out, his face was grim. "He's alive. But the injuries are extensive. He's in a coma." | don't remember much of the next few days. | lived at the hospital, existing on stale coffee and fear. On the third day, Jacob began to murmur in his unconscious state. A single word, over and over. "Almeda... Almeda..." My hand was shaking as | dialed her number. She answered, her voice cool and professional. "The Gilded Lily, this is Almeda." "It's me," | croaked. "It's Jacob. He was in an accident. A hit- and-run. He's in a coma, Almeda. And he's calling for you Please." There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line. For a heart-stopping moment, | thought she would hang up. ---- But then, | heard her sigh, a sound of profound, weary resignation. "Where are you?" she asked.