One Step From Bliss, One Step Into the Abyss

I got lucky. Amos Clayton, one of my own men, dragged me out of the villa a second before it went up. But the blast still caught my legs. Shrapnel had lodged deep inside. Too close to the nerves. If I didn't want to end up crippled, the only way was to dig it out without anesthesia. I lay on the cleaning table, fingers clawing straight through the sheet beneath me. Sweat poured off me, and I never made a sound. After all, no pain compares to being stabbed in the back by the one you love. When they finished, I refused the doctor's advice to rest in bed. I went back to the wedding suite and ordered Amos to tear out every last bit of the renovation inside. Amos looked uneasy. "Maddie, I know you're angry." "But this place was Tom's wedding gift to you." "If I smash it up like this, Tom will blame me." I caught the wording, and I fixed my eyes on his. "So you already knew?" "Why didn't you tell me?" Amos stammered. "Tom said he was afraid it would be too much of a shock for you." I laughed until it turned to tears. Afraid of the shock. So he hid the fact that he'd kept alive the enemy who killed our children. So he hid that he was sleeping with that enemy. So even my own men knew Tom had a woman stashed away. And I was the only one left in the dark like a fool. I shoved Amos aside, swung the hammer up, and drove it hard into the wall. Amos tried to stop me, but he was too late. Behind that plain, ordinary wall, there was another world. A pink crib. A blue baby walker. And more diapers, formula, and children's toys than I could count. And all at once I understood. Why Amos, who was supposed to be out on a job, had shown up in the villa a second before the blast to pull me out. Not loyalty to his boss. Fear that I'd hurt someone innocent. I pressed the gun to Amos's head and asked him. "Where's the child?" Amos still tried to speak up for that little bastard. "Maddie, the kid's innocent." "And besides, Freda is Tom's—" I put a bullet through his wrist. Clutching the wound, Amos finally gave it up. "Dragon Lake Manor." It felt like my heart had been carved straight out of me. I don't even know how I got into the car. All I could think of was five years ago, when I'd just found out I was pregnant. By then I'd been building everything alongside Tom for years. The gunfire and the fighting had wrecked my body long before. The doctor said the baby might not make it, and advised me to terminate first. There'd be time enough to try again once I recovered. But Tom looked at those two tiny heartbeats on the ultrasound. He spent a fortune building a private estate in Dragon Lake Bay, said to be the safest place in all of Harbor City. He brought in the best medical team to stand by twenty-four hours a day. I never imagined the very team meant to protect me and the babies would become the ones who watched them die. Afterward, I couldn't bear the memories the place stirred. I told Tom to sell the estate. He agreed to every word. Then he turned around and hid his mistress and his bastard son right there. Rage boiling in my chest, I kicked the manor gates open. It was empty inside. Only Tom, waiting for me. Seeing the red in my eyes, he came over and held me the way he always had, soothing. "Maddie, stop this. There's no child." "Those things are just offerings I bought for the children of ours who never got to be born." "All these years it wasn't only you. I never forgot them either." "What happened today is on me. I've already sent her away." "From now on I'll stay by your side, and we'll be just like before." I said nothing. I just smiled coldly and threw the photo of that woman holding a baby in his face. Just something I'd thrown together with AI on the way over, in case he tried to deny it. But Tom flew into a rage on the spot, seized my throat hard, and said, "What did you do to Freda and Bliss?"

Bliss... That was the name Tom and I chose five years ago, together, for the two children who were never born. I've killed too many people in this life. If I fall into the lowest pit of hell when I die, it would be no more than I deserve. All I ever wanted was for those two children to have a whole, happy, easy life. But they weren't only denied a safe birth. Even the name I gave them myself was taken away. Tears ran down to the corner of my mouth, so bitter my throat closed. I asked Tom. "So you'll finally admit that little bastard is yours?" "Our children have been dead five years! And you couldn't wait to climb into bed with the woman who killed them, and give her a child of your own." "When you hold that little bastard, when you rock him to sleep." "Does it ever cross your mind that our children never even got one look at this world?" "Shut up!" Tom's grip tightened. "Maddie, the child is innocent." "And what's between me and Freda Walker is nothing like what you think. I'm the one who wronged her first!" "Tell me where they are, and I'll give you anything you ask." I asked him. "Does that include killing them?" Tom's pupils shrank sharply. He cursed at me. "You're insane!" "How many times do I have to say it? None of this has anything to do with Freda or the children!" I looked straight into his eyes and said it word by word. "Tom, the one who's really gone insane is you." "You promised me. You'd kill everyone who had a hand in our children's deaths." "No matter how far they ran." "If you can't do it, then I'll do it for you." Maybe my words pushed Tom too far. He ordered me locked away. Every method he'd once used on traitors was turned on me, one by one. They tortured me for a day and a night, and still I wouldn't give. I only passed out, my body spent past its limit. Tom had a basin of cold water thrown over me to bring me around. He gripped my chin, his eyes cold. The same way he used to look at old enemies. "Madeline, I'll give you one last chance." "Where are Freda and the children?" My mind was slipping. Instinctively, I let it slip out. "I don't know..." Tom only closed his eyes. The next second, countless snakes came pouring toward me, tongues flicking. The slick weight of one slid over my ankle, and I woke all the way in an instant. And it dragged me back ten years, to the first time I ever met Tom. To the snake pit in the borderland wilderness, where I nearly died pulling him out. I lived through that, but it left a scar in me that never healed. For ten whole years after, there wasn't a snake in our home. Not even anything long and coiled shaped like one. And now, for that woman, he was using the one thing I feared most to break me. I screamed and shoved back to get away. "Tom! You can't do this!" "Get them away from me!" But he stood outside the door, looking down at me from up there. "You forced my hand." As he spoke, the snake nearest me opened its bloody mouth wide. Instinctively, I shut my eyes. Then a woman's voice rose suddenly from outside the manor. "Tom, what are you doing?" Tom wept with joy and rushed to gather the woman and the infant in her arms against him. His eyes full of the shock of getting back what he'd lost. But I saw the other child, the one standing beside the woman. Four, maybe five years old. If my two children hadn't died, they'd have been exactly his age. So Tom's betrayal ran far longer than I'd ever imagined. I reached for the earring on my right side. The moment the indicator light came on, I said, softly. "Brother, I regret it. Come and take me home." "And one more thing. I want Tom Barnes in hell."

I was back in the hospital again. While I was out, I dreamed of so many things from before. There was ten years ago, when I broke every rule of our world and begged my brother to save Tom Barnes, who was being hunted down. There was eight years ago, when I gave up everything I had abroad and stayed with him in Harbor City without a second thought, the two of us fighting our way up together. There was six years ago, when we got cornered in an abandoned warehouse at the docks after someone set us up. With our lives hanging by a thread, we held each other's hands and swore we'd be together again in the next life. One thing after another, all of it so good. Then the picture changed. I saw Tom holding another woman's hand. Watching me, cold-faced, as a crowd of men closed in around me. I lay in a pool of blood, cradling my pregnant belly, begging him for help. But he took the woman and her two children and walked away without looking back. And after that came the part of the nightmare I least wanted to touch. I woke up screaming, gulping down air. Freda Walker stood at the head of my bed with dozens of bodyguards. Seeing that I was awake, she spoke first. "Tom didn't want me coming to see you. He was afraid you'd lose control and hurt me." I gave a cold laugh of my own and asked her. "And you still dared to come? You're not afraid I'll kill you?" Freda smiled. "You won't." "Because you hate Tom more than you hate me." She was right. That didn't mean I'd let her go. Whenever I thought of losing my children, of hating myself so much in my grief that I wanted to die, Tom had been somewhere I knew nothing about. By the side of the woman who killed our children, seeing her through her delivery, caring for her and the child, even trying for a second one. I wanted to cut them both to pieces! Freda saw the hatred in my eyes too. She bent down and murmured close to my ear. "By the way, you must be curious what Tom and I are to each other." "Let me remind you. Ten years ago, when Tom was being hunted, it was because of me." "From beginning to end, you were nothing but a tool he used to climb up, to bring down the people holding me, to get me out." "I just never expected he'd be reluctant to let this particular tool go." "So it seems I'll have to send you off myself." A tool... So the love I thought I had was that worthless. And I spent ten whole years never seeing through it. Losing my youth, my resources, even the lives of my two children... Blood surged up and I spat it out. I grabbed the fruit knife off the table and drove it at Freda. But she moved faster than me. She tore at her own clothes and hair and started screaming. The next second, Tom kicked the door open. Freda threw herself into his arms at once, crying and accusing me to him. "Tom, I came in good faith to explain things to Miss Gilbert, and she got someone to attack me." "You know I just gave birth. The doctor said the postpartum bleeding hasn't even cleared yet. How could she do this to me!" Tom's eyes on me were cold as ice. "I already told you this has nothing to do with Freda. Why won't you let her go?" "Since you like these vile little tricks so much, then feel what they're like yourself!" Tom locked me up with those men. When they stripped me bare and pinned me down, I saw the same skull tattoo on the inside of Tom's forearm as the ones on theirs. My heart was already dead. I drew up my knee and rammed it into the man on top of me. The moment he flinched from the pain, I wrapped my arms around him and threw myself off the cliff outside the window without a second thought. ... Back at the villa, Tom had finally soothed the shaken Freda to sleep. But I never came back to make trouble for him. Agitated, he dialed my number, and no one ever picked up. Amos Clayton watched his restless face, hesitated a long while, then spoke. "Tom, why don't you just tell Maddie the truth?" But Tom snapped at him. "Shut up! I will never let that filthy past dirty Maddie's ears." "No one is allowed to mention any of it to her. One more word and I'll put a bullet in you on the spot!" Still, he couldn't stop worrying whether I was safe. He went downstairs and drove through the night to the hospital. The moment he stepped into the ward, a thick smell of blood hit him. But I was nowhere to be seen. A bad feeling cut through him. He instinctively ran toward the window, and a gun pressed into the back of his head. My brother's face was dark as he questioned him, word by word. "Tom Barnes, who gave you the nerve to climb up over the bones of my sister and my two nephews?"