The cemetery was silent, save for the whisper of the wind through the skeletal trees. The sky hung low and gray, a shroud of mourning stretched thin over the world.

Lila stood before Adrian’s grave, her fingers tracing the cold marble of his headstone.

Adrian Cross

Beloved. Betrayed. Buried.

A slow, serpentine smile curled her lips.

Beloved. Oh, how they had loved him. The charming, tortured billionaire with the devil’s smile and the angel’s hands. The man who could make a woman feel like the only soul in the universe—until he made her feel like nothing at all.

Betrayed. That part was true. Just not in the way the world believed.

She knelt, her black dress pooling around her like ink, and pressed her palm flat against the freshly turned earth. The scent of damp soil filled her lungs, rich and dark, like the secrets buried beneath.

"You were everything," he had gasped, blood bubbling between his lips as he died in her arms.

And she had let him believe it.

Let him believe she was shattered.

Let him believe she was innocent.

A laugh, soft and venomous, slipped from her throat.

Flashback – Two Months Earlier

Chloe’s body had been so light in her arms.

Lila had carried her through the park, the moonlight slicing through the trees like silver blades. The girl’s golden hair had trailed in the dirt, her blue eyes wide and unseeing, the bruises around her throat already darkening.

"You shouldn’t have touched him," Lila had whispered, stroking Chloe’s cold cheek before tucking her beneath the bushes, where the rats would find her first.

Then, the therapist. The woman had been too perceptive, her questions too sharp. Lila had watched from the shadows as she left her office late one night, had followed her into the parking garage, the sound of her heels clicking like a ticking clock.

"You knew, didn’t you?" Lila had murmured, pressing the syringe into the woman’s neck. "You saw what I am."

And then Sophie. Sweet, stupid Sophie, who had stumbled upon Chloe’s body while walking her dog. Lila had seen the recognition in her eyes the next day at the charity gala, the way her fingers trembled around her champagne flute.

It had been so easy to slide into her DMs, to play the grieving friend, to plant the seeds of doubt.

"Adrian’s been acting strange," Lila had whispered to Sophie’s fiancé, her eyes brimming with crocodile tears. "I think… I think he hurt Sophie."

And just like that, the trap was set.

Present

Lila’s fingers drifted to her stomach, where Adrian’s child—her child—grew.

She turned back to Adrian’s grave, running her fingers over the engraved letters one last time.

"Rest well, my love," she whispered. Then, lower, just for him: "You’re mine forever now."

The wind picked up, howling through the gravestones like a chorus of the dead.

The real game had only just begun.

And this time, she would make sure everyone bled