Chapter 17
Twenty–four hours.
That was all the time I had left.
Last night–After Pax asked me to start over, I didn’t respond.
I simply sat there, letting the weight of his words sink into the candlelit hush between us.
The restaurant, once warm and intimate, suddenly felt distant, the glow of the chandeliers dimmed by something neither of us was willing to name.
A silence stretched between us, thick and unresolved.
Pax’s mother, ever perceptive, didn’t push for an answer.
“These kinds of things should be settled between the two of you,” she murmured, dabbing the corner of her lips with a napkin. “Tve had my fill. I’ll be heading home.”
Before leaving, she handed me a gift.
An emerald jade bracelet–delicate, flawless.
I refused instantly.
It was too much, too significant.
But Pax didn’t hesitate. He took it for me, slipping it into his pocket with the ease of someone who had already
decided for me.
“Then I’ll hold onto it for now.”
And then, as if sensing that wasn’t enough, he insisted on picking out another gift.
“Something from me.”
1 didn’t argue.
I simply followed him through the high–end shopping mall, trailing behind him like a shadow.
Like someone watching their own life play out from a distance.
And then we ran into her.
Nina.
She was dressed in white. Her makeup was soft, natural–deliberately understated.
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Chapter 17
The perfect picture of restraint.
The moment she saw Pax, something in her shattereil.
Tears welled up immediately, slipping down her cheeks in silent, measured streams. Her shoulders trembled as if she were standing in the eye of some invisible storm.
Tinhaled slowly,she should really consider acting.
With that level of control, she could land a starring role without an audition.
“Park told me,” she whispered, voice trembling with raw emotion. “He said you were going to propose to her.”
Her hands clutched the fabric of her dress, wringing it as if trying to steady herself.
“I didn’t believe him. I thought”
She shook her head, exhaling in sharp, uneven gasps.
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
The world around us didn’t stop.
People still passed by, conversations still buzzed in the air.
Yet somehow-
Everything around us blurred.
Like a scene suspended in time.
Just the three of us.
Pax turned to me.
It was instinctive, reflexive–like he needed to read my expression before he could decide how to respond.
I smiled.
A light, effortless curve of my lips.
As if I hadn’t heard a thing.
“I’ve told you a hundred times already,” Pax said, his voice edged with exhaustion.
“I don’t like you, Nina. I never have.”
“How
many more times do I need to say it?”
His patience, already stretched thin, finally snapped.
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He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply.
“Can you just stop this? Stop making a scene?”
But no one–not even him–had expected what happened next.
The moment her hand slipped into her purse, something in the air shifted.
A flicker of silver,the unmistakable gleam of a blade.
The mall’s overhead lights caught the edge of it, sending a cold, metallic gleam into the air–My breath hitched.
Pax moved immediately, his body shifting in front of mine without hesitation.
But Nina–Didn’t turn the knife toward me.
Instead,she laughed.
And then, with that same eerie, hollow smile–she dragged the blade across her own wrist.
