Chapter 3: The Truth He Buried
Victor stepped into the room but didn’t touch anything.
“This isn’t your room,” he said quietly. “It belongs to her.”
Aria looked again at the portrait.
The resemblance was undeniable.
“She was my wife,” Victor continued. “My first wife… Elena.”
Aria’s breath caught.
Victor’s voice trembled for the first time.
“She died here. In this house. And before she died… she told me something I never forgot.”
He paused.
Aria waited, her heart pounding.
“She said if I ever lost her… I would try to replace her. Not on purpose. But because I couldn’t accept the loss.”
He looked at Aria directly.
“And then you came.”
The silence was unbearable.
Aria stepped back. “You married me… because I look like her?”
Victor shook his head slowly.
“Not just because you look like her.”
His voice broke.
“Because you are connected to her death in a way I never told anyone.”
A long silence followed.
Then he added:
“And I didn’t marry you to replace her… I married you to face what I did.”
Aria felt the ground shift beneath her.
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Everything she thought she knew—about the marriage, the money, the sacrifice—was only the surface of something much darker.
And now… she was trapped inside the truth.
