Bleeding Through the Veil of Scars

𝙸 𝙽𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚍 𝙷𝚎𝚛 𝙼𝚢 𝚆𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚃𝚘𝚘 𝙻𝚊𝚝𝚎

The silence in the room wasn't just silence—it was a living, breathing thing. 

It pressed in on me from all sides, suffocating, deafening. 

The chandelier above creaked faintly, and the ticking of the antique clock on the far wall sounded like a gunshot in my skull. 

Outside the window, the night was still—eerily so—like the world itself had paused to witness my fall from grace.

My heart was pounding, but it wasn't panic. 

It was something worse—clarity. 

Brutal, merciless clarity. 

The kind that stripped illusions down to bone. 

I sat there like I had just walked out of a warzone and didn't yet realize I was bleeding out. 

My hand clenched so tightly around the edge of the desk that I could feel the wood cutting into my skin. 

I welcomed the sting. 

At least it was real.

The office, usually a place of command and strategy, now felt foreign—tainted. 

The leather chair beneath me groaned when I shifted, but I didn't move far. I couldn't. 

The pen drive lay on the table, small, unassuming. 

Just a piece of plastic and metal.

But it might as well have been a guillotine.

My thumb hovered over it, trembling. Not from fear. From knowledge. 

Because I already knew. 

Somewhere deep inside me—buried beneath the justifications and the blind loyalty—I knew I had made a mistake.

No. Not a mistake.

A betrayal.

And now the proof of it waited for me. 

Cold. Unforgiving.

The desk lamp flickered slightly, casting long shadows across the room. 

I hadn't even turned on the overhead lights. 

Maybe some part of me didn't want the truth exposed under full brightness. 

Maybe I didn't want to see my own reflection in the glass—because I knew what I'd see.

A man who had chosen wrong.

A man who had traded an empress for an illusion.

The laptop sat open, cursor blinking in silent accusation. 

The files on the pen drive had already been decrypted by one of my trusted techs—ironically, someone loyal to her. 

To Serafina.