Chapter 4

The days following the party were a blur of silence. Bennett didn't come home. He didn't call. The only communication was a single, terse text: [Aria is shaken up. Staying with her to make sure she and the baby are okay.] He never asked about the party. He never asked if Kelsey got home safely. He was completely oblivious to the fact that she had nearly died.

Kelsey's physical wounds began to heal. The rash faded, the swelling in her throat subsided. But the wounds inside were still raw, festering.

After a few days of numbly drifting through the empty penthouse, she forced herself to go out. She found herself driving to the university campus where they had met, a place so saturated with memories it felt like walking through a graveyard. It had been their sanctuary, a quiet escape from the demands of their public lives.

She remembered a rainy afternoon they had spent there, huddled together on a bench. He had kissed her then, a soft, lingering kiss, and whispered, "This is us, Kels. Timeless."

Now, the memory was just another lie.

As she rounded a corner into the university's art gallery, she saw them. Bennett and Aria, standing in front of the very photograph that had won Kelsey her first major award. It was a self-portrait, taken the year she and Bennett fell in love. They weren't in a reverent hush. They were laughing, Aria leaning into Bennett, her head on his shoulder.

An elderly couple standing nearby smiled at them. "What a beautiful young couple," the woman murmured to her husband, loud enough for Kelsey to hear.

Aria beamed, her face alight with pride. She turned to the couple. "Thank you! He just spoils me rotten," she said, patting Bennett's chest possessively. "With him, I feel like I'm really living for the first time."

Bennett didn't correct her. He just smiled, a soft, indulgent smile that Kelsey hadn't seen in a lifetime. He leaned down and kissed the top of Aria's head. "And you make me feel young again," he said, his voice full of a genuine warmth that made Kelsey's blood run cold. "With you, I feel... real. Not like I'm playing a part."

Each word was a hammer blow to Kelsey's already shattered heart. So that's what their life had been to him: a part to be played. The dutiful husband, the responsible CEO. With Aria, he could be his "real" self-unburdened, passionate, alive.

Kelsey understood then. Aria's appeal wasn't just her youth or her resemblance to Kelsey. It was her simplicity. She was a girl from a different world, unburdened by the weight of the Randolph name, by the trauma of his family's past. She was his escape.

Kelsey turned to leave, her heart a leaden weight in her chest. But as she rounded a sculpture, she ran right into Aria, who was heading to the restroom.

Aria jumped, startled. "Oh! Mrs. Randolph! I... I didn't see you." She looked flustered, guilty. "We were just... Bennett wanted to show me some art."

"You don't have to explain anything to me, Aria," Kelsey said, her voice flat. "It's none of my business."

Just then, Aria saw Bennett approaching from down the hall. A calculating look flickered in her eyes. She took a step, twisted her ankle theatrically, and pitched herself toward Kelsey, letting her own forehead connect with the sharp corner of a marble pedestal. She crumpled to the floor with a cry of pain as blood began to trickle from the cut.

Bennett came running, his face a thundercloud of fury. He saw Aria on the ground, bleeding, and Kelsey standing over her, and his face contorted with rage.

"What did you do?" he roared at Kelsey, his voice echoing through the quiet gallery. "Are you so jealous you have to physically attack her? What is wrong with you?"

The accusation was so monstrous, so utterly divorced from reality, that Kelsey could only stare at him in stunned silence. He thought she had done this. He thought she was capable of such violence.

He didn't wait for an answer. He knelt, gathering a sobbing Aria into his arms, his voice dropping to a tender murmur. "It's okay, baby. I've got you. I'm here."

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and strode past Kelsey, his eyes burning with hatred. "Stay away from us," he hissed.

Kelsey followed them, a numb automaton, back to the same hospital, the same emergency room that was becoming a grim stage for her life's final act.

This time, the doctors, concerned about the head injury, wanted to be cautious. A nurse mentioned that Aria's chart noted a mild blood clotting disorder and suggested a precautionary blood transfusion. The hospital's supply of her rare blood type was dangerously low.

"I'm O-negative," Bennett announced without hesitation, rolling up his sleeve. "Take mine. Take as much as you need."

"Sir, we can only take one unit safely," a nurse cautioned him. "You'll be weak."

"I don't care," Bennett snapped. "Her life and our child's life are what matter. If she needs more, you take more. Do you understand me?"

He lay on a gurney, his jaw tight, as the nurse drew his blood. Kelsey watched from the hallway, a silent, invisible witness. He was literally giving his life's blood for this girl, a girl he had known for only a few months. A girl who was a lie.

He gave one unit, then demanded they take another, ignoring the doctors' protests. He grew pale, his breathing shallow. After the second unit was drawn, he tried to stand and collapsed, fainting from the blood loss.

The nurses rushed to help him, putting him on an IV drip in a room just across the hall from Aria's.

Kelsey stood in the doorway, watching him.

Even in his unconscious state, a name escaped his lips in a faint, desperate whisper.

"Aria..."

Not Kelsey. Never Kelsey.

In that moment, any lingering trace of love, any vestige of their shared history, died. There was nothing left but a vast, cold emptiness.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a secure message from Amelia.

[Passport, accounts, and ticket are ready. Your flight to Paris leaves from JFK. Tomorrow morning.]

The message was a lifeline, a promise of a future. A future without him.