Reborn to Slay Breaking the Superstar's Golden Cage

Introduction: To save Lucas, I destroyed my right hand, my career, and eventually, my life. It wasn't until the moment I died that I realized his so-called "love" was nothing more than an excuse to keep me locked in a cage—and the mistress he spoiled was the very person who ruined me. Given a second chance at life, I woke up on the exact day this tragedy began. This time, I tore up his prenup on the spot and set a trap with my original design files before they could make a move. My hand, my career, and everything they stole from me—I'm taking it all back myself. As for Lucas and Chloe? What they owe me, they will repay a hundredfold! Scarlett's POV I snapped my eyes open, gasping for air. My vision slowly brought the world into focus. Harsh, fluorescent lights glared overhead, almost blinding me. Instinctively, I moved to shield my eyes, but the moment my right arm shifted, an agonizing spike of pain shot through my body like an electric shock. "Hiss—" I sucked in a sharp breath. Cold sweat instantly drenched my hospital gown. I stiffly turned my head. My gaze fell on my right hand, wrapped tightly in layers of gauze and a thick plaster cast. A striking, crimson patch of blood seeped through the white bandage. The pain felt too real. My brain went completely blank for an entire minute. Then, memories rushed back into my mind like a tidal wave. I wasn't dead. To be exact, I was back three years in the past. Back to the day I shoved Lucas out of the way of a falling stage light, only for the heavy equipment to crush my right hand into a shattered fracture. Back then, Lucas was my entire universe. A rising megastar, adored by millions. For him, I had willingly put my own jewelry design career on the backburner. For him, I threw myself in harm's way at that split second, permanently crippling my right hand and losing the fine motor skills required to hold a design pencil. And what did I get in return? Lucas standing over me, delivering his emotionless verdict: "Scarlett, your hand can't be fixed. Just stay home from now on. The world out there is too messy, and I don't want you getting involved. You're too reckless, so this is best for both of us." Under the guise of "love" and "protection," he snapped my wings and locked me away in his penthouse. I became his caged bird. Any sign of struggle only brought harsher restrictions. And once Chloe entered the picture, my entire existence turned into a cruel joke! Lucas used all his connections to push her to stardom. That woman walked right up to me, smiling with sweet, dripping venom: "Scarlett, Lucas said you're nothing but a nuisance now. Those unfinished drafts of yours? I already published them under my name. Oh, right, just to make sure you keep your mouth shut..." That day, Chloe's bodyguards pinned down my already ruined right hand. One by one, they snapped my fingers, grinding them beneath the soles of their designer shoes. The sickening crunch of shattering bone, Chloe's delicate laughter, and Lucas's cold voice through the phone speaker—"Let her do what she wants, just don't kill her"—finally broke my mind. On a freezing winter night, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. *Beep... beep... beep...* The rhythmic chime of the heart monitor yanked me violently back from those suffocating memories. I stared at the ceiling, raw, bone-deep hatred screaming inside my chest. Fighting through the dizzy spell, I pushed myself up and ripped the IV needle out of the back of my hand. Blood welled up and dripped onto the snow-white sheets, but I didn't even flinch. Stumbling into the private en-suite bathroom, I looked up into the mirror. A pale face, bloodless lips, swallowed up by an oversized hospital gown. I looked so fragile a single touch might shatter me. But my eyes burned with a terrifying, untamed fire. This wasn't the broken woman waiting to die in a dark basement. This was me at twenty-three: the prodigy hailed as a once-in-a-century jewelry design genius, newly nominated for a prestigious international emerging artist award. And a woman whose hand had just been crushed, but who hadn't yet become anyone's trophy wife. "Lucas..." I stared at my reflection, letting a cold, humorless smile curve my lips. "You want to keep me as a pet? Keep dreaming." A fresh wave of agony throbbed through my right hand. I lost this hand saving him. In my past life, I fell for his lies and didn't go abroad for nerve reconstruction surgery in time, missing the golden recovery window and permanently crippling myself. This time, there was still time to fix it. I closed my eyes and drew a long, steady breath. From the second I died and woke back up, there was zero chance I'd ever play the fool for the same man twice. I was going to call off the engagement. I was going to take back every single design draft I bled over during sleepless nights. And I was going to make Lucas and Chloe taste what it felt like to be completely destroyed! I twisted the tap, cupped a handful of freezing water with my left hand, and splashed it onto my face. Drops of water trailed down my pale cheeks, soaking into my collar. When I looked up, the last trace of weakness and lingering attachment to the past had been wiped clean. Only razor-sharp resolve remained. I turned, walked back into the room, and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. The screen lit up with missed calls from "Lucas." More than a dozen of them. According to how things played out last time, Lucas was about to walk through that door with his so-called "prenup." On paper, it was a promise to take care of me forever; in reality, it was a gilded deed of ownership designed to strip away my career, my voice, and my freedom. With a scoff, I muted the phone and tossed it onto the mattress. Using my left hand, I awkwardly tugged open the nightstand drawer and pulled out my tablet. I unlocked it, typed in a complex passcode, and brought up a hidden cloud drive. Inside lay the fruit of six months of grueling labor: the rough sketches, revision history, and final blueprints for my "Awakening" jewelry collection. In my previous life, during the days I spent doped up in this hospital bed, Chloe used Lucas's corporate IT team to quietly hack my files, steal the entire collection, and release it ahead of me, turning around to frame me for plagiarism. Back then, trapped under the haze of physical trauma and Lucas's controlling grip, I had no way to fight back. I was nailed to the wall as a fraud. My left hand tapped away at the screen. Clumsy, but driven by absolute focus. I encrypted all the raw, high-resolution source files with timestamped metadata and transferred them straight to an offshore, independent private server. Then, in the original folder, I left a set of "bait" files. On the surface, they looked complete, but several crucial rendering parameters and foundational line arts had been subtly doctored. On top of that, I embedded a lightweight tracking script directly into the archive. The second someone tried to download or extract the files, the script would run silently in the background, screen-recording their desktop activity and capturing their real IP address. Once the trap was set, I let out a long breath and leaned back against the pillows. The pain in my right arm flared relentlessly, but my mind was eerily quiet. The net was cast. Now I just had to wait for the prey to walk straight into it. Heavy, familiar footsteps echoed out in the hallway. My eyes hardened into ice. The man who drove me into the abyss had arrived.Scarlett's POV The door clicked open. Lucas walked in wearing a tailored black suit. Even in a room thick with the stench of antiseptic, his aloof, pristine aura didn't fade an ounce. He had striking features: a sharp brow, a straight nose, and deep-set eyes that always seemed brimming with quiet devotion, even when he felt nothing at all. Once upon a time, I drowned in those very eyes. His personal assistant trailed behind him, carrying a sleek black leather briefcase. "You're awake?" Lucas approached the bed, putting on an expression of deep concern. He reached out to cup my uninjured left cheek. "Does your hand still hurt?" In my past life, I would have thrown myself into his arms, biting back the tears and forcing a brave smile just to keep him from worrying. This time, I tilted my head away, coldly dodging his touch. Lucas's hand froze in midair. His brow twitched with a flicker of irritation, though his practiced mask smoothed it over almost instantly. "Scarlett, don't be difficult," Lucas said, pulling his hand back with an undercurrent of authority. He gave his assistant a look. The assistant stepped forward at once, pulling a document from the briefcase and setting it before me, uncapping a fountain pen. Lucas pulled up a chair, crossed his legs, and rested his gaze on my pale face. "The doctor said the damage is severe. Extensive nerve trauma. You won't be able to handle intricate, high-intensity drafting ever again. I'm heartbroken, but we have to face reality. This is our prenuptial agreement. It's also my lifelong promise to you." I didn't pick up the pen. My eyes drifted coldly over the paperwork. Bold text leaped out from the top page. I didn't even need to read it to know what it said: "Party B agrees to unconditionally terminate all commercial jewelry design ventures post-marriage." "Party B agrees to align with Party A's public image and shall not conduct media interviews without prior approval." "Party A will establish a dedicated trust fund to ensure Party B is provided for throughout her lifetime." Every single line sounded like devotion, but it was nothing more than the blueprints for a gilded cage! "Sign it," Lucas said, his tone turning gentle. "You can focus on resting and healing at home from now on. I'll take care of you. You won't have to face the stress of the outside world ever again. As my wife, your only job is to stay happy and wait for me to come home." What a sweet little fairy tale. I laughed out loud. I laughed at how utterly blind I had been in my past life to mistake suffocating control for love. Without a word, I reached out with my left hand and picked up the contract. Watching me take the papers, a trace of smug satisfaction flickered in Lucas's eyes. A split second later, that satisfaction froze solid. *Riiiip—* The sharp, violent sound of tearing paper shattered the quiet room. Using my left hand and my teeth, I ripped the prenup clean in half. Then again. And again. Tearing thick paper with one hand was clumsy and awkward, but every rip carried raw, venomous fury. Scraps of white paper fluttered down like cheap confetti, scattering across the sheets and the floor. "Scarlett! What the hell are you doing?!" Lucas bolted out of his chair, roaring in disbelief. Beside him, the assistant stood petrified, holding his breath. I gathered the last handful of shredded paper and threw it right at Lucas's designer trousers. Looking up, the devotion and adoration that used to fill my eyes were completely replaced by arctic frost. "What am I doing? Are you blind?" My voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the air with razor precision. "Lucas, the wedding is off." The room plunged into dead silence. Lucas stared down at me as if looking at a total stranger. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?" Lucas's voice dropped low, vibrating with suppressed anger. "Scarlett, I don't appreciate you joking about this. You saved me. I'm grateful, and I'm ready to spend the rest of my life taking care of you. But you need to rein in this attitude." "Gratitude? Taking care of me?" I let out a mocking laugh. "Lucas, do you honestly think putting a roof over my head means I should fall to my knees in worship? Every single word on this paper tells me you don't want a wife. You want a brainless, career-less doll who needs your permission just to step outside the front door!" I took a deep breath, forcing down the acid burning in my throat. "You want a caged bird? Fine. Doesn't your little starlet, Chloe, love playing the pet? Doesn't she cling to you every single day, batting her eyelashes? Take this trash to her. She'll probably cry tears of joy and drop to her knees to thank you. Go keep her in a cage and keep your sickening games away from me." I watched Lucas's eyes shift. "Scarlett, what does Chloe have to do with any of this?" His expression darkened completely. "Chloe is an artist signed to my agency, and she works hard. Stop taking your professional frustrations out on your personal life, and stop throwing these childish tantrums." "Childish tantrums?" I leaned back against the pillows. "Lucas, my right hand is ruined. It got crushed because I shoved you out of the way of that lighting rig. And you walk in here with a contract stripping away my entire career, telling me to stop throwing tantrums?" I pointed my left hand toward the door. "Get out. Take your pathetic pity and get the hell out." Lucas stood rooted to the floor, his fists clenched tight at his sides. He drew a long breath. "You're not in your right mind right now, Scarlett. Your hand is going to need long-term physical therapy and rehab. You can't handle this on your own." "I'll give you time to calm down. Once you're done acting out, I'll come back." With that, he turned and stormed toward the exit, his back straight and composed, though his hurried stride looked more like an escape. The assistant hurriedly scooped up the scattered briefcase and scrambled out behind him. The door clicked shut. I stared at the empty doorway, pure disgust washing through my chest. Calm down? I had never been more lucid in my entire life. I wasn't just calling off the engagement. I was going to make Lucas realize that losing me meant the rest of his life would never know peace again. I looked down at my bandaged right hand, my expression hardening into stone. "You think you ruined me?" I whispered, a dark smirk pulling at the corners of my lips. "Let's see who destroys who first."Scarlett's POV The afternoon after Lucas walked out, an uninvited guest showed up. A cloud of heavy, suffocating perfume entered the room before the person did. A moment later, an obnoxious bouquet of white lilies was slammed onto my nightstand. I wasn't severely allergic to pollen, but as a designer whose craft relied on sharp senses, I despised overpowering, synthetic scents. Frowning, I looked up from my tablet. Standing before me was a woman dressed in a pristine white designer dress, sporting flawless "no-makeup" makeup, her silky hair falling neatly over her shoulders. It was the innocent face of the entertainment industry's newest darling—Lucas's rising protégé, dubbed by millions as the "purest star of her generation": Chloe. "Scarlett, I heard about your accident. I cleared my whole schedule just to visit you." Chloe's voice sounded sweet enough to rot teeth, but the gleam in her eyes radiated pure, gloating triumph. In my last life, that wide-eyed, naive facade completely fooled me into thinking she was just a harmless rookie. It wasn't until her bodyguards crushed my fingers one by one that I saw the monster underneath. I didn't answer. I didn't even shift my posture, watching her like a pathetic clown in a circus. Chloe dragged a chair over, sat down, and fixed her eyes on my thick plaster cast. She let out an exaggerated gasp. "Oh my gosh, Scarlett... how did it get this bad?" Chloe covered her mouth, her eyes welling with instant, theatrical tears, as if she were the one suffering. "Lucas told me you might never be able to hold a pencil again. What are you going to do? You're a brilliant designer! If you can't sketch, aren't you basically... useless?" Her words sounded full of sympathy, but every syllable was aimed directly at ripping open my deepest wound. If this were my previous life, fresh off the news of my permanent injury, I would have broken down completely. Instead, I felt nothing. In fact, I almost laughed. "Are you finished?" I asked flatly, barely bothering to lift an eyebrow. Chloe froze for a second. She gritted her teeth, dropping her voice to an intimate whisper: "Scarlett, you don't have to put on a brave face. I know you're dying inside. Lucas is a loyal guy. Even though he views you as a burden now, he's still willing to support you. But still..." "Still, since your hand is ruined and you won't be designing anything ever again, wouldn't it be better to close your independent studio? Those people working for you don't have a future tied to a cripple. Just stay home, be a good little trophy wife, and stop giving Lucas a hard time with your baggage, okay?" There it was. Her real motive. Crush my spirit, dismantle my career, and grind me into the dirt so I could never stand up again. Staring at her fake, smiling face, I suddenly chuckled. "Chloe, do you really think having Lucas back you up gives you the right to run your mouth in front of me?" My voice wasn't loud, but the sheer chill in it made the air grow heavy. "Calling him 'Lucas' this and 'Lucas' that, sounding so intimate. What, does his talent training program teach you how to act pure and how to be a homewrecker at the same time?" "You!" Chloe's face flushed crimson. "Watch your mouth, Scarlett! I came here out of kindness. Don't be ungrateful!" "Kindness? You don't know the meaning of the word," I scoffed, twirling my stylus lazily with my left hand. "Go back and tell Lucas to keep his disgusting PR games out of my sight. Whether my studio stays open or whether I can still draw isn't up to a third-rate starlet who traded her dignity for fame to decide." "You... you crazy bitch! You deserved to lose that hand!" Shaking with rage, Chloe's delicate facade cracked entirely. She leaped to her feet, glared at me with pure venom, and slammed the door behind her as she stormed out. Silence returned to the room. I stared at the obnoxious lilies on the nightstand and hit the nurse call button. "Please throw these flowers in the trash. The smell is making me sick." Once the room was cleared, I leaned back and closed my eyes to rest. Doing the math in my head, since Chloe couldn't wait to come here and gloat, her behind-the-scenes move would happen any minute now. Sure enough, less than three hours after Chloe left. Night had fallen, draping the room in shadows. The phone resting beside my pillow buzzed violently. My eyes snapped open. That was the custom high-priority encrypted alarm I had set up. Sitting up swiftly, I grabbed my tablet with my left hand and tapped in the passcode. A glaring red warning box lit up the dark screen— [ALERT: Unauthorized intrusion detected on your offshore private cloud! Firewall bypassed!] Right on schedule. My gaze turned razor-sharp, like an eagle locking onto its prey in the dead of night. Instead of severing the connection, I steadily initialized the counter-tracking program running silently in the background. Lines of green code scrolled rapidly down the screen, laying out their digital footprint in real time. They were being cautious, routing through several proxy hops, but their methods still looked amateurish to me. During the years Lucas kept me trapped in that house, I had forced myself to become a top-tier digital security expert just to secretly audit his company's financial records. "You want to steal my collection? Go ahead. Take it." With a cold smirk, my left hand tapped the glass, deliberately opening a "vulnerability" to guide the intruder straight into the bait folder. The monitor confirmed it: the intruder was frantically downloading the archive titled *Awakening_Final_Master.rar*. The progress bar crawled forward: 10%... 50%... 90%... 100%. Download complete. At the exact same moment, the lightweight Trojan packed inside the archive quietly executed on their machine. A split window snapped open on the right side of my tablet, streaming a live screen recording of their desktop. And the sweetest, most ironic part? The Trojan didn't just capture their MAC address—it resolved their physical, static IP. An IP address belonging squarely to the internal corporate network of Lucas's entertainment agency. Watching them uncompress the stolen files in real time, a sea of freezing hatred churned behind my eyes. Oh, Lucas. To build your little mistress into a star, you didn't just stand by while my hand was crushed; you actively let her rob my life's work, ready to brand me as a plagiarist for the rest of my days. You pulled it off in my past life. You ruined my name and drove me into an early grave. But this time around... I watched the screen recording finish saving, then packaged, encrypted, and backed it up across three different cloud accounts. Chloe, since you love stealing so much, choke on it. Let's see if you can handle the fallout when you proudly parade that poisoned bait in front of the world. Let's see who ends up copying who.Scarlett's POV Three days later, the storm hit right on schedule. It was mid-morning, and I had just finished an agonizing session of occupational nerve therapy. Sweat was still beading on my forehead. The moment I stepped back into the room, my phone on the nightstand went berserk with notifications. Picking it up with my left hand, I opened X, and several trending tags with bold red "VIRAL" markers slammed into my view: #Chloe Launches Debut Jewelry Line "Awakening"# #Scarlett Accused of Stealing Rookie Designer Chloe's Work# #Chloe The Genius Crossover Designer# #Boycott Scarlett Out of the Industry# Chloe had made her move. Fast, loud, and massive. I clicked on the top trending post. An hour ago, Chloe's verified account had posted a polished photo carousel. Nine breathtaking jewelry design concepts were showcased—the exact "Awakening" collection I had spent six months slaving over. Her caption read: "From the screen to the drafting board, every new journey is a rebirth. This is 'Awakening,' a collection I poured my soul into for half a year, hoping to bring everyone the warmth of spring. On a side note, I heard a certain senior industry figure was working on a suspiciously similar concept recently. I truly hope it's just a coincidence. Original art isn't easy to create, after all. [Heart]" The second that post went live, Lucas's agency PR network mobilized, driving the narrative at full throttle. Several design commentary accounts boasting tens of millions of followers posted simultaneously, dropping "insider scoops." They hinted that my inspiration had completely dried up and that, crippled by my hand injury, I had secretly swiped Chloe's portfolio to stage a comeback—only for Chloe to beat me to the punch. Online mobs never cared about facts; they just wanted someone to tear apart. Between Chloe's calculated PR spin and Lucas's tacit backing, my comment sections were overrun by an absolute bloodbath of hate. "Some 'genius designer.' Turns out she's just a pathetic thief! Disgusting!" "If your hand is broken, just retire! Stealing from a rookie? Have some shame!" "Boycott Scarlett! Kick her out of the design world!" "Stealing from a newcomer is a new low. Cancel her permanently!" Someone even leaked my hospital location, with trolls threatening to show up with buckets of red paint. The hospital's administration called my room in a panic, asking if I needed an immediate transfer to dodge the paparazzi. Looking at the vile abuse flooding the screen, I didn't feel an ounce of panic. If anything, I felt perfectly calm. "No need to transfer," I told the PR manager over the phone, my tone frosty. "I just need access to the projector and whiteboard in the top-floor conference room. I'm going live in thirty minutes." Hanging up, I ignored the rabid comments, logged into the secured server, and downloaded the true, uncorrupted master archive. Thirty minutes later, inside the empty conference room on the top floor. No makeup. No glamorous setup. I sat in an oversized striped hospital gown, my right arm locked in a thick plaster cast and held up by a black sling. Completely barefaced, pale as a ghost, but projecting an untouchable aura of authority. I propped my phone on a small tripod and hit the live broadcast button. Because the scandal was raging, the second the stream went live, over a hundred thousand viewers flooded in. The live chat was an unreadable blur of pure toxicity. [A plagiarist actually has the guts to go live?] [Get on your knees and apologize to Chloe!] [Look at her acting all pathetic in a hospital bed trying to play the victim! Don't fall for it!] I didn't spare the chat a single glance. Using my left hand to navigate the trackpad, I fired up the projector behind me. The massive wall lit up, casting my laptop screen across the room. "My name is Scarlett. Regarding Chloe's debut of the 'Awakening' collection and her claims of plagiarism, I will only say this once." My voice wasn't booming, and lingering physical exhaustion left it slightly raspy, but the sheer, unwavering composure in my tone miraculously forced the rapid-fire abuse in the comments to slow down. "Chloe claims this collection was the result of six months of hard work. Coincidentally, I have an 'Awakening' collection of my own. Since everyone is so eager to find out who the real creator is, let's take a little public class on raw file metadata." I opened a project directory on the projected screen. "This is the very first concept sketch for 'Awakening.'" I pulled up a rough pencil-textured draft. "Creation timestamp: November 4th of last year, at exactly 2:14 AM. Chloe, did your lightning bolt of inspiration happen to strike at this exact same second?" A few viewers started pushing back: [Anyone can change their system clock! That proves nothing!] I scoffed. "Change the clock? Fair enough. Let's look at something you can't fake." I opened the complex master file for the signature necklace and imported it into the design software. "I reviewed the nine images Chloe posted today. They look great. Beautiful rendering, stunning lighting. Unfortunately, she only managed to steal the skin." Using my left hand with steady, deliberate clicks, I began deconstructing the layers one by one. Under my commands, the gorgeous necklace was stripped down to line art, base flats, highlights, and shadow maps—spanning over a hundred distinct layers. "Anyone who actually designs jewelry knows that a complex piece requires endless revisions. Look at this petal layer right here," I zoomed in on a microscopic detail. "There's an abandoned line correction trace here. On February 12th of this year, I hid this vector guide layer because I wasn't happy with the curve. In the high-res render Chloe posted, if you blow it up fifty times, you will still see a tiny cluster of pixel noise left behind when that hidden layer was flattened into the final image." The tone of the live chat shifted instantly. Professional designers and neutral viewers began chiming in: "Holy shit, the line trace is actually there! I just zoomed in on Chloe's post, there's literally a noise artifact right at that spot!" "You can only get leftover guide noise like that from raw working project files!" "Chloe only showed flattened JPEGs. Scarlett is breaking down the entire root directory live." That was only the beginning. My gaze sharpened into steel. "If that's still not enough proof, then I suggest Chloe and the legal team at Lucas's agency take a very close look at this next video." I clicked play on a video file. The footage clearly showed a desktop recording of an ongoing intrusion. From breaching the firewall, to navigating straight into the directory named "Scarlett_Cloud," to downloading the bait archive for "Awakening"—every click, every keystroke was laid bare. And the fatal blow: pinned in the bottom right corner of the screen, the tracking script displayed the intruder's physical IP and MAC address in crisp, undeniable detail! "This is a screen recording from three days ago, documenting an illegal intrusion into my private server to steal my design files. Anyone with basic tech knowledge can look up this IP address—it routes directly to the internal network at the headquarters of Lucas's entertainment agency." I turned away from the wall and stared straight into the phone camera lens. In that moment, my gaze pierced through the screen, aimed straight for Chloe's and Lucas's throats. "Chloe, when you talked about your 'blood, sweat, and tears,' did you mean hiring a hacker to break into the computer of a crippled woman lying in a hospital bed, stealing a deliberately flawed bait file, slapping your name on it, and rushing to post it first?!" "Who gave you the audacity?!" Every word landed like a thunderclap, blowing the entire stream wide open. After two seconds of stunned, breathless silence, the live chat exploded with sheer madness—and this time, the tides flipped entirely! "HOLY CRAP! The ultimate reverse card!" "This isn't copying, this is grand larceny! This is a straight-up felony!" "I just pinged the IP, it really belongs to Lucas's agency! Wow!" "Chloe pretending to be an innocent angel while being a literal thief? I'm gonna puke!" "Scarlett is the real genius! What an absolute queen of a takedown!" "Kick Chloe out of the industry! Throw her in jail!" The trending topics inverted in real time: "Scarlett Exposes Hacker Screen Recording" "Chloe Steals Design Portfolio" "Lucas's Agency Harboring a Criminal" From being reviled by the entire internet to having the whole world in my corner, it took less than thirty minutes. My account's follower count skyrocketed at a terrifying pace, pulling in over five million new followers overnight!Scarlett's POV The internet's celebration meant nothing to me. The second the stream ended, I didn't go back to the hospital bed. I pulled out my IV line, changed into my own clothes, and took a cab straight to my private studio. Pushing through the heavy glass door, the familiar scent of polishing paste, metal shavings, and lapidary fluid hit my senses. The walls were covered in my sketches, and workbenches held scattered tools and unfinished casts. This was my battlefield—and the empire Lucas had stripped away from me in my previous life. Walking over to the safe, I used my left hand to punch in the code, transferring every rare raw gemstone and unreleased master draft into an impact-resistant security case. Just as the metal latches snapped shut— *BANG!* The heavy glass entrance was violently kicked open from the outside. I didn't turn around. I calmly gripped the handle of the case with my left hand. I already knew it was Lucas. Within seconds, Lucas closed the distance, grabbed my left shoulder, and slammed me hard against the edge of the workbench. "Scarlett! Have you lost your mind?!" "Do you have any idea what you did on that live stream today?!" The impact against the wall knocked the wind out of me, but I didn't even flinch. "What did I do?" I looked up into his eyes, my voice chillingly calm. "I merely exposed a thief to the public. What, is Mr. Star heartbroken over her?" "Did you really have to push it this far?!" Lucas's chest heaved with fury. "Chloe is the biggest talent my agency is pushing right now! She has over a dozen brand deals and three major film roles lined up! Pulling a stunt like this didn't just end her career, it dragged my entire company through the mud! Destroying her is destroying me!" "Destroying you?" A low laugh slipped past my lips. "Lucas, Chloe destroyed herself the second she chose to steal. If she had stayed in her lane, who could have touched her?" I paused, dropping my gaze down to the thick plaster cast wrapped around my right arm. "You're crying over her ruined career? Then tell me—" My voice rose sharply. "Is her hand shattered?!" Lucas's pupils shrank, and his grip on my shoulder instinctively loosened. "Were her creations stolen?! Was she branded a fraud, hunted down by millions of strangers, and terrified to step outside her own front door?!" Using all the strength in my left arm, I shoved Lucas backward. The sheer force sent the grown man stumbling half a step back. I closed the distance, staring down his rapidly paling face: "Was she locked away in an isolated suburban house, stripped of her pencils and laptop, accused of acting out just for glancing at a sketch?! Did she ever reach a point of such utter despair that swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills felt like her only way out?!" The agonizing memories of my past life collided with the boiling rage of the present. My eyes burned red, but not a single tear fell. "What are you talking about? What sleeping pills? Who locked you up?" Lucas looked completely lost, rattled by my words. "You don't understand? That's fine." I drew a deep, ragged breath, forcing down the metallic taste of blood rising in my throat. I looked down. Using the thumb and forefinger of my left hand, I pinched the diamond ring sitting on the middle finger of my right hand. A five-carat pink diamond. The exact ring Lucas slipped onto my finger when he proposed. Once upon a time, I treated it like the most precious treasure on earth, refusing to take it off even when showering. "Lucas, my hand was crushed because I shoved you out of the path of that falling rig. I thought I was saving the love of my life." My voice dropped back into a flat, icy monotone. "And how did you show your concern? By handing me a prenuptial agreement, conveniently clipping my wings, and trying to turn me into a helpless parasite who had to beg you for survival." "I never wanted to turn you into a parasite!" Lucas blurted out defensively, though his voice lacked conviction. "I just wanted to protect you! With your hand in that state and the design industry being so brutal, I didn't want you to suffer out there!" "Stop dressing up your sick need for control as romantic devotion. It makes me sick." I scoffed, tugging hard on the ring. My knuckles were still swollen, and the band cut painfully into my skin, leaving an angry red welt, but I ripped it free without a second thought. "Protect me? Your idea of protection was letting your mistress steal my life's work! Your idea of protection was taking her side while the whole world tore me to shreds, demanding to know why I had to ruin her!" The ring popped off my finger. I looked at Lucas's completely bloodless face. "This is your so-called love. Cheap. Hypocritical. Repulsive." The moment the words left my lips, I flicked my wrist. *Ping—* The multimillion-dollar pink diamond ring hit the polished marble floor with a sharp, ringing crack. It bounced and skittered across the tiles, rolling straight toward the corner until it settled right next to the trash can. Lucas parted his lips, but not a single sound came out. "We're done." Picking up the security case from the workbench, I didn't spare him another glance. I brushed past his shoulder and stepped out into the midnight air.