The Blackthorn Charity Foundation gala invitation arrived as a sleek black metal card with an embedded e-ink display. Viola tossed it dismissively onto her console when it arrived. Just an hour before the event, she finally retrieved the dress from its cryogenic preservation unit—a stark white silk gown with architectural lines and not a single embellishment. Lucas had given it to her the day she'd named their daughter "White Rose." She had never worn it until now.

Her hover car glided silently to the venue—a crystalline structure perched dramatically on a cliff edge, dark waves crashing against the rocks below.


Viola entered wearing that white dress, a ghost blade slicing through the opulence. Conversation died momentarily. Recognition dawned on faces as eyes darted between her austere white gown and the venue's lavish decorations, whispers rippling outward like shock waves.

Lucas stood at the center of an admiring circle, all charm and laughter. When he spotted her, his smile crystallized, fury flashing across his blue eyes. He cut through the crowd with predatory grace, seizing her wrist with bone-crushing force.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed, each syllable dripping venom.


Viola extracted her hand, her expression glacial. "To witness your 'rebirth,' Lucas. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Her gaze slid past him to Selina, who approached with calculated elegance. She wore a champagne-gold gown encrusted with crystals, her slightly rounded belly prominently displayed, her face a mask of undisguised triumph. In her hand, she carried a small velvet box.


"Viola," Selina's voice dripped saccharine sweetness, deliberately pitched to carry to nearby guests, "how wonderful you could join us. Perfect timing—Lucas and I have something for you. Consider it both a farewell to the past and a celebration of new beginnings." She opened the velvet box with theatrical flourish.

Inside wasn't a traditional diamond but an upright brooch. Its base formed twisted platinum thorns cradling a teardrop-shaped, flawlessly clear diamond. Within the gem, microscopic star-like particles hung suspended, catching the light with a soft yet unsettling luminescence.

"We've named it 'Eternity,'" Selina announced, lifting the brooch for all to see, her voice thick with performative emotion. "Technology preserving precious memories forever. Lucas thought it might bring you some measure of peace."

Viola's heart froze mid-beat. She recognized the technology instantly—the highly classified "Stardust" project from Blackthorn's biotech division that fused cremation diamonds with genetic markers to create memorial gems containing actual traces of the deceased. She herself had authorized the project's funding.

The "stars" suspended in this diamond were her daughter's ashes.

Around her, a chorus of affected sighs rose, guests praising Lucas's "thoughtfulness" and Selina's "generosity."

Viola stared at the diamond, at Selina's counterfeit compassion, at Lucas's rigid profile. The world's sounds receded, replaced by the thundering rush of blood in her ears.

Selina smiled, extending the brooch like a queen bestowing alms. "Keep it as a memento, Viola. After all, that child—much like you—doesn't have the privilege of enjoying all this anymore."

Viola made no move to accept it. She stared through Selina as if seeing something beyond her. Then, with deliberate slowness, she raised her hand—not toward the brooch, but to her own elegantly pinned hair. She extracted a slender metal hairpin, its tip needle-sharp and glinting coldly under the chandeliers.

No one reacted quickly enough—not even Lucas, standing mere inches away.

Viola moved with blinding speed. A flick of her wrist revealed a microscopic nozzle at the hairpin's tip, which she aimed at Selina's outstretched hand and the right side of her face before triggering a hidden mechanism in the pin's head.

A colorless, viscous liquid sprayed out, precisely coating Selina's right hand and the entire right side of her face.

Selina froze momentarily before releasing a strangled gasp. The liquid made a soft hissing sound against her skin, releasing wisps of white vapor. Excruciating pain erupted instantly. She screamed and dropped the brooch, clawing desperately at her face, only spreading the corrosive substance further as it clung tenaciously to her skin, accelerating its damage.

"My face! My eyes!" Selina's voice transformed into a raw, horrifying shriek as she stumbled backward, toppling a champagne tower. Shattering crystal punctuated her screams. Her gold gown's hem soaked crimson with spilled wine as she collapsed, writhing in agony on the floor.

Chaos erupted instantly. Screams and shouts mingled with the crash of overturned furniture as guests scrambled away from the horrific scene. Security personnel struggled forward against the tide of fleeing attendees.

Lucas's face drained of color. He stared in horror at Selina's writhing form before whirling toward Viola, his eyes blazing with murderous rage. "You! What have you done?!" He lunged toward her but was momentarily trapped by the panicking crowd.

Viola remained perfectly still, hairpin in hand, her white dress still immaculate. She gazed coldly at Selina's crumpled form, her face an emotionless mask.

Lucas finally broke through, seizing Viola's arm with bruising force, his nails digging into her flesh. His voice shook with rage and panic: "You psychotic bitch! Do you realize what you've done?! You've destroyed her face! How dare you—"

"What did I ruin?" Viola cut him off, her voice unnervingly calm while her eyes pierced like poisoned daggers. "Who turned our daughter into jewelry? Who used their child's ashes as a prop to please his mistress and torment me? Between us, Lucas, who's truly insane?"

Lucas's face contorted with fury, but deep in his eyes flashed unmistakable panic—the look of a man suddenly, catastrophically exposed.

He needed to regain control immediately, to redirect the narrative. He yanked Viola closer, shouting above Selina's agonized screams to ensure the shocked onlookers heard his version:

"Control yourself, Viola! Look what you've done!" He shook her violently, staging her as the unhinged aggressor. "Our daughter's death was a tragic accident! I begged you to move forward! You're the one who obsessed over the past, burying yourself in work, taking those dangerous 'cleanup' operations! If you'd been more careful, if you'd listened to me and stayed somewhere safe, maybe that 'accident' would never have happened! And now you're attacking innocent people because of your guilt?!"

Viola's body went rigid, as if struck by lightning. She stared at Lucas in stunned disbelief, at his handsome face—once so beloved—now twisted with rage and desperate self-preservation.

He wasn't just rewriting history or inverting truth and lies. He was actually… actually twisting their daughter's murder into Viola's fault—blaming her for working instead of hiding away like a good, obedient wife?

Disguising his meticulously planned filicide as an accident she'd brought upon herself?

Her rage didn't explode outward but imploded into absolute-zero clarity. She looked at Lucas as if truly seeing him for the first time.

Her gaze dropped to Lucas's right hand gripping her arm. At the base of his pinky finger, beneath the skin, lay a barely visible bump—the subdermal biometric chip embedded directly in his bone, wired into his neural pathways. The physical master key to Blackthorn's empire and its highest security protocols.

Lucas continued his tirade, desperately focusing all attention on her supposed instability.

In the microsecond before his next breath, while all eyes were locked on Selina's suffering and Lucas's performance, Viola struck.

Her captured arm twisted with martial precision, joints rotating at seemingly impossible angles to break his grip. Simultaneously, the metal hairpin in her free hand—its tip now pointing downward—plunged with surgical precision!

The movement was lightning-fast, clinically precise, and utterly merciless. Without a flicker of hesitation.

"AAAGH—!"

Lucas's scream was brief and piercing. He hadn't even seen the strike—only felt excruciating pain exploding from his pinky finger and the neurological agony of the chip's destruction sending feedback through his nervous system.

Blood fountained from the wound. His pinky finger hung by a thread of skin, nearly severed. Amid the gore and shattered bone, the destroyed microchip lay exposed, its fractured circuits emitting frantic, ominous red pulses—like the final desperate beats of a dying heart.

This sudden, even more violent tableau shocked the chaotic room into absolute silence. Everyone—even the security personnel mid-charge—froze in horror at the sight.

Viola released the hairpin, letting the bloodied implement clatter to the floor. She stepped back from the spraying blood, her pristine white dress hem somehow remaining immaculate.

She seized this moment of stunned silence, her gaze sweeping over Lucas—who clutched his mutilated hand, ashen-faced and speechless with pain and shock—and then to Selina, still whimpering on the marble floor.

"An accident?" she echoed, her voice terrifyingly serene as it cut through the silence. "Well, this is also an accident."

Without another word, she turned and walked away, stepping over broken glass and spilled champagne, her stride measured and unhurried as she headed for the nearest emergency exit.

No one moved to stop her. All remained paralyzed by the cascading horrors they'd witnessed.

Only seconds after her white silhouette vanished through the exit did the hall erupt into fresh pandemonium.

The gala descended into chaos. Meanwhile, the shattered chip at the base of Lucas's nearly-severed finger continued its ominous red flashing—like the countdown of a doomsday device silently activated.

What really happened to their daughter? Beyond Lucas, who else participated in the cover-up?

These questions coiled like venomous snakes in the minds of witnesses, though none dared speak them aloud.