CHAPTER 128: I’M SO SORRY

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back furiously. She couldn’t afford to fall apart now. Not here. Not when they were watching. Not when her mother’s life was on the line. She needed to think, needed to move, but fear had wrapped itself around her lungs.

Her gaze darted toward a nurse’s station where two staff members chatted quietly, their laughter soft and harmless. For a fleeting second, she almost ran to them—almost screamed that she was being followed, that her life was in danger. But the memory of the knife flashing before her eyes stopped her cold.

She swallowed hard. Her hands shook as she pulled out a small notepad and pen from her purse. The edges of the paper were already damp from her sweating palms. You will write exactly what I tell you to, the man’s voice had said. The command still lived in her head.

Her handwriting trembled as she scribbled the words they’d dictated to her earlier.

She stared at it for a long moment, the lie burning into her chest. Her lower lip quivered as she folded the paper neatly, placing it on the small metal tray beside her mother’s bed. Her mother looked peaceful in her sleep—pale, fragile, a faint bruise along her temple where she must have hit her head.

"Mom," Ivy whispered. She leaned down, brushing her mother’s hair back from her forehead. "I’m so sorry... I should’ve been here. I should’ve protected you." A single tear slipped free and landed on the bedsheet.

She kissed her mother softly on the cheek, lingering there, breathing in her familiar scent. "If I don’t come back..." she couldn’t finish the sentence. Her throat constricted painfully. "Please forgive me."

When she straightened, her legs felt like they didn’t belong to her. Every step toward the door felt like a countdown. Judging by the message they asked her to write, she wasn’t sure she was going to survive this.

The thought stabbed through her. They were going to kill her. And for what? Her mind scrambled through the possibilities. Why her?

As she exited the hospital room, her eyes darted around. Every movement seemed amplified—the squeak of shoes on tile, the hum of machinery, the rustle of paper at the nurse’s desk. The hallway stretched endlessly ahead, a tunnel of fear and flickering lights.

Her breath came fast and shallow. Her fingers brushed the engagement ring on her finger.

What if she never saw him again? The thought hollowed her chest. She could almost hear his voice teasing her, his arms wrapping around her, his laugh rumbling low against her ear.

Now, as she walked toward the exit with death waiting somewhere outside, all she could think was— I’m sorry, Winn. I should’ve told you I loved you one more time.

She drove back to her house with fingers that felt permanently numb. Every turn of the wheel brought her closer to a door she wished she could lock forever — and every mile felt like a countdown. When she stepped inside, the living room was the same as she had left it.

But the warmth had been drained from it; the two men waited like vultures in the shadows.

"Good girl." The man with the knife said, his drawl lazy as if he were bored and entertained in the same breath. He lounged in the armchair as if this were a parlor game. "I was hoping you would mess up, actually."

Ivy’s knees felt weak. "I didn’t. I promise, I didn’t." Tears blurred the edges of the room, turning the men into darker smudges of menace.

The shorter intruder — the one with the bored eyes — pushed himself off the couch, walked slowly toward her, and tipped his head. "I know," he said. "I had a tail on you and a camera on you." Cold threaded through her. Every movement she’d made at the hospital, every furtive glance — recorded.

"Please let them go. Please," she whispered, as if begging could undo whatever web had been laid around her life.

The man with the knife did not answer. Without ceremony, he handed her her phone.

"Now," he said, "send a message to your fiancé and tell him you cannot marry him. And you better give a very believable reason. Or I will stick this knife through your lungs and watch you bleed out." The bluntness of it made her stomach drop; the threat was real, and the casualness of its delivery made it worse.

"Is this what this is about? My wedding? You did all this so I wouldn’t marry Winn?!"

"Don’t ask questions," the man snapped. "Do as I say."

Tears flowed freely now. Ivy’s vision tunneled as she stared at her phone’s screen. She unlocked it and scrolled the names until Winn’s blue bubble glowed at the top. Her thumb hovered over his contact. There was no escape hatch. There was only the small, monstrous thing she had been asked to do.

She thought of Winn’s face — the way he’d looked at her in the chapel, the rawness in his eyes when he’d confessed his love in the cake shop. He would be the one to break when he read the message. She wanted to type a thousand lines — Please don’t believe it. You have to know I love you.

Her fingers betrayed her, typing the line the men demanded as if her hands belonged to someone else.

She read it back once, then twice, as if her eyes could find a loophole in the words. There was none. The message was a blade.

Her thumb hovered over "send" for a suspended breath.

"Send it!" the man ordered.

Her hand trembled violently as she stared down at her phone screen. The message she had just typed glared back at her. Her thumb hovered for a split second longer, praying that somehow he would know she didn’t mean it—that he’d feel her love even through the lie.

But the man’s breath was hot against her neck, the tip of his knife teasing her ribs. "Do it," he hissed. And she did. She pressed send. The small whoosh sound was the most gut-wrenching thing she’d ever heard.