Yet he desperately squeezed a smile onto his features, choking out in a frantic rush.

"Sienna... you... you came... I knew it, your heart still holds a place for me..."

"My leg is probably finished, I am no longer worthy of standing beside you... but I swear, the exact second I recover, I will deploy every single thing I have left to meticulously compensate you..."

"Let's start over, alright? I promise I will definitely..."

Chapter 22

"I did not grace this room with my presence to listen to these scripts," Sienna cut him off in a bone-chilling frost. "I only stepped inside to inform you that we were entirely finished long ago."

"From the exact fraction of a second you permitted Stella to storm into my household and systematically validated her actions to humiliate me, there has been nothing left between us but raw vengeance and bitter resentment."

Every trace of color vanished from Shane's face, leaving him thoroughly crushed under a mountain of blinding shame and acute regret.

Sienna looked down at him from her high horse, her countenance frozen in absolute ice.

"Shane Vance, answer me this: after executing so many thoroughly repulsive acts against me, by what virtue do you still possess the shameless audacity to turn around and claim you love me?"

"Even if your life completely expires in this room today, my heart will never execute a single beat for you again."

"The Sienna Fontaine who once loved you so passionately was systematically murdered long ago by your daily humiliations and arctic neglect."

She took a deep breath, delivering her absolute final words, "You intercepted that blow for me today, so let us consider this ruined leg as your final repayment to clear your debt to me. From this exact second forth, we owe each other absolutely nothing, and we shall never cross paths again."

With that, she turned with absolute finality, walking straight toward the exit of the ward.

"No... Sienna! Don't leave! I beg of you! I recognize my faults! I genuinely recognize my faults!"

Shane thrashed wildly, attempting to crawl off the mattress, yet his broken frame possessed zero physical strength. Ultimately, he could do nothing but stretch his hand out in absolute, hollow despair, shrieking at the top of his lungs, "Sienna!"

On the other side of the city, Stella remained entirely uncooperative inside her holding cell, acting as if she had suffered a complete psychological break as she threw violent tantrums, relentlessly demanding to face Sienna.

Thoroughly annoyed by her disturbances, and given that the legal processing required her presence, the officers ultimately contacted Sienna.

Sienna arrived at the visitation room shortly after.

Separated by a thick pane of security glass, Stella sat draped in a orange jumpsuit, her hair a chaotic mess, her eyes dripping with an absolute, volatile hatred.

She violently threw her weight against the glass, her hands slamming fiercely against the barrier as she roared through a twisted, demonic snarl, "Sienna! You wretched bitch! I swear you will meet a horrific end!"

"Even if I morph into a ghost, I will never let you off! Just you wait! The exact second I step clear of these walls..."

"The exact second you step clear?" Sienna cut her off with a remarkably faint, dismissive sneer. "Do you truly believe you still possess a single opportunity to walk out of here?"

She offered a subtle nod to the assistant standing behind her, who immediately stepped forward to present a heavy forensic file against the glass partition.

Itemized within the documents was an ironclad, indisputable mountain of evidence detailing how she had systematically utilized Shane's corporate umbrella over consecutive years to execute grand commercial fraud, tax evasion, and even illicit capital routing with hostile offshore accounts.

Every single charge constituted an astronomical sum, carrying an exceptionally severe criminal nature.

"These counts, consolidated with your current charge of premeditated attempted murder," Sienna's voice dropped into a bone-chilling frost, "are more than enough to ensure you rot behind bars for the remainder of your natural life, if not worse."

Stella’s eyes stretched wide in sheer terror, her jaw dropping open, yet she found herself entirely devoid of breath to construct a single syllable. Her broken frame slunk powerlessly down the security glass, collapsing onto the chair in absolute ruin.

The final judicial decree was handed down shortly after: convicted on all counts with maximum severity, she was sentenced to the absolute penalty—execution.

The dust had officially settled.

Losing his leg, Shane collapsed into a state of permanent, crushing ruin.

Yet compared to the physical agony racking his broken body, he was systematically consumed by a soul-deep torment of acute regret and obsessive longing for Sienna.

He despised her arctic detachment, yet he was hopelessly incapable of purging the memories of her past devotion from his mind.

He actually began to stealthily shadow Sienna's operational movements.

Until one particular day, his eyes caught sight of a magnificent, aristocratic man who appeared to have anchored himself by her side.

The stranger consistently maintained a close proximity to her, their posture dripping with an intimate, effortless familiarity.

When Sienna stood beside that man, the radiant smile gracing her features carried a soft, bright warmth that Shane had absolutely never witnessed in his life.

A volatile surge of intense jealousy exploded in his chest.

Gnash his teeth in bitter resentment, he deployed the absolute last of his capital to unearth the stranger's background.

The forensic records revealed that the man was Lucas Sterling, the solitary heir to the legendary Sterling dynasty, a house that shared ancestral ties with European royalty.

Not only did his sovereign background and generational prestige trace back to a depth unfathomable to ordinary minds, but his global corporate network spanned effortlessly across both the Western and Eastern hemispheres, scaling to a height Shane Vance could never hope to touch in a lifetime.

His fingers trembled violently against the files, and ultimately, he could do nothing but bury his face in his hands, letting out a low, muffled groan of absolute, helpless misery.

Chapter 13

By evening, Shane drowned himself in an ocean of heavy liquor once more until he was thoroughly intoxicated.

The burning alcohol amplified every single thread of his volatile emotions. Forcing a phone out of the bartender's hand, he frantically dialed Sienna’s sequence time and time again.

"Answer the phone! Sienna! Pick up the phone!" he roared into the receiver, screaming at thin air.

Yet at this exact second, Sienna was sharing an elegant dinner with Lucas Sterling.

Her phone had long since been silenced, resting quietly inside the designer clutch resting on the booth.

Listening to the relentless, hollow rings echoing from the receiver, Shane stumbled blindly out of the establishment. Guided by nothing but his intoxication and obsessive fixation, he actually managed to drag his footsteps to the ground floor of the premier restaurant.

Throwing his chin up, his blurred vision caught sight of that soul-haunting silhouette through the massive floor-to-ceiling glass window.

She was tilting her head to share a soft smile with the man, her features illuminated under the ambient lighting with absolute grace.

A sudden rush of volatile blood exploded straight to his head!

Clutching his fists with a white-knuckled intensity, he stumbled frantically across the road, entirely intent on forcing his way inside to interrogate Sienna.

Without warning, a speeding vehicle materialized from the blind spot, charging straight toward him with absolute velocity!

Boom!

He felt a massive, shattering kinetic force slam into his frame, launching his body into the air in a fraction of a second.

Following a brief, weightless suspension, a wave of blinding, catastrophic agony ripped through his entire body.

Warm, metallic liquid gushed uncontrollably from his mouth and nose, rapidly blurring his vision as it stained the pavement beneath him.

He instinctively clawed for the breath to scream her name, yet his throat could produce nothing more than a dry, rattling gasp.

Inside the grand restaurant, Lucas was currently dropping onto a solitary knee before Sienna.

An intense, breathless devotion softened his deep eyes as he opened a luxury velvet box, presenting a magnificent diamond ring.

"Sienna," his voice dropped into a low, resonant rumble as he declared with absolute solemnity, "Marry me. From this exact second forth, every ounce of my sovereign capital and global prestige belongs strictly to you. I will shield your life from every storm, and cherish your heart through a lifetime of absolute happiness."

Sienna stared down at the magnificent man standing before her, her lips curling into a soft smile. Yet before she could construct her answer, a localized wave of frantic commotion suddenly rippled through the dining room.

Several guests seated near the floor-to-ceiling windows bolted to their feet, throwing their heads out to look down at the street as hushed whispers of "a car crash," and "exceptionally severe" filtered through the air.

Sienna paused briefly, her gaze naturally drifting out the window.

The streets below appeared to be locking down under a massive crowd, punctuated by the pulsing, electric flash of cruiser lights.