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That night she stepped onto Vivienne's yacht off Long Island Sound. She had barely made it inside when Vivienne cornered her on the stairs.
"I can't believe you made it out. I told him to double the voltage. Maybe the syringes were expired?"
"You didn't want me injecting your mom, huh? Well. That same drug went into you. Was it nice? People say it feels like ants crawling under your skin. Like being stung by wasps. Is that it?"
Gloating. Poorly hidden.
Seraphina ignored her. She finished her text to Nathaniel.
"Fake death tonight. Following Vivienne's own plan."
The phone was knocked out of her hand.
She looked up. Met Vivienne's sneer. Something slow and sharp spread across her face.
"Enjoying yourself, Vivienne?"
She leaned on the railing and watched the other woman with the kind of calm that sliced open.
"You don't really think you've won. You've burned through every card you have. You've staged your own attacks. You hurt yourself. And for what?"
"Did Damien ever once bring up divorce? Oh, and I forgot to mention — do you know what he said to me when he was soothing me? That he just feels grateful to you for what you did when he was a kid. That he was forced to hurt me, but his heart was always mine. Once you were 'stable,' he was going to send you off."
Vivienne went white.
"Damien is never going to love you. He didn't love you when you were twelve. He's never going to."
That did it.
"Shut up."
Vivienne lunged, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and slammed her back against the railing, closing her other hand around her throat.
The rail dug into her lower back. Her spine bent. She hissed through her teeth.
Vivienne's grip tightened. Seraphina's face went purple. But her voice still found a way out, low and steady, straight into Vivienne's ear.
"I'm his only wife. You don't get to kill me."
"As long as I'm alive, he will never be yours. Not in this life."
His only wife.
Four words that cracked something inside Vivienne.
As long as Seraphina Hale existed, Vivienne would only ever be the girl who helped Damien when he was small.
The thing she'd been pushing down rose up, all at once. She threw her full body weight into it, shoving.
"Why wouldn't I kill you? Your mother. Your brother. They're crippled and comatose because of me. You're just another number. Damien is mine. He grew up protecting me. I'm not losing to some outsider."
Seraphina lost her footing. Went over the railing. Dropped.
The splash was lost under laughter and music from the deck.
Mission complete. Eyes closed, she let the black water take her.
The locator she was clenching in her fist sent its signal.
She'd made it.
Soon, she would be completely gone from this poisonous, treacherous place.