It wasn’t a complete word. But it was enough.
That morning, Ethan called every specialist he trusted. The device was tested. The method was examined. Clara hadn’t harmed his children. She had awakened them. Months later, the villa was no longer silent. Leo laughed at music. Noah followed Clara’s voice. Eli learned to press a button that said, « Dad. » And every night, Ethan watched the cameras in the nursery one last time—no longer out of fear, but out of gratitude. Because the woman he had considered a danger had brought back the only thing money could never buy: hope.
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I could never have imagined
I could never have imagined that the worst moment of my life would happen under a bright sky, with the wind howling around me and my father’s coffin lying just steps from the edge of a cliff. This morning had felt wrong from the very beginning.
My father had died suddenly three days earlier, and nothing about his funeral made sense. The preparations were rushed. The ceremony was private. And the man controlling everything was Damian—my father’s young business partner, the same man who, last year, had tried to convince everyone he was « like a son » to him. I had never trusted him. He smiled too easily. He spoke too softly. And every time my father mentioned wanting to change his will, Damian would somehow appear in the room a few minutes later, listening, watching, calculating.
When I arrived at the funeral home, one of the employees pulled me aside, pale and trembling. He told me Damian had insisted on carrying the coffin alone to a remote cliff where my father “always wanted to say goodbye to the world.” But then the employee whispered something that made my blood run cold: “Your father is still in that coffin.” I drove like a madwoman. When I reached the cliff, Damian was already there, beside the closed coffin, in his expensive black suit, calm… almost amused. I begged him to stop. “Please… don’t do this,” I sobbed, tears stinging my face. He looked at me with a small, cruel smile, as if my grief amused him. Then he said, “You deserve a life like this.” And before I could reach him, he laughed… lifted his foot… and nudged the coffin. I watched as it slid over the edge and disappeared. I sank to my knees and screamed, « Oh no… that was my father! » Damian’s smile vanished. He turned to me, his face devoid of color. « What?! » he cried. Read the rest in the comments 👇
Damian staggered back from the edge of the cliff.
Damian staggered back from the edge of the cliff, as if the ground itself had betrayed him. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked genuinely frightened. « You’re lying, » he said. « This coffin should be empty. » Those six words told me everything. He hadn’t come to the cliff to honor my father. He had come to destroy something. I stood up slowly, my whole body trembling. « Empty? » I repeated. « Why would you think my father’s coffin was empty? » Damian realized too late that he had said too much. He opened his mouth, but no excuse came out.
