Nobody spoke.

Lucas stared at the photograph in my hand.

Not confused.

Not shocked.

Afraid.

I looked at him.

“You knew.”

Diana immediately stepped forward.

“Sister, what are you talking about?”

I turned the photograph toward her.

Her face changed.

Only for a second.

But Gabriel noticed too.

Lucas reached for it.

“Victoria, give it to me.”

I pulled my hand back.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t prove anything.”

“I didn’t ask what it proved.”

I held his gaze.

“I asked why you already knew.”

My father slammed his cane down.

“Enough! Whatever happened two years ago has already been settled.”

Gabriel’s voice became cold.

“No.”

Everyone looked at him.

“If someone deliberately drugged Diana Shen and arranged for Major General Lu to enter that room, nothing has been settled.”

Diana’s eyes filled with tears.

“General Gu, are you accusing me?”

“I haven’t accused anyone.”

Gabriel looked at the photograph.

“But you seem remarkably frightened by a question.”

Lucas suddenly spoke.

“I knew the door had been locked.”

Silence.

Even Diana turned toward him.

My heart sank.

“When?”

He looked at me.

“That morning.”

Two years.

For two years he had known.

“And you still married her?”

Lucas closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

Diana grabbed his sleeve.

“Lucas!”

He removed her hand.

For the first time since I returned, he stepped away from her voluntarily.

I almost laughed.

Two years ago, that gesture would have destroyed me.

Now it was simply late.

“Explain,” I said.

Lucas looked exhausted.

“When I arrived at the clinic, Diana was disoriented. She could barely stand. Her assistant told me someone had drugged her.”

“And?”

“I entered the room. Then I heard the lock.”

“You knew someone had trapped you together.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you break the door?”

His silence answered.

My father’s face darkened.

“Lucas.”

Lucas ignored him.

“I remembered my previous life.”

Of course.

“In that life, Diana burned herself because I didn’t go.”

His voice became hoarse.

“She lived with those scars until she died.”

I stared at him.

“So you decided you owed her.”

“Yes.”

“And I was the payment.”

“No.”

“That’s exactly what happened.”

He stepped toward me.

“Victoria, I thought if I refused responsibility, she would hurt herself again.”

I nodded slowly.

There it was.

Not love.

Not an accident.

A choice.

Again.

“You knew it might be a trap.”

“Yes.”

“You knew marrying her would end our engagement.”

His eyes reddened.

“Yes.”

“And you still chose her.”

Lucas whispered:

“Yes.”

I handed the photograph to Gabriel.

“Then there’s nothing else I need to know.”

I picked up my medical case.

Lucas blocked my path.

“Victoria, wait.”

“For what?”

“Diana manipulated everything.”

Behind him, Diana went pale.

I smiled faintly.

“And?”

He stared at me.

“And that changes nothing?”

“No.”

His expression broke.

I continued quietly.

“Because Diana’s deception explains what she did.”

I looked directly into his eyes.

“It doesn’t erase what you did after discovering it.”

Diana suddenly shouted.

“I did it because you stole him first!”

Everyone turned.

My father’s face became gray.

She realized too late what she had admitted.

But now the words poured out.

“In the previous life, everything belonged to you! Father favored you. Grandmother left you her medical notes. Lucas married you. Even after I was disfigured, everyone looked at me with pity and then went home to celebrate your perfect family!”

Lucas stared at her.

“You remember too?”

Diana laughed through tears.

“Of course I remember.”

Lucas’s face emptied.

“You said you didn’t.”

“I needed you to come that night.”

“So you drugged yourself?”

She said nothing.

Lucas understood.

The entire tragedy he had spent two lifetimes carrying as guilt had been built on another lie.

But I felt no satisfaction.

Gabriel handed the photograph to my assistant.

“Preserve the original.”

My father immediately objected.

“This is a family matter.”

Gabriel looked at him.

“No. Drugging, confinement and falsifying circumstances to force a marriage are not family matters.”

Then he picked up my suitcase.

“We’re leaving.”

Lucas followed us outside.

“Victoria!”

I stopped beside Gabriel’s vehicle.

Lucas stood several steps away.

Rain had begun falling.

Exactly like that night two years earlier.

“Don’t marry him.”

I looked at him.

“Why?”

His voice cracked.

“Because I made the wrong choice.”

“No, Lucas.”

I shook my head.

“You made the choice you wanted to make.”

“I thought I was saving her.”

“And now?”

He couldn’t answer.

Because Diana was still his wife.

Because regret didn’t reverse vows.

Because discovering that the trap was real didn’t suddenly make me the woman he had chosen.

I opened the car door.

Lucas called my name again.

This time Gabriel spoke.

“She answered you two years ago.”

Lucas froze.

Gabriel looked at him calmly.

“You just weren’t listening.”

I left.

Three months later, the investigation into the clinic incident concluded.

Diana’s former assistant confessed.

Diana had arranged the entire scene.

She had obtained the sedative herself.

The assistant locked the door.

The marks on Lucas’s neck and shoulders had been deliberately created after he fell asleep from the drugged tea Diana gave him.

Nothing had happened between them that night.

But Lucas had known part of that for two years.

He had discovered the locked door and inconsistencies within days.

He simply buried them.

Because admitting the truth would mean admitting he had sacrificed our engagement for nothing.

Diana and Lucas divorced.

My father called me eleven times that day.

I answered none.

Then Lucas came to the border medical headquarters where I was completing my final assignment before the wedding.

He waited outside for six hours.

Eventually I walked out.

He looked thinner.

“Victoria.”

“Why are you here?”

“To return this.”

He opened his hand.

My grandmother’s pearl necklace.

Diana had surrendered it during the division of property.

I took it.

“Thank you.”

I turned away.

“Is that all?”

I looked back.

“What else should there be?”

His eyes became red.

“In our previous life, I died regretting that I hadn’t saved Diana.”

“I know.”

“In this life, I saved her.”

“Yes.”

“And lost you.”

“Yes.”

He laughed bitterly.

“So this is punishment.”

“No.”

I shook my head.

“This is consequence.”

That silenced him.

A month later, Gabriel and I married.

There was no enormous military ceremony.

No political guests filling a ballroom.

No family negotiations over invitations.

Before the ceremony, Gabriel found me alone beside the window.

“Nervous?”

“A little.”

He held out his hand.

“We can stop.”

I laughed.

“On our wedding day?”

“Especially today.”

He looked completely serious.

“If you say no, nothing happens to you. Nothing happens to me. You owe me nothing.”

My eyes suddenly burned.

Lucas had once loved me.

Perhaps he had loved me deeply.

But in both lives, his love came attached to debts he believed he owed someone else.

Gabriel gave me something simpler.

Choice.

So I placed my hand in his.

“Yes.”

Years later, I saw Lucas once more at a national medical-military conference.

He had been promoted.

I had two children by then.

Gabriel was standing across the hall with our daughter asleep against his shoulder.

Lucas followed my gaze.

His expression softened.

“You’re happy.”

“I am.”

He nodded.

For a moment, I saw the man from my previous life.

My husband.

The father of children who now existed only in my memories.

A man who had taken my father’s blows for me.

A man who had loved me and still died wishing he had chosen someone else.

I no longer hated him.

Perhaps that was the final gift of being given another life.

Not the chance to punish him.

The chance to stop asking him to choose differently.

Lucas looked at me.

“If we had another life…”

I interrupted gently.

“Don’t.”

He fell silent.

I smiled.

“We already had two.”

Across the hall, Gabriel looked for me.

When he found me, he raised his hand.

I walked toward him.

I didn’t look back.

In my first life, I had hidden Diana’s message because I was terrified Lucas would choose her.

In my second, I sent it.

And he did.

For a long time, I thought that meant I had lost.

But I eventually understood:

Sometimes the most merciful thing fate can do is give someone the freedom to choose—

so you can finally see whether you were ever their choice at all.