Lucas stared at the photograph for so long that Diana finally stopped smiling.
I closed the medical notebook.
“You knew.”
He didn’t deny it.
My father frowned.
“Knew what?”
I held up the photograph.
“The clinic door was locked from outside.”
Diana immediately said:
“That proves nothing.”
“No?”
I turned toward her assistant.
The woman had gone pale.
“You sent me the message saying Diana had been drugged. Then you locked Lucas inside with her.”
“I—I was following instructions.”
“Whose?”
Her eyes moved instinctively toward Diana.
That was enough.
My father raised his cane.
“Diana!”
But Gabriel caught it before he could strike her.
“No.”
His voice was cold.
“Violence won’t establish what happened.”
Then he looked at Lucas.
“But Major General Lu can.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Lucas’s face had become almost gray.
Finally, he spoke.
“I knew the door had been locked.”
My father staggered.
“Then why did you marry her?”
Lucas looked at me.
Not Diana.
Me.
“Because I remembered the previous life.”
I already knew that.
But his next words changed everything.
“In the previous life, Diana wasn’t scarred because Victoria ignored her.”
Silence.
“She planned the fire herself.”
Diana’s face emptied.
Lucas continued.
“Years later, shortly before I died, I discovered her medical records. She had never been drugged that night.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Then why did you tell me to send you her location in the next life?”
His eyes reddened.
“Because I thought if I reached her in time, none of it would happen.”
I laughed once.
A broken sound.
“So when we came back, you still chose to save her.”
“Yes.”
“And when you realized she had trapped you?”
Lucas said nothing.
That silence hurt more than the answer.
“You stayed.”
“I thought I could contain her.”
Diana suddenly screamed:
“Stop talking!”
Lucas didn’t even look at her.
“She threatened to repeat what happened in our previous life. She said if I walked out of that room and married Victoria, she would destroy herself eventually.”
Gabriel’s expression turned icy.
“So you rewarded coercion with marriage.”
Lucas flinched.
“I thought it was the safest solution.”
“For whom?” I asked.
He looked at me.
And there it was again.
That terrible flaw I had mistaken for honor in my previous life.
Lucas was always willing to sacrifice himself.
The problem was that he also volunteered me for the sacrifice.
“In our first life,” I whispered, “you married me while loving the woman you believed I had allowed to be disfigured.”
His eyes closed.
“You were kind to me. You protected me. We had children.”
My voice trembled.
“But on your deathbed, the last thing you wanted was another chance to save her.”
“Victoria—”
“And in this life you got that chance.”
I looked at Diana.
“You chose her.”
“No.”
Lucas stepped toward me.
“I chose responsibility.”
Gabriel gave a humorless laugh.
“Men have used that word to disguise desire for centuries.”
Lucas’s expression hardened.
“This is between Victoria and me.”
“No,” I said.
“It stopped being between us the night you married my sister.”
He froze.
Diana suddenly grabbed his arm.
“Lucas, don’t listen to her. We’re married.”
Lucas pulled his arm away.
For the first time, fear appeared on her face.
The investigation began the following morning.
Gabriel didn’t arrange it privately.
That mattered.
Because Lucas was a major general.
Because Gabriel was a general.
Because using rank to bury a scandal would only turn another woman’s manipulation into my problem.
So the evidence went through formal channels.
The clinic records showed no evidence that Diana had been drugged.
Security footage had been partially deleted, but backups showed her assistant purchasing alcohol and sedatives hours before the incident.
Messages recovered from an old device were worse.
Diana had written:
If Victoria sends him, I’ll make sure he can never go back to her.
And later:
Once everyone sees us together, the Lu family will have no choice.
The marks on Lucas had been deliberately created.
The compromised scene had been staged.
His decision afterward had been his own.
That distinction mattered to me.
Diana had trapped him.
But she had not forced him to marry her.
Lucas had chosen reputation and guilt over truth.
Again.
My father came to my hotel three days later.
He looked ten years older.
“Come home.”
“No.”
“Diana will move out.”
“No.”
“Your room will be restored.”
I almost smiled.
“You still think this is about a room.”
He lowered his head.
Then he placed Grandmother’s pearl necklace on the table.
I didn’t touch it.
“I should have protected your things.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you wouldn’t return.”
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite excuse.”
His eyes reddened.
“I failed you.”
This time I didn’t comfort him.
Some apologies deserve acknowledgment.
They don’t automatically deserve absolution.
“Keep the necklace.”
He looked surprised.
“It belongs to you.”
“It belonged to the Victoria who needed that house to prove she had a family.”
I stood.
“She doesn’t exist anymore.”
A month later, Lucas filed for divorce.
Diana refused.
Then the evidence from the clinic became part of the proceedings.
Her assistant cooperated fully.
There were disciplinary consequences for Lucas too.
Not because he had been trapped.
Because afterward he concealed material facts and allowed a false narrative to stand while two prominent families reorganized their lives around it.
His career survived.
His reputation did not remain untouched.
One evening he came to see me.
I was preparing to return to the border before my wedding.
“Are you really marrying Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
“So quickly?”
I stared at him.
“Two years ago you changed brides in one day.”
He had the decency to look ashamed.
“I deserved that.”
“This isn’t punishment.”
“I know.”
He swallowed.
“Do you love him?”
I thought of Gabriel asking for my answer in front of everyone.
Not deciding.
Not assuming.
Asking.
“Yes.”
Lucas looked away.
“In our previous life, did you love me?”
“Very much.”
His eyes filled.
“And now?”
I didn’t lie.
“I remember loving you.”
That was different.
He understood.
“I thought I was protecting everyone,” he whispered.
“You were.”
He looked confused.
“Everyone except me.”
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was resignation in them.
“I am sorry, Victoria.”
“I know.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“Eventually.”
Hope flickered.
I extinguished it gently.
“Forgiveness isn’t another life together.”
He nodded.
Then left.
Gabriel and I married six months later.
There was no enormous ceremony.
No political spectacle.
No attempt to prove anything to either family.
Before the wedding, Gabriel knocked on my door.
I opened it in half-finished makeup.
He held out his phone.
“What?”
“Deployment order.”
My heart tightened.
“There has been an emergency at the western border.”
I stared at him.
The timing was almost cruel enough to be funny.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
I looked at my wedding dress.
Then at him.
“You have to go.”
“Yes.”
Neither of us spoke.
Then Gabriel said:
“But I haven’t accepted yet.”
I frowned.
“You can refuse?”
“I can request reassignment. Someone equally qualified can take command.”
“Why would you?”
“Because today I made a commitment to you too.”
Something inside me cracked open.
In my previous life, I had learned that duty could become a beautiful excuse for neglect.
In this life, Gabriel did something far more difficult.
He gave me the choice.
So I gave it back.
“Go.”
His expression changed.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I smiled.
“But we’re getting married first.”
He laughed.
We signed the papers in a military office with six witnesses.
Forty minutes later, my husband left for the border.
The difference was simple.
Lucas had abandoned our engagement without asking because he believed he alone could decide what sacrifice I should endure.
Gabriel and I made the decision together.
Years later, someone asked me whether I regretted my first life.
I thought of Lucas.
Our children.
His final words.
Diana.
The engagement that disappeared overnight.
The border roads that eventually gave me my own career.
Then I thought of the message that had started everything.
In my first life, I deleted it because I was afraid another woman would take my place.
In my second, I sent it.
And Lucas went.
For a long time I believed that meant Diana had won.
She hadn’t.
Because a place that can be taken simply because someone else demands it was never truly yours.
Lucas had asked for another life so he could make a different choice.
He received one.
So did I.
And this time, when he chose to stay with her—
I didn’t fight to get my place back.
I finally understood I deserved a place where no one had to be forced to choose me.
