Chapter 200: Chapter 201: Revenge
THREE DAYS LATER
Victoria sat in her hospital room, enduring her daily physical therapy session. The therapist....a middle-aged woman named Sarah with kind eyes and a firm touch....was trying to get Victoria’s right hand to make a fist.
It wasn’t working.
"Just a little more pressure," Olive encouraged. "Try to curl your fingers inward."
Victoria tried. God, she tried. But her fingers barely moved, and the pain that shot through her hand when she attempted it was excruciating.
"That’s enough for today," Olive said gently, seeing Victoria’s face pale with pain. "You did well. It’s only been a few days since surgery. These things take time."
"How much time?" Victoria asked through gritted teeth. "How long until my hands are functional again?"
Olive’s expression became carefully neutral. "That depends on many factors. Your commitment to therapy, how your body heals, the extent of nerve damage...."
"Just give me a number."
Olive sighed. "Six months of intensive therapy before we can accurately assess your final level of function. Maybe longer. And Miss Ashford...." She paused, clearly debating whether to continue. ".....you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that ’functional’ might not mean what you hope it means. You may regain some basic motor skills, but fine motor control, grip strength, dexterity....those might be permanently compromised."
Victoria looked at her bandaged hands, imagining a future where she couldn’t hold a pen properly, couldn’t type on a keyboard, couldn’t do any of the thousands of small tasks that required functional hands.
Damien Blackwood hadn’t just hurt her. He’d crippled her. Permanently.
After Olive left, Victoria sat alone with her thoughts and her rage. The afternoon sun streamed through the window, painting her hospital room in golden light that felt obscene given the darkness of her situation.
Her phone rang....her actual phone, which Harold had arranged to be sent to her along with some clothes and personal items. A nurse answered it for her and held it to her ear.
"Victoria, it’s me," Harold said. "How was therapy?"
"Agonizing. The therapist says it’ll be six months before we even know how much function I’ll regain." Victoria’s voice was bitter. "Six months of this hell, and at the end I might still be crippled."
"I’m sorry, sweetheart. But listen.....I have news. Good news, I forgot to mention it the other time."
"What news?"
"I’ve made contact with someone who has extensive information about Aria Chen’s past. Criminal hacking activity, companies she destroyed, evidence of a pattern of illegal behavior spanning years." Harold’s voice was electric with satisfaction. "This person hates Aria as much as we do. Has been building a case against her for years."
Victoria felt her pulse quicken. "What kind of case?"
"The kind that shows she’s been a criminal hacker since she was fifteen years old. The kind that proves the breach of my company wasn’t her first rodeo....it was just the latest in a long series of corporate espionage and data theft." Harold paused. "The kind that will make Richard Blackwood question everything he thinks he knows about his grandson’s perfect girlfriend."
"When?" Victoria demanded. "When will you use this information?"
"Soon. Very soon. I’m finalizing the delivery strategy now." Harold’s voice hardened. "And Victoria, when this hits....when Richard sees the evidence, when Damien starts questioning everything about Aria....I want you to be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"Ready to come home. Ready to watch everything fall apart for them the way it fell apart for us." Harold’s voice was cold with promise. "They destroyed us, sweetheart. But we’re going to destroy them right back. And it’s going to be beautiful."
Victoria looked at her ruined hands, felt the constant throb of pain, remembered Damien’s cold eyes as he’d ordered Marcus to break her.
"Burn it all down, Daddy," she said quietly. "Make them suffer the way we’re suffering."
"Oh, they’ll suffer," Harold promised. "By the time I’m done, Damien Blackwood is going to wish he’d just killed you instead of sending you away. Because death would have been kinder than what’s coming for him."
"What’s coming?"
"He’s going to lose the woman he loves. Going to watch her be exposed as a fraud and a criminal. Going to realize that everything he thought he knew about her was a lie." Harold’s voice was pure venom. "And the best part? It won’t be me who destroys their relationship. It’ll be the truth. The actual, documented truth about who Aria Chen really is."
After the call ended, Victoria sat in her hospital room and smiled for the first time since waking up.
Damien thought he’d neutralized her as a threat. Thought breaking her hands and shipping her off to Australia was the end of the story.
But he’d underestimated her. Underestimated what a woman with nothing left to lose was capable of.
Victoria Ashford might have ruined hands and a shattered life. But she still had her mind. Still had her father’s resources. Still had her absolute certainty that Damien Blackwood was going to pay for what he’d done to her.
She looked at her bandaged hands and made herself a promise: by the time she was healed enough to return to New York, by the time Harold’s plan had destroyed Damien’s relationship with Aria, Victoria would be ready.
Ready to watch them suffer.
Ready to see the pain in Damien’s eyes when he lost the woman he loved.
Ready to finally, finally get her revenge.
"I loved you," she whispered to the empty room, thinking of Damien. "I loved you more than anything. But you looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was garbage. And that....." Her voice hardened. "....that I can never forgive."
Outside her window, Sydney glittered in the afternoon sun, beautiful and indifferent to her pain.
But Victoria didn’t care about Sydney or healing or the doctor’s grim prognosis.
All she cared about was revenge.
And she was willing to wait as long as it took to get it.
