Chapter 3

Stella's POV

The Maybach cruised smoothly along the elevated highway. The heater was running high, yet it couldn't melt the invisible layer of frost hanging over the back seat.

Elena seemed irritated by the suffocating atmosphere. She unzipped her Chanel bag and pulled out an elegantly packaged, burgundy box.

"Stella," Elena turned around, smiling warmly as she offered the box to the back seat, "these are handmade chocolates I brought back especially from Belgium. They're really hard to get. Try one."

It was a dark truffle, dusted heavily with cocoa powder.

As the wrapper was peeled away, a rich, sickly-sweet scent of cocoa instantly flooded the confined space of the car.

My stomach heaved violently. A wave of dry retching hit the back of my throat.

I was severely allergic to cocoa.

Not the kind that just gives you a few itchy hives, but a life-threatening allergy that causes acute laryngeal edema and anaphylactic shock.

Everyone in the Vance household knew this. The very first year Nicholas took me in, I had eaten a bite of chocolate cake by mistake and ended up lying in the ICU for three whole days.

I pressed myself further against the car window, shrinking away from the outstretched hand.

"No, thank you. I can't," I said, my voice stiff and laced with unmistakable resistance.

Elena’s hand hovered awkwardly in the air. The smile on her face froze, and she immediately pouted, looking deeply hurt. "Stella, do you hate me? I just wanted to share something nice with you. If you don't like it, fine..."

As she spoke, she slowly pulled her hand back, her eyes rimmed with unshed tears.

In the driver’s seat, Nicholas’s expression darkened instantly.

He glared at me through the rearview mirror, his tone flat yet heavy with absolute authority. "Elena is offering it to you, so take it. Don't you have any manners?"

I looked up, meeting Nicholas’s deep, merciless eyes through the glass.

"I’m allergic to cocoa," I stated coldly.

Nicholas, have you forgotten?

Back when I was lying half-dead in the ICU, you were the one who sat by my bedside with a grim face and personally fired the maid who bought that cake.

You were the one who gave the order that across every single property under the Vance name, not a single cocoa bean was ever allowed to cross the threshold.

Yet the man in the mirror didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.

"It’s just a piece of chocolate. It won't kill you," Nicholas said, his voice entirely devoid of warmth. "Take it."

A bitter laugh threatened to escape my throat.

In Nicholas's eyes, Elena's tears meant she had suffered an unspeakable tragedy, while my life-threatening allergy was nothing more than a cheap trick to beg for sympathy.

A flicker of pure malice danced in Elena's eyes. She thrust the chocolate back at me, shoving it directly into the palm of my hand.

"She’s right, Stella, just take one tiny bite. It’s a gift from my heart. You wouldn't leave me hanging like this, would you?"

I looked down at the dark truffle resting in my palm, its heavy scent suffocating me.

The cocoa dust dusted my fingertips like a coat of corrosive poison.

I knew that if I didn't eat it, this wouldn't end today. Nicholas had plenty of ways to punish my disobedience. In my past life, just because I refused a glass of wine from Elena, Nicholas locked me in the dark basement for a full twenty-four hours.

There was no escaping it.

I closed my eyes, my fingers trembling slightly. I lifted the chocolate and took a mechanical, tiny bite.

A bitter, cloying flavor exploded across my tongue. Without chewing, I forced myself to swallow it down whole.

"See? That wasn't so hard," Elena beamed with satisfaction, turning back around to chat casually with Nicholas.

Two minutes.

Barely two minutes passed before my body began to violently rebel.

Something deep in my throat swelled rapidly, choking off my airway millimeter by millimeter.

I gasped frantically for air, but less and less oxygen reached my lungs.

The color drained from my face, leaving it a sickly, ashen white. Cold, clammy sweat beaded across my forehead, dripping down my cheeks.

My hands began to shake uncontrollably. Crimson hives erupted across the backs of my hands and climbed up my neck, spreading at a terrifying speed.

"Nngh... *cough*..."

I clutched my throat with both hands, harsh, wheezing gasps rattling from my chest. My entire body curled into a knot on the leather seat as I writhed in agony.

Nicholas finally realized something was horribly wrong.

He snapped his head up toward the rearview mirror. The moment he saw the fiery red rash clawing across my neck and my lips turning a bruised shade of purple, his pupils contracted sharply.

Nicholas yanked the steering wheel hard, swerving the car violently onto the emergency shoulder.

He unbuckled his seatbelt in a flash, spun around, and flipped open the central console compartment. From the deepest compartment, he tore out an unopened box of emergency antihistamines and an auto-injector pen.

It was the emergency kit he had kept stocked in his car for years, just in case an accident ever happened.

He gripped the medication, turning to shove it into the back seat to me.

Right at that exact second, Elena gasped, clutching her chest, and slumped weakly against Nicholas’s arm.

"Nicholas..." Elena's voice was so faint it sounded like her breath was slipping away. Her shoulders trembled, her face twisted in distress. "I... my chest feels so tight, I can't breathe... I don't feel good either."

Nicholas’s movements froze instantly.

He looked down at Elena whimpering in his arms, then flicked his eyes back up to the rearview mirror. There, he saw me rolling my eyes back, my fingernails scraping desperately against the leather seats in a suffocating trance.

The air in the car hung completely suspended for a heartbeat.

Nicholas’s brow knit together.

Without a second thought, he shoved the only emergency kit into Elena’s hands.

"Elena, take the medicine first." He turned his entire body toward her, stroking her hair, his voice softer and gentler than I had ever heard it.

In the back seat, my vision was already blurring into dark static. Every breath felt like inhaling razor blades.

In the final split-second before the darkness claimed me, through the haze of fading light, I watched Nicholas hand the life-saving medicine to Elena without the slightest hesitation.

With the last scrap of strength in my body, I clamped my eyes shut.

In this life, Nicholas Vance... I really don't want you anymore.