No flowers for the dead - Chapter 8: Chapter 8

The apartment was too quiet.
Too clean. Too still.
Alina sat on the edge of the bed, the folder Elias left still unopened beside her. She hadn’t moved since she found it. She didn’t want to open it. Didn’t want to know how prepared he was to vanish from her life.
She called him once. He didn’t answer.
So she called again. And again. Until her fingers shook and her voice cracked. Until she realized that panic was a soundless scream—one that settled in the back of her throat and refused to come out.
Somewhere across the city, Elias Vale was tying up every loose end of his life.
And she wasn’t part of those meetings.
⸻
Elias stood in the vault beneath Vale Tower, the private one that only his father and grandfather had used. The air smelled of steel and legacy, and the documents on the table felt heavier than they should have.
Final instructions. Contingency codes. Instructions for liquidation.
All written in his handwriting.
“Are you sure about this?” his attorney asked, voice low. “Once you trigger this clause, there’s no pulling it back.”
Elias didn’t hesitate. “Do it.”
A silence fell. Heavy. Binding.
And yet, even as the attorney left, Elias didn’t move. He stared down at the folder of death-prep like it was a mirror. Because that’s what it was.
A reflection of the life he was choosing to destroy—so she could live.
⸻
Back at the penthouse, Alina paced the floor like a woman unraveling thread by thread. She opened the envelope.
There was everything.
A new identity. An exit strategy. Enough money to disappear forever.
All written in perfect detail.
But no letter.
No message.
Just clinical, precise planning.
As if he didn’t trust himself to say goodbye in words.
She threw the envelope across the room and sank to her knees on the cold marble floor.
This wasn’t how love was supposed to end.
Not with silence.
Not with logistics.
She had stood by him through blood, secrets, the suffocating cold of the Vale dynasty.
But this?
This felt like a betrayal.
Because if he could plan her future without him… maybe he’d never really believed they’d make it through.
⸻
That night, Elias came home to a dark, quiet apartment. No candles. No soft music. No warmth waiting.
Only Alina.
Sitting on the floor where she had cried herself dry.
He froze in the doorway.
“I read it,” she said softly.
He stepped forward. “Alina—”
“No. You don’t get to explain. You don’t get to say you did it to protect me. I know why you did it. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?” he asked, voice low.
“You wrote out my life without you like it was just another business contingency.”
“Because if I die, you’ll be safe—”
She stood suddenly. “If you die, I won’t be anything!”
The room went still.
Tears slipped down her face.
“I don’t want your money, Elias. I want you. All of you. Even if it’s dangerous. Even if it’s stupid.”
His face broke then, grief flashing across it like lightning.
“I don’t know how to survive this,” he whispered. “I’ve never loved anything without losing it.”
“You haven’t lost me yet.”
And slowly, painfully, she walked to him and placed his hand on her chest.
“Feel that? That’s yours. Not some building. Not some legacy. Me.”
He crushed her against him, holding her like the world might end before dawn.
And maybe it would.
But at least they’d go into the fire holding on to the only truth they had left:
Us.