Chapter 1391:


    Rosanna shattered. Tears streamed down her cheeks in violent, uncontroble waves.


    She released him abruptly, stumbling back as her voice cracked into a broken wail. “No! You’re lying! You’re lying—this isn’t true! Austen can’t be… he can’t be dead!”


    She sobbed harder, every denial ripping out of her like a wound too deep to close.


    Freed from her hold, Ss staggered up, breath ragged. Pain from his torn ear exploded across his skull, sharp enough to make his vision blur. Rage lit his eyes. Without restraint, he drove his fist into the side of Rosanna’s head.


    A heavy, sickening thud echoed. The fight drained out of her instantly. Her body went ck, copsing like a doll whose strings had been brutally severed. She crumpled onto the cold ground, motionless, her hair spilling across the dirt.


    Ss sucked in a shaky breath, pressing his palm against his shredded ear. Agony pulsed through it—hot, blinding, merciless.


    And then, as he lifted his gaze—a new horror revealed itself in the moonlit dark.


    Ss stared at his trembling palm, unable toprehend whaty in it. The mutted curve of an ear—his ear—red back at him like a taunt.


    For a heartbeat he simply froze, his mind refusing to stitch sense into the horror. Then rage roared through him, primal and scorching, burning away everyst trace of reason. He spun toward Rosanna’s limp body sprawled on the ground. A snarl tore free. With a brutal, unrestrained swing of his leg, he drove his foot into her abdomen.


    “You damned, filthy woman!” he spat, his voice jagged with shock and fury.


    Another kick. And another—each delivered with such reckless force that his shoe finally flew off and skidded across the ground.


    Ss hovered over her, chest heaving, cursing her between breaths as though words alone might w back the dignity she had stripped from him.


    Then the distant rumble of voices rolled through the night. A crowd.


    Without a second thought, Ss staggered back, pivoted, and bolted barefoot into the shadows—blood slicking the side of his neck where his ear once clung.


    Find what’s next on g al no ve ls


    He barely made it three steps before a shrill scream burst out of him. ss—thin, vicious shards scattered across the ground—pierced straight into the soft flesh of his sole. He copsed to a crouch, gritting his teeth as blood pooled beneath his heel.


    “This night is cursed,” he hissed, his breath shaking as he plucked a fragment from his skin. “An absolute nightmare.”


    The crowd drew nearer, their fury vibrating through the air. Dozens poured in holding banners scrawled with “I need a job!” while chanting with venomous rhythm, “Get Maia out of Wront!”


    Faces twisted with resentment. Eyes burned. This was no spontaneous gathering.


    Kiley’s army of the unemployed—summoned, fed lies, and unleashed.


    Ss lunged toward the nearest patch of brush and rolled inside, but even the bushes betrayed him. Something sharp stabbed into his foot, dragging another strangled noise from his throat. He pped a hand over his mouth to stifle it.


    In the scramble, the ear slipped from his hand. “No—no, no!” he whispered fiercely, fingers wing through leaves and dirt. He groped desperately, as though the severed piece of him could reverse the grotesque unraveling of his night.


    Not far away, hidden in a car, Kiley watched everything unfold with cold satisfaction. She had slipped away the moment blood stained the air, blending into the shadows like a serpent patiently observing the havoc she had engineered.


    The more violent the uproar, the cleaner her victory. When victory came wrapped in mes and corpses, me always found the most convenient target—the wronged, the desperate, the ones who had lost everything because of Maia.


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