Chapter 378
Chapter 378:
“Do you think she’ll ever understand what she did?” she asked quietly. “Not just to me, but to herself?”
Victoria’s eyes softened with rare compassion. “Some people aren’t capable of that kind of reflection. They see only what was taken from them, never what they threw away.”
The car pulled into traffic, leaving the courthouse behind. On every corner, newspaper stands displayed Rose’s booking photo, her face twisted with rage beneath damning headlines:
FASHION DESIGNER FACES LIFE FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER
SISTER VS. SISTER: INSIDE ROSE LEWIS’S REIGN OF TERROR
THE FALL OF ROSE LEWIS: HOW JEALOUSY DESTROYED A RISING STAR
Camille turned away from the windows. “It doesn’t feel like victory.”
“It’s not supposed to,” Alexander said gently. “There’s no winning in this, only surviving.”
Camille nodded, resting her head against his shoulder. The car moved through Manhattan traffic, carrying her toward the future she’d fought so hard to protect. Behind them, Rose faced a different future, one shaped by bars, guards, and the slow grind of justice.
Two sisters. Two paths. Two destinies now irrevocably separate.
Camille closed her eyes, feeling neither triumph nor sorrow, but something in between—the quiet certainty that some chapters must end before others can begin.
Victoria stared at the scan results spread across her doctor’s desk. The images showed her body from the inside, revealing the battle waged within her tissues and bones. But unlike previous scans, these told a different story.
“The tumors have shrunk by sixty-three percent,” Dr. Winters said, her finger tracing the outlines on the images. “It’s the best response I’ve seen to the treatment protocol.”
Victoria kept her face blank. Decades of boardroom battles had made it second nature to hide her feelings. But inside, something unfamiliar bloomed—a fragile, tender hope she hardly dared acknowledge.
“What does this mean, exactly?” she asked, her voice steady despite the storm in her chest.
Dr. Winters removed her glasses, meeting Victoria’s gaze directly. “It means the cancer is responding to treatment far better than we anticipated. Six months ago, I told you we were looking at buying time. Now, I’m talking about the possibility of remission.”
The word hung in the air between them. Remission. Not cure—never cure with this type of cancer—but something Victoria hadn’t allowed herself to consider.
“How much time?” The question that had haunted her since diagnosis.
“I can’t make promises,” Dr. Winters said, “but patients with this response rate often gain years rather than months. Good quality years.”
Years. The enormity of it struck Victoria like a physical blow. She had been preparing to die, arranging her affairs, bracing Camille for the worst. She had accepted her fate with the same grim determination she’d applied to everything in life.
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