After I Finally Became His Perfect Donna Chapter 10

After I Finally Became His Perfect Donna Chapter 10

I stayed.

The old couple had no children of their own. They’d spent their whole lives on that fishing boat, through wind

and rain and everything in between.

Once they took me in as their daughter, my father kept saying he couldn’t let me spend the rest of my life drifting on the water too.

They pooled their savings and rented a small stall to sell fresh seafood.

I went back to what I knew best. I set up a big iron skillet next to the stall and started selling fried rice again.

My mother even gave me a new name. Milo Sage.

Milo, for gentleness and resilience, for new growth and nourishment. Sage for the tenacity of a weed, and in the name itself, a symbol of wisdom and healing. She wanted me to be like a nameless weed, growing back in some forgotten corner where nobody knew me.

Then one afternoon, a group of thugs showed up at the stall.

They claimed the fish wasn’t fresh, flipped myfried rice skillet, and shoved my father around.

“There’s grit in this food! We got sick eating here. Pay up or this stall is done!”

I stared at the mess on the ground, and my body started shaking on instinct. My hands and feet went ice

cold.

That helpless terror of being bullied with nowhere to hide dragged me straight back into the past.

I wanted to beg, the way I used to. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll pay, please, I’m begging you…”

I was already bending at the waist, making myself small, when a steady hand caught my shoulder.

“Robbery in broad daylight. What do you say, gentlemen, want to take this down to the station?”

A firm voice cut through the noise.

The man wore a crisp white dress shirt, but he carried an authority that left no room for argument.

He was a professor at the university next door. Julian Rivers, I’d heard the name from students who came to buy myfried rice.

The thugs took one look at his composure, saw that he’d already called the cops, and scattered with a string

of curses.

I kept my head down, mechanically picking up the spatula from the ground. “Thank you… thank you, Mr.

Rivers.”

“Lyra?”

The voice above me turned my entire body to stone.

I jerked my head up and met Julian’s stunned eyes.

He stared at my face for a long time, his tone shifting from uncertainty to something like amazed relief. “It

really is you?”

The spatula slipped from my hand and clattered on the ground. My heart was hammering. The denial came

out on reflex.

“You’ve got the wrong person. My name isn’t Lyra. It’s Milo Sage.”

I spun around to run, but he was faster. His hand closed around my wrist.

“I’d never mistake you.” His expression was complicated, threaded with gratitude. “Five years ago, in that back alley, I was getting mugged. You came out of nowhere and saved me.”

“I went looking for you afterward. They told me you’d gotten married. And after that… I could never find any

trace of you again.”

My head was buzzing.

Five years ago? I could barely remember anything from five years ago.

All I remembered was pushing Mireille. All I remembered was Dorian saying I was insane.

I was on the verge of tears, my voice raw with pleading. “Julian, let go of me…”

He seemed to sense something was wrong. His grip loosened slightly.

“Lyra, what happened to you? Where’s Dorian?”

The sound of that name drained everyounce of strength from my body. I grabbed his sleeve and held on for

dear life.

“Don’t tell him. Please don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

“If he finds out I’m alive, he’ll send me back…”

I was babbling, incoherent, ready to drop to my knees.

Julian crouched down fast and caught me. “I won’t. I won’t tell a soul. Don’t be scared.”

“Don’t be scared, Milo.”

His voice was steady and sure. “Nobody is taking you anywhere. Not anymore.”

I looked into his eyes, saw how serious they were, and believed him. At least halfway.

What I didn’t know was that back in Manhattan, Dorian had already lost his mind.

When Dorian woke up in the hospital, the only person in the room was Mireille.

She looked at him with worry and urgency, her eyes swollen red. “Dorian, what happened? Why did you just collapse like that?”

Dorian turned his head to look at her. His voice was sandpaper. “She’s dead.”

“Lyra is dead.”

For one unguarded instant, wild joy flashed through Mireille’s eyes. She smothered it almost immediately beneath a mask of grief.

She seized his hand, tears falling on command. “How can that be? How could Lyra do something like that?”

She cried, watching his face the whole time.

Seeing him hollow and lost, she ventured a careful attempt at comfort.

“Dorian, don’t be too hard on yourself. What’s done is done. Now that Lyra is gone…”

“We should give her a proper funeral. If nothing else, do it for Mike. You have to pull yourself together. I’ll be right here with you…”

“Get out.”

Dorian’s head snapped up, his eyes venomous, and he shoved her away hard.

Mireille stumbled and crashed to the floor.

A terrified cry came from the doorway. “Daddy!”

Mike had appeared at some point, his small face white with fear. “Daddy’s mean! Daddy’s hurting Mommy! I

hate Daddy!”

But Dorian, who had always doted on him, looked at his son with nothing but vast, empty indifference.

He didn’t comfort the crying boy. He simply closed his eyes, as if by refusing to see, refusing to hear, he

could make everything go back to the way it was.

Mireille wiped her tears, gathered Mike into her arms, and left the room without a word.

The door clicked shut. The only sound left was Dorian’s ragged breathing.

For three full days, he didn’t speak a single word.

He couldn’t believe Lyra was really dead. He didn’t dare believe it. She had loved him so fiercely once. How

could she possibly leave him?

On the fourth day, he discharged himself against the doctors’ orders and went home.

But when he pushed open the front door, the sight before him made his pupils contract to pinpoints.

The living room had been transformed into a memorial hall. White funeral banners hung from the walls. And

in the center, a massive black-and-white portrait.

It was Lyra at twenty-two. He’d taken that photo himself.

In it, she wore a shy, radiant smile.

“Dorian, you’re back?”

Mireille emerged in a black dress, her face arranged in tasteful sorrow.

“I thought, even though Lyra is gone, she deserves a proper send-off…”

She sounded considerate. But Dorian’s expression turned to ice. “Who told you to do this?”

He advanced on her, step by step. “Who gave you permission to decide she’s dead?”

Mireille backed away, frightened by the madness in his eyes. “Dorian, calm down. The police said the body they pulled from the river…”

“I haven’t seen her body. She is not allowed to be dead!”

Dorian kicked over the altar table, ripped the portrait from the wall, and hurled it to the ground.

“She’s not dead. She’s just hiding. She’s just angry at me!”

Mike burst into terrified sobs, cowering behind Mireille. “Daddy, stop!”

But Dorian didn’t seem to hear. He picked up the memorial tablet, grabbed the petrified Mike, and forced the

boy’s head down.

“Kneel. Call her Mom.”

Dorian’s voice was raw with obsession. “She is your mother. Your only mother.”

“She’s not! She’s a bad lady! Daddy’s gone crazy!” Mike thrashed, his eyes wide with fear.

Dorian looked at Mike. Then slowly, he let go and laughed.

Right. Mike had never once accepted Lyra.

Why had he ever assumed that having a child would solve everything between them? That it would carry

them hand in hand into old age?

Mike was right. He was the one who’d gone insane.

He walked out the front door. Behind him, Mireille was sobbing and Mike was screaming, but he couldn’t

hear any of it.

Dorian drowned himself in alcohol for seven straight days, until his second-in-command finally pried open

the door.

“Don, the records you asked us to pull on the Academy. We found them.”

The man looked at the bottles covering every inch of floor, his voice strained.

“These five years… what your wife went through wasn’t discipline. It was torture.”

“There are several recordings. The Academy made them to showcase their results. Do you… want to see

them?”

Dorian reached out with a trembling hand and took the laptop.

The moment the video started, screaming filled the room.

On screen, Lyra was strapped to an electric shock chair, her whole body convulsing, but she was still mechanically repeating the same words.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault. I’ll behave…”