Love Came Too Late

After I took another knife for him and lost another pregnancy, Leander Croft finally agreed to marry me. On the day of the wedding, the bridal car never arrived. I only received a phone call from kidnappers who demanded my life in exchange for his. His voice crackled through the line, broken and faint. "Mila, just live. Do not come for me..." A kidnapper cut him off in the next second. "Mila Carver, do you want him alive? Get the ransom ready, then jump off Seaview Bridge." I ran back to my room to gather the money. When I opened the safe, I found a thick stack of documents titled "The Mila Carver Atonement Plan." It turned out that seven years earlier, the first time Leander had been kidnapped, everything had been staged. He watched as I ran into a burning building to save him, and my right arm shattered beyond repair. I never played the piano again. He watched as my mother threw herself in front of a blade meant for him and died in my arms. He watched as I lost pregnancy after pregnancy, and I paid for sins I never committed. Every single time, he only felt the thrill of revenge. The Carver family and the Croft family had a blood feud that went back generations. Today was the final test. If I was willing to trade my life for his, the debt the Carvers owed the Crofts would be wiped clean. He would marry me, just as he had promised. The phone rang again. The kidnappers began counting down. I held the wedding ring and walked calmly toward the death he had arranged for me. This time, I would die. I would die in the moment he loved me most and leave him with a lifetime of regret. Chapter 1 Third Person's POV After the call ended, the warehouse at the abandoned dock stayed silent for a few seconds. Leander Croft sat in a chair with his hands loosely tied by rope. Even the streak of blood on his face had only been painted on by Katrina Byrne. Katrina removed the voice modulator and let out a quiet laugh. "Think she'll actually come?" Leander kept his eyes lowered and said nothing. A few of their childhood friends adjusted the surveillance camera angles nearby. One of them snickered. "Mila Carver worships the ground he walks on. She loves him more than her own life. If she heard something happened to him, she would crawl here on her hands and knees. "She proved it seven years ago. She sold the piano her dad left her just to pay his ransom. "During the fire, her right hand was destroyed, and she still cried while asking if he was okay." Leander's brow furrowed. "Shut up." The warehouse went quiet instantly. Katrina watched him, and a flash of resentment crossed her eyes. "Are you feeling sorry for her?" Leander looked up at her. Katrina softened her voice. "Leander, do not forget. She is a Carver. "You know how your father died. You know what the Croft family went through. Have you forgotten all of that?" Leander's fingers curled tighter, one knuckle at a time. He had not forgotten. That was why, seven years earlier, he had gotten close to Mila Carver in the first place. She had just won the gold medal at an international piano competition. She stood at center stage in a white dress and looked untouched by anything ugly in the world. He sat in the audience and watched her smile, watched her bow, and watched her embrace her mother. In that moment, he only felt bitterness. Why did the Croft family lie in ruins while the Carver girl stood in the light? He went to every length to get close to her. He became the person she loved most, and then, piece by piece, he dragged her out of the light and into the dark. During the first kidnapping, he watched through the surveillance feed as she knelt in the rain and pushed the money from selling her piano toward the kidnappers. She shook so hard she could barely speak while she begged over and over. "Do not hurt him. I will give you whatever you want." All Leander felt was satisfaction. His enemy's daughter knelt before him and atoned for the sins of the Carver family. Yet after that, things slipped out of his control. During the fire, when the beam came crashing down, Mila could have run. She turned back instead and shoved him out of the way. When she woke up with her right hand wrapped in bandages, the first thing she said was, "Leander, are you hurt?" The doctor said she would never play at a high level again. She stayed quiet for a long time, then turned to him and smiled. "It is fine. I still have you." From that day on, Leander could not bring himself to look her in the eye. Katrina walked up to him and lowered her voice. "You are not really calling this the last time, are you?" Leander closed his eyes. "Yeah." "As long as she is willing to die for you, the Carvers' debt to the Crofts is settled?" He stayed silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was raw. "Yes." Something in Katrina's face changed. "Then what about the wedding?" The rain grew heavier outside the warehouse. Leander lifted his head and stared at the pitch‑black night beyond the door. "It goes ahead." Katrina clenched her fingers until her knuckles turned white. "You are really going to marry her?" Leander did not answer, but the silence was answer enough. Katrina laughed, sudden and sharp. "You lost your mind. You tortured her for seven years, and now you are telling me you will marry her as long as she is willing to die for you?" His voice was barely above a whisper. "This is the last time. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to her." Katrina stared at him as though she had heard the most absurd thing in the world. "You took her hand, her piano, her mother, and your unborn children from her. What could you possibly offer that would make up for any of it?" Leander's eyes snapped up, bloodshot and furious. "Shut up! Not another word!" Katrina stumbled back, but the resentment in her eyes never wavered. "You will never clear that debt. The two of you are destined to end in ruin." Chapter 2 Mila's POV By the time I reached the dock, the rain was coming down hard. The kidnappers told me to park 1,000 feet from the warehouse and walk the rest of the way in. My heels sank into the mud with every step, and the white hem of my dress became filthy within seconds. If this had been earlier, I would have been shaking and telling myself not to be afraid. I would have reminded myself that Leander was waiting for me. I only felt contempt for my own blind and foolish trust. Inside my bag was the ransom I had taken from the safe, along with the final operation plan. The page read, "If Mila Carver is willing to trade her life for Leander Croft's, the Carver family's old debt will be considered settled, and the wedding will proceed as planned." "The wedding will proceed as planned." When I read those words, I nearly laughed. Leander had finally agreed to marry me. It was not because he felt guilty about the miscarriage that left me unable to conceive again, and not because he lay awake at night thinking about the child we lost. He simply felt it was time to finish his revenge. As long as I proved with my life that I truly loved him, he would be gracious enough to wipe the slate clean. I looked down at my right hand. Rainwater slid across the back of it, and the old scars prickled faintly. After the fire 3 years earlier, I had gone through months of rehabilitation. On the worst days, my fingers could not even hold a pen. I locked myself in the music room and placed my right hand on the keys again and again, but it would not obey me. Melodies I once played easily came out broken beyond recognition. Leander walked in one day, and I scrambled to hide my hand behind my back. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me. "Mila, it is okay if you do not play anymore. I will take care of you for the rest of your life." I leaned into his chest that day and cried until I could not speak. I believed he said it because it hurt him to see me like that. Clipped to the side of the final operation plan was an older page of notes. "After the fire incident, Mila Carver's emotional dependence on Leander Croft increased significantly. Objective achieved." My dream died in that fire. To him, it was nothing more than a successful experiment in making me need him more. I wiped the rain from my face and kept walking. My phone buzzed. It was a message from Katrina. "Mila, where are you? Leander's hurt badly. Hurry." A second message came a few seconds later. "But do not push yourself too hard. You just had a miscarriage, after all. If something happened to you, Leander would be devastated." I stared at those words, and my vision went black for a moment. Three months earlier, I had fallen down a flight of stairs. The pain in my lower abdomen felt like something tearing apart from the inside. Leander carried me into the hospital, and his voice shook so badly it barely sounded like him. "Doctor, save her. Save her first." When I woke up, the baby was gone. Leander sat at the edge of the bed, and his eyes looked raw and red. "Mila, let us get married." I believed that after losing our child, I had finally received the proposal I had waited for. I had seen the report on the stairwell "accident" in the safe. The original objective was to have someone knock the documents out of my hands to test whether I had uncovered the old case between the Carver and Croft families. They had not intended for the baby to die, so the report summed it up in two words. "Unplanned miscarriage." There was not a single line of regret. My child never saw the world and was written off as acceptable collateral in their plan. I stopped in the rain, pressed my hand to my stomach, and laughed until tears ran down my face. Another message from Katrina. "Mila, do not tell me you are scared." I turned off my phone. Scared? I had been scared 7 years earlier when Leander was kidnapped. I had been scared 3 years earlier when he was trapped in the fire. I had been scared 1 year earlier when the knife came down, and I feared my mother would never wake up again. I had been scared 3 months earlier under the surgical lights when I feared I could not save the baby. I had been scared so many times. Every single time, the one who lost a piece of herself was me. This time, I was not scared. I had already decided that Mila Carver would die here that night. Chapter 3 Mila's POV The moment the warehouse door swung open, the stench of rust and damp hit me in the face. Leander was tied to a chair. He looked up and saw me, and something in his eyes loosened for a split second before turning tight again. "Mila, why did you come?" It was a good performance. He sounded exactly like a fiancé who never wanted the woman he loved anywhere near danger. If I had not seen those documents, I probably would have thrown myself at him in tears and asked if he was in pain. I stood in the doorway and looked at him. His face was pale, and blood sat at the corner of his mouth, but I knew the blood was fake. The ropes were loose. If he wanted to, he could stand up at any time. He did not, because he was waiting for me to walk forward. He was waiting for me to complete the final sacrifice he had arranged. One of the kidnappers stepped out of the shadows and tossed a knife at my feet. "Mila Carver, do you want him alive? It is simple. Stab yourself once, then jump off the dock." Leander thrashed against the ropes. "Do not touch her!" The kidnapper sneered. "Mr. Croft, is it not a little late to play the concerned lover?" The color drained from Leander's face. I looked at him, and he looked at me. In that instant, every other sound in the warehouse seemed to fall away. I thought of my mother right before she died. When that blade came at me, she had thrown herself in front of it. Her blood hit my face. I held her and pressed my hands over the wound, but no matter how hard I pushed, the bleeding did not stop. She looked up at me, and her lips moved for a long time before she managed a single word. "Run." I did not run. Because Leander held me and said, "You still have me." So I stayed by his side. I stayed with the man who was truly responsible for her death. I bent down and picked up the knife. Leander's pupils contracted sharply. "Mila, put the knife down." I asked quietly, "Leander, if I actually died today, would you finally be satisfied?" His throat moved, and his voice came out strained. "I will not let you die." "You only want to see whether I am willing to." Every trace of color left his face. The men posing as kidnappers finally sensed that something was wrong and exchanged uneasy glances. Katrina stepped out from the shadows. Her eyes were rimmed red, and she still wore that same fragile and helpless look. "Mila, do not misunderstand. Leander has been in so much pain. He has been caught between you and the Croft family's grudge all these years. It has not been easy for him either." I turned to her. "So watching my hand get destroyed, my mother die, and my child disappear made things easier for him?" Katrina went white. Leander's voice shook. "Mila, what did you find out?" I smiled faintly. "Everything." The warehouse went silent. Leander looked as though that single word had nailed him to the chair. I walked toward him, one step at a time. "Every staged accident you planned over the past seven years was because you believed the Carver family owed you a life, was it not? Then today, I am giving you that life." Leander's breathing turned ragged. His eyes went red, and his voice dropped to a snarl. "That is not what this is." I looked down at him. "Then what is it?" He opened his mouth, and it took him a long time to force the words out. "After today, I genuinely want to marry you. As long as you pass my test, I am willing to let go of everything between our families." It was laughable. He had broken my dream with his own hands, destroyed everything I had, and dragged me from a normal life into a living hell. Yet he still sat there, looking up at me from his throne, convinced that marrying me would be enough to make up for all the damage he had done. I tightened my grip on the knife and asked quietly, "Leander, do you honestly believe that one 'I love you' from you is enough for me to forgive everything? To forgive what you did to my family, to forgive you?" He searched my eyes for something to hold on to, but when he saw the finality in them, the last shred of hope in him shattered completely. Leander began thrashing violently. The ropes that had been hanging loose snapped taut under the force, and blood appeared on his wrists within seconds. "Untie me!" He turned on the men beside him with a roar. "I said untie me!" The men posing as kidnappers looked at each other, clearly unprepared for things to go this far. Katrina reacted first. She rushed over and pressed down on Leander's shoulders. "Leander, calm down. She already knows. What are you going to do, run up to her? Mila is never going to forgive you." Leander's bloodshot eyes locked on her, and he shoved her aside. "Get away from me." Katrina stumbled backward, and humiliation covered her face. I watched the two of them struggle and felt an exhaustion so deep it reached my bones. There was a time when nothing terrified me more than seeing Leander stand next to Katrina. I was afraid he would take her side, afraid he would go soft, afraid I would lose to her again. Watching him shove her away, I did not feel a single moment of satisfaction. Love that showed up this late meant nothing. I pressed the tip of the blade against my white dress. Leander saw the movement and froze. "Mila, do not do this." His voice dropped low, and desperation filled it. "I was wrong. I know that now." I smiled. "Leander, are you afraid of me dying, or are you afraid that I found out the truth before I died?" Something blocked his throat, and for a long time he could not speak. I answered for him. "It is the latter. Because if I had died for you without knowing any of it, you could have lied to yourself. You could have told yourself I loved you, told yourself the Carvers' debt was paid, told yourself you had finally earned the right to marry me. "Too bad. I know exactly how you destroyed me." I stepped backward, one step at a time, until I reached the rear door of the warehouse. The dock waited on the other side, and rain and crashing waves folded together like some grand farewell. Leander finally tore the ropes from his wrists and charged toward me, but I was faster. The back door flew open, and the cold and wet sea wind rushed in. "Leander, the Carvers' debt to you is paid." In the instant I fell, I caught sight of the rescue swimmer I had positioned in the distance long before any of this began. I also saw Leander lunging toward me like a man losing his mind. "Mila, do not!" I looked at him and spoke softly. "Live well. I want you to spend the rest of your life drowning in guilt and begging for forgiveness you will never get." The freezing water swallowed me whole. I heard Leander's scream tear through the air. "Mila!" It sounded like it ripped him apart, but I did not look back.