Chapter 135

OLIVIA’S POV I should’ve trusted my instincts. Even as the breeze whispered through the trees and the night wrapped around the garden in an illusion of calm, something in my chest tugged and twisted—an anxious heartbeat urging me to be alert. But I brushed it off, thinking maybe I was still spiralling from the chaos of the ballroom. I had checked. I had looked. There had been no one. No shadows. No footsteps. Just silence. Just the cold stillness of a night that was supposed to have been mine. Ours. A beginning, or at the very least, closure. I took one last look at the moonlight dancing on the pool’s surface. That’s when it happened. A sudden, sharp shove to my back. So swift. So unexpected. So brutal. My arms flailed as a startled cry escaped my lips. The cold water swallowed me whole before I could even scream properly. It was like falling into a void—a moment suspended between air and silence, then shock and suffocation. The world became blur and bubbles and panic. The chill grippe