“It’s not?”
Kiana smiled sadly.
“Darius, I heard every single word. Your brilliant plan to steal my money, split it fifty‑fifty, and blame it on scammers. Clever plan. I’ll give you that.”
He tried to say something, but his voice broke.
“Kiki, Mom came up with it. I was against it, honestly. She just pressured me, saying she had nothing to live on, saying you were greedy—”
“Stop.”
Kiana raised her hand.
“Don’t try to pin everything on your mother. You agreed to it. You just dictated the PIN to her half an hour ago. I heard everything, so don’t lie.”
Darius slumped into a chair, burying his head in his hands.
“God, what’s going to happen now? What’s going to happen now?”
Kiana finished her tea and put the mug in the sink.
“Now your mother is sitting at the bank explaining to the security service why she was trying to withdraw over a hundred thousand dollars from someone else’s card. They might transfer the case to the police if they want to. It depends on whether I file a report.”
He looked up quickly.
“You won’t file one. Please don’t. That’s my mom. They’ll arrest her.”
Kiana looked at him for a long, scrutinizing moment.
There he sat, pathetic and scared, begging for mercy for his mom—the same person who had tried to clean out his wife an hour earlier.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Darius jumped up and stepped toward her.
“Kiki, please understand. This was just a stupid mistake. We didn’t want to hurt you. We just needed the money.”
“Money is always needed,” she interrupted. “But normal people earn it. They don’t steal it from their wives.”
He fell silent, standing with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, his face etched with complete despair.
Somewhere deep down, Kiana felt a faint pang of pity—but it was just that.
A faint, very faint pang.
“Go to bed,” she said tiredly. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, in the morning. I’ll tell you what I’ve decided. For now, go.”
Darius nodded, stunned, and shuffled off to the bedroom.
Kiana remained standing in the kitchen, looking out the window.
Dawn was breaking outside, the gray pre‑dawn sky slowly pushing back the darkness.
The city was waking up slowly, reluctantly.
Darius’s phone vibrated again in the hallway.
