Rebirth: The Blind Heiress Makes A Deal With The Devil

The words hung in the air like heavy iron.

Isabella flinched, her small hand tightening into a fist against her lap. She didn’t understand all the medical terms, but she understood the truth. The drops hadn’t been helping her. They had been blindfolding her.

Kian felt the blood drain from his face. His heart slammed against his ribs.

The quiet confidence that had filled his chest just five minutes ago shattered into cold, sharp pieces. The question in the courtroom was no longer whether Isabella was legally entitled to leave him.

The question was who had been putting poison into her eyes.

And for the three months prior to her leaving, Kian had been the only person managing her care.

Slowly, Kian turned his head. He looked across the aisle, straight at Aaron.

Aaron turned his head at the exact same time. Their eyes met. Aaron didn’t smile big. He didn’t sneer. He just gave Kian a small, almost imperceptible tilt of his head... a quiet, terrifying acknowledge of the trap.

Kian’s hands went cold.

’He knew.’

Aaron hadn’t been caught off guard by Arthur’s legal delays.

He hadn’t been helpless when the state lab caught fire.

He had known, from the very beginning, that Kian and Arthur would try to erase the drops.

He had let them spend their money, let them pull their strings, let them burn down a building, just to watch them walk straight into a second wall he had built in the dark.

Kian wasn’t winning because he was smarter. Aaron had simply been letting him move.

"Your Honor," Niko said, standing tall. "In light of this analysis, the petitioner moves to introduce a witness regarding the attempted tampering of the original state evidence."

Arthur’s head snapped around. "What witness?!"

Niko picked up a second paper from his desk. "We call Benjamin Miller, former compliance officer for the state laboratory system."

Arthur froze. The name hit him like a physical blow.

’Benji.’

Kian looked at Arthur, seeing the sudden, pale shock on his attorney’s face. For the first time since Kian had hired him, Arthur Pendleton looked completely thrown off balance.

"Objection!" Arthur shouted, stepping forward, his voice loud enough to echo off the wood paneling. "Your Honor! This is a complete surprise tactic! This witness has not been deposed! We have had no opportunity to review his statements!"

"Mr. Miller was taken into custody by state investigators two hours ago," Niko said, his tone razor-sharp. "He has provided a sworn affidavit stating that he was offered financial compensation to remotely alter the thermal controls of the state storage locker, intentionally delaying the official toxicology report."

The courtroom erupted into a muted shock of whispers.

Kian’s breath caught in his throat. His mind raced, trying to pull the pieces together. The thermal delay, that wasn’t Kian’s doing. That was Arthur’s move from weeks ago. Benji was Arthur’s contact.

Aaron hadn’t just tracked Kian’s moves. He had tracked Arthur’s, too.

"Your Honor!" Arthur pressed, his voice tight, his face reddening as he fought to regain control of the room.

"Any statements made by a disgraced lab employee under state interrogation are completely inadmissible in a civil divorce proceeding! My client has had zero involvement with this individual! This is an obvious, desperate attempt by Mr. Kazarov’s legal team to smear my client’s character without a shred of direct proof!"

"He isn’t lying, Your Honor," Niko fired back. "The financial trail leads directly to an off-shore shell company linked to—"

"That is an unproven assertion!" Arthur cut in aggressively. "I demand an immediate strike of those comments from the record! If Mr. Kazarov wants to bring criminal allegations, he can take them to the district attorney! They have no place in this courtroom!"

"Enough!" Judge Daniel slammed his gavel down, the loud crack ringing through the room, cutting off both lawyers.

The room fell dead silent.

Daniel sat back in his chair, breathing heavily. He looked down at Arthur, then at Niko, then at Kian. The easy, comfortable tone he had maintained earlier was completely gone.

He looked cornered, stressed, and exhausted. The quiet arrangement he had made with Arthur was crumbling right in front of him.

If he suppressed this evidence now, with a state investigation already active, he would be risking his own bench, his own career, and his own freedom.

"This court will not turn this hearing into a criminal circus," Daniel said, his voice hard and cold. "The witness statement is stayed pending formal review by state authorities. The private toxicology report will be held under court seal for further evidentiary evaluation."

Arthur took a short breath, trying to smooth down his jacket. "Thank you, Your Honor."

"However," Daniel added, staring right at Arthur, "given the extreme nature of these submissions and the chaos surrounding the evidence, this hearing is adjourned. We will reconvene in two weeks. Both parties will submit full written briefs regarding the admissibility of the secondary sample."

Daniel struck his gavel one final time. "Court is adjourned."

The judge stood up immediately and walked out through his private door, disappearing before either legal team could say another word.

The courtroom began to empty slowly. The bailiffs stepped to the doors, opening them to the noisy hallway outside.

The quiet rustle of black robes echoed through the room as Judge Daniel stood and exited through his private door. The loud crack of his final gavel strike still hung in the air, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.

Arthur Pendleton stood frozen at the defense table, his hands trembling as he packed his files into his leather briefcase, his usual polished charm completely stripped away.

Kian sat beside him, his hands resting flat on the mahogany wood, staring straight ahead at the empty bench.

His mind was spinning. The eye drops were back on the record. Benji was in state custody. The trap had closed, but Kian’s mind couldn’t pull the pieces together.

Across the room, Aaron was already leaning down, whispering something softly to Isabella as he helped her up from her seat.

Isabella stood, her fingers tightening around the edge of her dark wool coat. The medical words the judge had read aloud were still screaming in her head. Kian had poisoned her. He had made her blind.

She turned her head toward the sound of Kian’s faint, shallow breathing across the aisle. Her chest heaved under her coat.

"Aaron," Isabella whispered, her voice shaking with a sudden, sharp intensity. "Take me to him."

Aaron went still. Niko immediately reached out a hand. "Isabella, no. The hearing is over. We should leave through the back."

"Take me to him, Aaron," she repeated. There was no fear in her voice now. No hesitation. Only a raw, burning determination that cut straight through her tears.

Aaron looked down at her pale face, seeing the fierce resolve behind her green eyes.

He didn’t argue. Slowly, Aaron rested his broad hand on the small of her back and guided her across the carpeted aisle, stopping just two feet from where Kian sat.

Kian looked up, standing on instinct as she approached. The overwhelming urge to reach out to her hit him like a physical wave. "Isabella, look, you can’t believe—"

"Don’t," she breathed.

Isabella reached out blindly into the space between them. Her fingers brushed against the rough wool of his suit jacket to find him, and then, with everything she had left inside her, she swung her hand.

’SLAP.’

The crack of her palm against his cheek echoed through the empty courtroom like a gunshot.

The force turned Kian’s head to the side. Arthur gasped, stepping back. Niko took a half-step forward, but Aaron remained perfectly still, watching with cold, steady eyes.

Kian didn’t move. A red mark was already blooming across his cheek, but he didn’t touch it. He slowly turned his face back to her, his dark eyes wide, staring at her in complete, stunned silence.

"Isabella," Kian tried again, his throat dry, desperate to fix the breaking space between them. "Listen to me, please. It’s Aaron. He’s cooking all of this up, he’s feeding you lies just to pull us apart, you know how he—"

"Stop lying!" she screamed, her voice cracking sharply, the sound tearing out of her chest.

Tears finally spilled over her lower lashes, slipping down her pale skin, but she wasn’t sobbing pitifully.

She stood straight, her chin raised, her breath coming in hot, ragged gasps. She wasn’t looking directly at his eyes, she couldn’t, but her gaze burned right into his chest.

"Why?" she cried, her voice trembling with a heartbroken, angry confusion that made her entire body shake. "Why, Kian?! Why would you do that to me?!"

The single word hit him harder than the strike.

"Why would you claim to love me all those years just to slowly drown me in the same darkness you created?!" Her voice broke, raw and bleeding with the sheer weight of her pain.

"Why would you sleep with Alice?! Why would you stay in my bed, whispering love confessions to me at night, while you were planning my downfall with her behind my back?!"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!