He lifts his chin slightly, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. There is the hint of a smirk playing across his lips. He wants me to know I haven't won. That he will never possess any true regret for his actions. A fact that could only wound me if I hadn't realized it long ago myself.

"From this day forward, you will cease to exist," I tell him. "You will not be remembered. You will not be mourned. Nobody in this Society will ever utter your name again."

The smirk slips from his face, and in its place, a shimmer of rage appears.

"Our lives will go on. We will raise our children and prosper in your absence. Your family will be my family. Your sister, my wife. Your father, my father. The dark days you created will be long behind us. And when we gather for every holiday, there will not be an empty seat at the table. It will be as if you never existed at all. Your memory will be wiped away, forgotten. And I think, perhaps, that is the greatest gift you have given us. An apathy so pure, we can no longer harbor hatred for you. Nor sadness, nor loss. There is nothing, and there will always be nothing as far as you're concerned."

"You aren't their family," he snarls under his breath. "You never will be. And they will remember me. They will never forget—"

I unfold the note from Ivy, holding it up for him to see, and he goes rigid.

"You should know better than anyone, Abel, what it means when someone forgives. It means they have made peace with who you are. They have accepted the truth, and they have let you go. The cord is severed. It is the very reason your own father provided the evidence against you. There is nothing worth saving in you, and he understands that, perhaps better than any of us."

“No,” he growls. “You are wrong. He will grieve for me. You’ll see. You will all see. Nobody can ever replace me. Least of all you.”

A dark smile flickers across my face as I offer one last sentiment to carry him to his final breath.

“I already have.”

We turn to go, and Mercedes halts me, glaring back at Abel, steeling her strength as she stands taller. When she pulls away from me, I am not certain of her intentions, but I do not intervene as she approaches Abel. She pauses only when the tips of her heels bump against his bare feet, and for a moment, she stares at him with such unwavering strength, it reminds me of who she is at her core. She is determined to let Abel know it too. That she will rise from the ashes of her destruction. That his actions will not ruin her.