The grand ballroom of the Grand Sapphire Hotel still felt like a vacuum. The brutal truth Aris had just unveiled hung heavily in the air, suffocating anyone who heard it. On the floor, Mr. Wijaya, who had been dragged by security, suddenly collapsed, his eyes rolling back into his head. His body convulsed briefly before he lost consciousness completely.

"Father!" Bella screamed from up on the balcony. Forgetting status and the surrounding luxury, she rushed down the emergency stairs toward the main hall.

"Call a doctor! Quickly!" shouted one of the guests, but Aris simply stood motionless on the podium, watching the scene unfold with an expressionless gaze. No empathy, no intention to help. To him, this was merely the natural consequence of decades of accumulated greed.

Bella reached the center of the hall, out of breath. She fell to her knees beside her helpless father, tapping the old man's cheeks, but there was no response. Beside her, Mrs. Ratna rushed in, hysteric, screaming at the top of her lungs while pointing a finger at Aris.

"You! You devil! You did this to my husband! You took your revenge by trying to kill him!" Mrs. Ratna shrieked hysterically.

Aris stepped down from the podium with a calm, deliberate stride. Each strike of his leather shoes on the marble floor echoed like a death knell. He stopped directly in front of Bella, who was sobbing uncontrollably as she held her unconscious father.

To Bella, the man standing before her felt completely foreign. He was no longer Aris—the man who used to sit with her on the porch at night, the man who gave her a awkward smile whenever her mother yelled at him. The man in front of her now was a ruler whose icy aura could freeze anyone in their tracks.

Bella looked up. Her bloodshot, swollen eyes locked onto Aris's. The ache in her chest clashed with sheer disbelief.

"Who are you really?" Bella’s voice trembled, practically breaking. "Where is my husband? Where is the Aris I loved? Was he... was he just a charade? Were you just playing a role in a drama you orchestrated yourself for an entire year?"

Aris went silent for a moment. He looked down at Bella—the woman who, for a whole year, had been the sole reason he endured the suffocating Wijaya household. Yet, his gaze didn't waver for a second.

"The Aris you knew," he answered in a deep voice, "was nothing more than a mask. An empty shell I created to see the innermost nature of the people living under that roof."

"But we were married!" Bella cut in, her voice rising an octave. "We shared a life! We—"

"We shared pain," Aris cut her off coldly. "Yet you chose to look at my wounds without ever trying to heal them. You let them trample on my dignity. You let them treat your husband like dust under their feet. And today, when you ask me who I am..."

Aris leaned down slightly, bringing his face level with hers. A flash of hidden pain flickered deep within his eyes, but he swallowed it whole instantly.

"I am the man you threw away," Aris whispered directly in front of her face. "I am the man who offered you his entire love, only for you to return it with silent indifference. If you feel I am a stranger, it's because you never actually made an effort to know the man you married."

Bella froze. Those words struck straight into her heart. She had stayed silent. She had never defended Aris. But did that mean she deserved a destruction like this?

"You're cruel," Bella whispered softly, her tears dripping onto Aris's shirt sleeve.

"I am merely a mirror," Aris replied bluntly. "A mirror reflecting back what you did to others."

The hotel's medical team finally arrived, quickly placing Mr. Wijaya on a stretcher to carry him out. Mrs. Ratna trailed behind, shouting curses at Aris, but Aris didn't spare her a single reaction. He didn't care about the insults. For him, the show was officially over.

Aris turned to walk away, but Bella’s hand reached out, grabbing his arm.

"If you're really this heartless," Bella’s voice sounded calmer now, yet laced with a deep, newfound resentment, "why didn't you just divorce me from the start? Why make me fall in love with this fake man, only to crush me with a reality far more cruel?"

Aris gently yet firmly pried Bella’s fingers off his arm. He didn't look back.

"Because I wanted you to feel it, Bella. I wanted you to know how it feels when the person you trusted most—the person you thought was entirely yours—turns out to be the very one pulling the ground out from under your feet."

With that, Aris walked away, leaving Bella sitting alone on the floor of the grand hall. The party went on, the orchestral music resumed, but for Bella, the world had turned quiet and freezing cold. She had just realized that the man she married was not the man she thought she knew.

And what hurt the most was that despite her burning hatred for him, her heart still throbbed with a agonizing ache as she watched Aris walk away into the distance. The mask had finally fallen, but the wound it left behind ran far too deep to ever heal again.