9
<
“Miss Quinn,” Mr. Henderson announced, his
voice filled with a quiet pride, “these are from
Mr. Hamilton. He asked me to tell you that
this is just a small token, and that even bigger
surprises are yet to come.”
Silas stumbled back a few steps, his face a
mask of utter devastation, as if he were the
one who had been cruelly wronged and
betrayed.
The bodyguards efficiently, and not too
gently, escorted Silas out of the house.
Since he couldn’t pay for the mountain of
gifts he’d “ordered,” the vendors who had
delivered them were now screaming at him,
cursing him for wasting their time, calling him
every foul name under the sun.
<
A few of the more incensed deliverymen even started kicking him, their frustration boiling
over.
Right when he was at his most pathetic, his
most humiliated, I had my security team step
in and drive off the men who were beating
him.
Silas saw me. He scrambled, half–crawling, half–dragging himself across the pristine
driveway, collapsing at my feet. “Quinn,” he
choked out, his voice thick with tears, “you…
you still care about me, don’t you? You can’t
bear to see me suffer! You still love me,
right? Right?”
Looking down at his tear–streaked face, his
eyes red and swollen, I was suddenly
transported back. Back to the cold, agonizing
pain of my own death in that previous life.
Back to the image of my precious, seven- month–old baby, so brutally ripped from my
womb.
A towering wave of pure, unadulterated rage
surged through me, so potent, so
overwhelming, I wanted to reach down and
strangle the life out of him right then and
there.
“Silas Thorne,” I asked, my voice eerily calm,
“do you love me?”
It was a strange, almost nonsensical question
given the circumstances, but Silas answered
instantly, desperately.
“Yes! Of course, I love you! Quinn, believe
Г
me, please believe me! In our last life… the
man you married… it was me!”
“Oh, really?” I asked, a chillingly light tone to
my voice. “And how did that story end for us,
Silas?”
His face, for a fleeting instant, contorted in
an ugly grimace, but he masked it quickly.
Without a hint of hesitation, his voice firm
and resolute, he lied.
“We were happy, Quinn. So incredibly happy.
And we had a child, a beautiful, adorable
child.”
“You lie!”
The mention of our child… it was the final
straw. I couldn’t hold back any longer. My
く
hand lashed out, slapping him hard across his
lying, deceitful face.
I grabbed the front of his expensive shirt,
twisting the fabric in my fist, my eyes burning
with unshed tears. My voice was a low,
guttural snarl, each word dripping with
venom.
“Silas Thorne, have you forgotten? Have you
so conveniently erased the memory of our
baby? Our seven–month–old child, whom you
personally, with your own two hands, cut from
my body and then smashed against the
goddamn floor until he was dead?”
Silas trembled, his body shaking violently.
“You…” he stammered, his eyes wide with a
dawning, horrified understanding.
“Silas,” I said, my voice dropping to a cold,
dead whisper, “the truth is, you don’t love me.
You never did. And you don’t love Cora Stone
either. The only thing you’ve ever truly loved,
Silas, is the thing you can’t have.”
With that, I turned my back on him and
walked away, resolute and unwavering.
The moment the heavy front door clicked shut
behind me, sunlight streamed down, bathing
me in its warm, golden glow. It felt like a sign,
a benediction, a symbol of the final, definitive
end between Silas Thorne and me.
I don’t know where Cora Stone had run off to,
but she reappeared just then, rushing to
Silas’s side. She threw her arms around him,
her voice thick with a desperate, misguided
く
devotion.
“Silas, my love! Even if Quinn doesn’t want
you, I do! I want you! Please, say you’ll be
with me! When Father gets back, I’ll get a
large sum of money from him. We can leave
this place, Silas! We can go somewhere new
and start over, just the two of us!”
Silas looked like a man whose soul had died.
Hearing Cora’s voice, he reacted with a
violent, visceral disgust, shoving her away
with brutal force.
“Get away from me, you manipulative bitch!”
he snarled, his voice raw with a self–loathing
he projected entirely onto her. “If it weren’t
for you, Quinn and I wouldn’t be… estranged!
This is all your fault! All your goddamn fault!”
This is all your fault! All your goddamn fault!”
In the violent shove, Cora lost her balance
and fell heavily to the hard ground.
A few moments later, a dark stain began to
spread on the pavement beneath her. Blood.
Her agonizing, heart–wrenching screams
quickly drew the attention of neighbors and
passersby.
By the time Cora was rushed to the hospital,
she had already lost consciousness. The
baby, barely two months along, couldn’t be
saved.
She only found out she’d been pregnant when
she woke up in the hospital bed. Hearing that
her baby was gone, she became completely
く
hysterical, a whirlwind of inconsolable tears
and frantic, incoherent cries.
When word of the scandal spread
—
the
―
affair, the public fight, the miscarriage – my
father, deeply shamed and disgusted by the
whole sordid affair, gave Cora a final sum of
money and then, officially and irrevocably,
severed all ties with her.
