Chapter 9
Blood spattered across both our faces until his wound tore open, and I was spent. Only then did we finally let go and collapse to the floor.
Audrey curled up in a corner, trembling with fear, watching everything unfold.
Between heavy breaths, he was the first to push himself up. I reached for the dagger, but he kicked it aside. He then picked me up and set me against the wall.
The first-aid kit we’d meant for him was now being used on me. He poured the alcohol onto my wound and blew on it, that same nervous breath he had always used. Then he wrapped bandages tightly around my arm, and I turned my head away.
“Paisley.” His voice was low. Drops of blood hung from his lashes, oddly dangerous and irresistibly tender. “How did we end up here?”
The alcohol stung again, so he bent over and blew on the cut once more. “Can’t find the povidone-iodine. Be brave, hold on.”
Be brave, hold on. If this scene hadn’t been soaked in the stench of a ruined wedding hall, I might have thought I was still eighteen, being tended by the same boy who comforted me after my father beat me, soothing with alcohol and soft words: “Be brave. Hold on. Wait for me, Paisley. I’ll get you out. I’ll take you somewhere no one can hurt you, even if it costs me my life.”
I opened my eyes, and the boy had grown into a man, still treating my wounds, wounds caused by him.
“Geoffrey, do you know your reproductive system actually has problems?”
His hand at my wound instantly froze.
Squeezing a bitter smile, I continued, “Our two children… they were probably the only chances you would ever have to father a child.”
He frowned. “What are you saying?”
“The medical report was fake.” I looked him in the eye. “I lied because I didn’t want you to lose your pride as a man. I’m not the problem.”
The cotton swab snapped in his hand.
I stood and glanced at Audrey in the corner. “So the girl who had two pregnancies, were those really your children?”
He was speechless.
Not waiting for his reaction, I walked away.
I trusted that he wouldn’t be able to resist digging. He’d uncover his real medical report and discover the man Audrey actually loved.
Soon after, a video landed on my phone. In it, Audrey was dragged by the hair and dumped by the river with her hands bound. There was no love left in her eyes for Geoffrey.
“How could I ever love you?” she spat into the camera. “If not for your tricks, my father wouldn’t have been killed by that bitch. I thought you made it on your own, but you’re even afraid of your
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own wife. Pathetic! Loser!”
Not letting her words get into him, Geoffrey raised a hand, and a bodyguard shoved her into the water, and the river took her.
It was a storm just like the night he was eighteen. He dialed a number he had called a thousand times before. But as always, he was blocked. He tapped the screen a few times, then tossed the phone aside. He glanced at the camera as the rain streaked his face. For a moment, he looked like the boy he once was. Then he gave the lens a pale, bitter smile.
When everyone else had left, he walked to the river and stepped into the torrent. The current swallowed him. It carried him away and, with him, the boy I had loved.
After the police found his phone, his last message became public. It was for me, read as, [Paisley, I’m sorry.]
I stood under an umbrella at the riverbank while his men left offerings on the water. Then I turned and walked away without a sound. My marriage was over, widowed, not divorced.
