Chapter 6
Paisley’s POV
Geoffrey laughed, bitter and cold. “I’ve read their statements. They admitted they intended to violate her. In that situation, a woman wouldn’t have the room to fight back.”
Audrey cried out in horror. “Oh my God! So she was touched by those men even though she was eight months pregnant? How shameless!”
“Enough,” Geoffrey roared and turned toward the control console. He was about to order the system shut down when his brow suddenly creased as someone had already swapped the console screens. The controls showed faces he didn’t recognize.
He panicked and scanned the room. New people were among the crowd. Audrey’s face was also drained white in an instant. Those we’d assumed were their allies now looked like strangers to
both sides.
I walked toward the stage.
The night I saved him, I came the same way with a machete in hand and only ten die-hard men at my back. We fought from the gate to the headquarters; one by one, my people fell. In the end, it was just me and their men. He kicked my belly, but I sliced his throat. That night, the sun bled red. He collapsed beside my stretcher and cried for the first time. For years after, every time he revisited the past, he would hold me close, trembling, apologizing. In the middle of the night, he’d lock himself in his study and chain-smoke until dawn. I thought he lived under the weight of guilt. So I’d held him and told him I forgave him.
But maybe what haunted him wasn’t whether he’d wronged me. Maybe he worried whether I had wronged him.
“Sure, maybe she was innocent,” his voice played over the speakers. “But I secretly saw her medical report. She can’t have children anymore. She’s useless.”
Just then, a bullet smashed through the speaker. Geoffrey was breathing hard while the hand that held his gun trembled.
“Geoffrey.” I kept closing the distance between us. “Do you really think these words are wronging you? Or are you too cowardly to face your own filth?”
“Paisley,” he tried to say my name, but I cut off his breath by clamping his throat with my hand. “Geoffrey!” Audrey screamed, rushing forward until one of my men leveled a gun at the back of her head.
I pressed him back step by step while he staggered, retreating.
“Those ten men followed me when we first entered this circle, and they died trying to save you. Do you know what it felt like watching their parents ask me, red-eyed, where their sons had gone?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. His expression flickered with complicated emotions.
I laughed, edged with tears.
“All this I never told you. I was afraid my blood would become your guilt, your chain. But after so many years, you never cared about how many of my men I lost that day. You only worried if I had
Chapter 6
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wronged you.”
I shoved him hard, and his back slammed into the wall. A protruding hook tore into his old shoulder wound, and blood stained his neck and soaked my hands.
“Geoffrey!” Audrey sobbed.
His eyes found her, but there was no fear there, only tenderness.
“Maybe I did misunderstand you,” he said softly. “But Paisley, I’ve always wanted children.”
Tears glistened in his eyes as he continued, “I dream of us having a child, a happy family of three. Then, I would be a good father and never let him suffer what you suffered.”
2:06 pm P PAD.
