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Chapter 2

Autor: Shallow Teal
Scott began retaliating against me in plain sight.

He brought every kind of woman home: blondes, redheads, hostesses, dancers...

Every night, laughter and the squeak of the mattress drifted from the master bedroom.

Even when he ran into me, he made no attempt to hide it. "What? You don't care? Or can you not even be bothered to pretend anymore?"

His eyes held fathomless pain, his gaze tentative and searching.

He seemed to be waiting for me to make a scene or grovel for his love.

But I did neither.

I bit my lip and went back to my room alone.

Then my cousin Elena appeared.

After my parents died, my uncle's family stole everything they left behind and drove my grandmother and me from the Emmons home.

They cut us off entirely.

Now she had the nerve to show her face in front of me!

I found two lengths of rope and tied Elena up in the basement wine cellar.

When Scott kicked in the door, I had just raised a broken beer bottle to her chin.

He shoved me aside. "Let her go!"

Elena, holding her bleeding chin, leaned against Scott's chest.

She claimed she was terrified, then curled her lips into a triumphant smirk at me.

I lunged at her in a rage, reaching for her throat, but Scott knocked me to the floor.

Two hulking guards pinned me to the floor as Elena stood over me, flexing her wrist.

"You were so fierce a moment ago, weren't you, Leah?"

The first slap snapped my face to the side and filled my mouth with blood.

The second left my ears ringing.

The third nearly knocked me flat.

Scott leaned against the doorframe, frowning but silent.

Elena raised her hand for another blow...

He stopped her. "Enough."

Elena turned and whined, "Darling, she almost killed me."

"Your hand is swollen. How are you supposed to attend tomorrow's banquet with me?" He gave me a cold glance, placed a hand at Elena's waist, and guided her into the room. "Making her kneel here is punishment enough."

My entire body numb, I knelt outside the master bedroom all night.

When the maid brought breakfast at dawn, she let out a bloodcurdling scream.

The blood on the carpet had dried dark brown, sticking to the hem of my nightgown.

And so my second child was gone as well.

More than six months passed in a haze as I drifted through the mansion like a walking corpse.

Scott came to my room several times, solely to use me to satisfy himself.

When I refused, he gripped my ankle, dragged me off the bed, bent me over the edge, and penetrated me from behind.

The entire act felt more like punishment than sex.

"...Why aren't you fighting me anymore? Last time you called me filthy and told me to get out. Now you're just taking it?"

I bit down on my own arm and remained silent.

Afterwards he sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.

I curled in on myself and wrapped the comforter around my body.

He blew a smoke ring, then pulled me against his burning chest. "Didn't you want to get pregnant? I'm giving you the chance. Why aren't you happy?"

I closed my eyes. They stung, but not a single tear came.

Not long afterward, I discovered I was pregnant again.

That child was the only hope I had left.

I had long since stopped caring about that damned three-year deadline or the money.

I only wanted my baby to live.

My need to protect this baby bordered on obsession.

I stopped leaving the mansion, ignored whatever Scott and Elena did, and even had the servants leave dinner outside my door.

I lived in terror of any accident that might take my child from me.

But Elena found out anyway.

She waited until Scott was away, burst into my room with two men, and threw me like a rag doll over the second-floor railing onto the marble below.

Blood pooled beneath me.

The tiny life inside me was torn away in the fall and vanished.

Elena leaned over the railing, covering her mouth in mock horror. "Oh my God! Leah, why are you always so careless? Blood is such a nuisance to clean off the floor."

At the hospital, familiar cold instruments probed inside my body.

The doctor removed his mask and said, "Madam, the wall of your uterus is permanently damaged. I'm afraid you may never conceive again."
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  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 9

    Leah's POVScott did not leave.He settled in town and bought the two-story house across from mine.Every time I left the house, his car followed at a distance.The town was small, and gossip traveled fast.My elderly neighbor asked conspiratorially, "Sweetheart, is that handsome man trying to win you over?"I shook my head and quietly told her I did not know him.My voice was coming back slowly.A month later, the court issued its judgment.I recovered my parents' entire estate.When my attorney called, excitement rang in his voice. "Mr. Emmons lost control in court, and the bailiffs removed him. Miss Elena cursed at the judge in open court, so she was fined for contempt."She was extremely agitated and kept making threats in the courtroom... Please be careful when you go out."I thanked him.The next day, my attorney accompanied me to the county clerk's office to complete the transfer of the estate.In the rearview mirror, the black Bentley still followed at an unhurried distance.I

  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 8

    Leah's POVI stared at the screen, my mind blank.Then I reached out and pressed the red power button on the remote.Fifty million.He was willing to spend fifty million dollars to find me, yet he had refused to give me one million to save my grandmother.I closed my eyes. The gaping wound in my chest no longer hurt.I felt nothing at all.The hospital sent a psychiatrist to evaluate me. She diagnosed me with depression and recommended comprehensive treatment.I felt nothing. I had lost everything, and living or dying made no difference to me.Even so, my body slowly recovered.The cast came off my right hand, and my ribs hurt less each day.I could even get out of bed and walk slowly.Every day, the nurse wheeled me into the garden to sit in the warm sunlight.A month later, I boarded a bus bound for a small town in the north.Before she died, my grandmother had told me she owned a small, aging house in that town. She had planned to retire there, but after she fell ill, she never retu

  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 7

    Scott's POVThe surveillance footage captured only one brief sequence: Leah, blindfolded, being dragged into a van by two men.She did not struggle.Her figure in the footage was thin as paper and barely upright.I watched it dozens of times."The van headed toward the East Bank docks." My second pointed to a red circle on the map. "A private cruise ship sailed from there that night and exploded the next morning."My nails dug into my palm.She had been bound when she called me. Her voice was hoarse, and she probably knew she would not survive.And what was I doing?I had my arm around another woman at a banquet."Can you confirm she was aboard?""Yes."I stood up and kicked the chair over. "Find Mac."That night, I led a raid on the warehouse sheltering the remnants of Mac's gang.Gunfire raged for an hour.Shrapnel tore open my left arm, but I felt no pain.I dragged a half-dead lieutenant to his feet and pressed the muzzle under his chin. "Who did it that night?"His face was bloody

  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 6

    Scott's POVThe black Bentley tore through the empty streets, the accelerator almost to the floor as I raced toward the Cullen family's hospital.I yanked the doctor on duty out of the staff lounge.I fixed him with a hard stare. "What room is Leah's grandmother in?!"The terrified doctor trembled as he searched the records.After a long moment, he ventured, "Mr. Cullen... that lady passed away several days ago.""What did you say?""We did everything we could," the doctor explained softly, as if afraid I might draw my gun at any second. "Mrs. Cullen never paid for the surgery. In the end, all we could offer was conservative care..."I stood rooted to the spot, every ounce of strength draining from my body.She had not paid for the surgery?Had she really come to beg me that night for her grandmother's surgery?And what was I doing?When I came out of the shower and saw Elena ending the call, I asked about it offhandedly.Elena smiled. "Leah says her grandmother needs surgery and wants

  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 5

    Scott's POVI regretted hanging up the instant I did it.But I could not take back what I had said.I could not believe anyone would dare kidnap Leah. She was my wife.Even so, I stood on the terrace for several minutes, clutching my phone while the wind whipped around me, unable to shake my unease.Stacks of documents and audio recordings still covered the table.Elena had brought them.The evidence claimed that Leah had secretly contacted lawyers during our second year of marriage to ask how she could divide the Cullen family's overseas assets.I rubbed my brow and took a long swallow of whiskey.The truth was, I had already decided to give in.I had planned to find her and tell her that no matter how many times she had deceived me, no matter whether she had married me for the contract, I accepted it all.I did not care about the hundred million dollars. I only wanted us to be whole again and to have a healthy baby someday.The afternoon the final divorce decree arrived, I had just r

  • The Don Thought I Was Lying While I Was Dying   Chapter 4

    Just then, my phone rang. It was the hospital."Mrs. Cullen, your grandmother's heart rate has plummeted. She's in critical condition and needs emergency surgery immediately. We estimate it will cost one million dollars. Please come as soon as..."I did not take in another word of it.Still soaking wet, I ran from the pool without changing and hailed a cab straight to the hospital.My grandmother lay in an ICU bed, her frail body bristling with tubes, as thin as a dead leaf.At the sight of me, one large tear rolled from her sunken, wrinkled eye."Leah... sweetheart..." She stroked my hair with one cracked hand. "I don't want any more treatment. I mean it. Come home with me."I clutched her warm, wasted fingers and shook my head hard. "No! I'll find a way. Grandma, believe me. I will save you!"With great effort, she cupped my icy hands and breathed warm air over them.That faint warmth of her breath made my eyes sting with tears.The doctor drew me aside and gravely warned that they c

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