《Too Late To Beg》全部章節：第 91 章 - 第 100 章

JAMES I could not move. I sat on a wooden bench inside the courtroom, staring at the place where my wife had been standing only moments ago, and tried to make my body cooperate with the most basic instructions my brain was issuing. Stand up. Breathe. Speak. Do something. Nothing worked. What had happened? How had things changed so badly? I had almost won. Everything had been going exactly according to plan. And now she was gone, and my marriage was dissolved. Who had done this? Who had ruined me? Leo. It had to be Leo. That thorn in my flesh. That arrogant, scheming attorney who had been circling my wife like a shark since the moment he had entered her life. He had been planning this for long. And Whitney. Why did it have to be Whitney? Of all the women in the world, of all the strangers Tammy could have had as a long-lost twin, why did it have to be the one I had personally arranged to be beaten unconscious in the woods? Why did it have to be the one woma

JAMES I arrived at the house in under twenty minutes. The lights inside were blazing. Music was pouring out of every window, the bass so heavy I could feel it in my chest from the driveway. The kind of music that suggested a party, not a kidnapping. Not a girl screaming for help. I rang the doorbell. No response. I pounded on the door. No response. I stepped back, took a breath, and kicked the door open with the full force of every ounce of rage I had been carrying since the courtroom that morning. The scene inside stopped me cold. The living room had been transformed into something I almost could not process. Half-naked young men and women were draped across every surface. The couches were occupied by couples in various states of undress, their hands wandering openly in front of an audience that did not care. A group of teenagers, none of whom looked older than twenty, were smoking what was clearly not tobacco near the open windows. Empty bottles littered the coff

TAMSIN I shook my head gently. "We were very young when we lost our parents." Mr. Johnson's face changed. "My mother died of cancer when we were small. She was sick for a long time. My father took her to every hospital he could find. He tried everything. He spent everything he had. She still did not make it." "Oh, my dear." "It was Whitney and I, then. We were small, but we understood what we had lost. We made a promise to each other. We promised that we would both become oncologists. We had learned that some cancers can be hereditary, and we did not want to lose anyone else without at least knowing we had done everything possible. We told each other that we would compete for it. That we would each become the best oncologist in the city. We even used to argue about which of us was going to win." Colby let out a startled laugh. "Whitney." Whitney lifted her tear-streaked face from her hand. "What?" "That is why." "What?" "You have always been single-minded abo

MARY After James left, I stood in front of the mirror in my new bedroom for a long, long time. The reflection that looked back at me did not belong to me. The girl in the mirror was wearing soft cotton pyjamas that were the most expensive thing she had ever owned. Her hair had been brushed by a stylist that afternoon. Her face was clean. Her skin, the skin that had been ruined years ago in a fire that had taken everything from me, had been given the best treatment money could buy, and what remained of the scars was barely visible under the careful, gentle lighting of the room. It did not feel like my face. It did not feel like my life. It felt like a dream, and I kept waiting for someone to wake me up. James Whitmore had brought me here. James Whitmore had bought this house for my grandmother and me. James Whitmore had handed me a small black card and told me, in that quiet, serious voice of his, that whatever I needed for the rest of my life was already taken care of.

LEO I had been following her since the beach. Not closely. Not in a way that would alarm her if she happened to glance in her rearview mirror. I had stayed three or four cars behind, slipping in and out of traffic with the practiced patience of a man who had spent a great deal of time recently watching the woman he loved navigate a life she would not let him share. At the beach, I had watched her stand at the water with her bandage white in the afternoon sun. I had let Whitney be the one to go to her. Even though every cell in my body had wanted to cross that sand myself, I had stayed back. This was a sister moment. This was a moment Tamsin had earned, not me. I had followed them from the beach to the Johnsons' house. I had waited in my car at the end of the long driveway while Tamsin had spent over an hour inside meeting the family who should have always been part of her life. I had followed them again when Tamsin had left and driven, against all reason, to James's villa