Semua Bab EX-HUSBAND'S REGRET (It's Too Late To Apologise): Bab 51 - Bab 60

Damien placed a phone on the mattress beside me.Not my phone. A burner. Cheap. Untraceable."Call him." His voice was calm. Too calm. "Tell Sterling you're leaving him. That you're coming back to me. That you and Charlotte belong with me now."I stared at the phone. My hands trembled."I can't.""You can. You will." He crouched in front of me. "Unless you want me to hurt her. Because I will, Elena. I've killed before. Two of your babies. What's one more?"Charlotte slept in my arms. Peaceful. Unaware of the monster threatening her life."Okay." The word barely came out. "Okay, I'll call him.""Good girl." He picked up the phone. Dialed a number from memory. Calloway's number. "Remember—sound convincing. Tell him you're leaving him for me. That you realized you made a mistake. That you want your old life back."The phone rang. Once. Twice.Then Calloway's voice. Desperate. Broken.

The hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. Each minute felt like an eternity. Each second stretched until I thought I might scream just to break the suffocating silence. Damien had eventually come back downstairs after his phone call with whoever he'd been coordinating with. He'd brought us food—stale bread that tasted like cardboard, bottled water that was lukewarm, and some crackers that crumbled into dust between my fingers. He'd checked on Charlotte, tried to play the doting father role that made my skin crawl and my stomach turn with revulsion. "She's beautiful," he'd said, touching her soft cheek with fingers that had killed. That had murdered my daughters. That had pushed me down stairs. "She looks just like me, doesn't she?" I'd bitten my tongue until I tasted blood. Forced myself to nod. To play along. Because what choice did I have? Charlotte's life depended on my cooperatio

The standoff felt eternal. Time had stopped. Or maybe it was moving too fast. I couldn't tell anymore. All I knew was the gun pressed against my temple, Charlotte's weight in my arms, and Calloway's gray eyes locked on mine from across the basement. "Let them go, Anderson." Calloway's voice remained steady. Controlled. But I could hear the rage beneath it. Carefully leashed. Barely restrained. "This is your last chance." "My last chance?" Damien laughed. The sound echoed off concrete walls. Harsh. Bitter. "You're not in a position to make demands, Sterling. I'm the one with the gun. I'm the one with your wife and daughter. I'm the one with all the power here." "You have nothing." Calloway took a single step forward. Immediately, Damien's arm tightened around my throat. The gun pressed harder. I gasped, struggling to breathe. "Another step and she dies!" Damien screamed. "I'll do it! Don't test me!" Call

The emergency room was a blur of white coats and fluorescent lights and the constant beeping of monitors. They'd taken me straight to a treatment room. Clean. Sterile. Safe. Such a stark contrast to the concrete basement where I'd spent the last terrifying hours. A doctor examined my arm. Older. Calm. The kind of steady presence that probably talked people through crises every single day. "You're very lucky," she said, cleaning the wound with careful precision. "The bullet just grazed you. Superficial tissue damage. No arterial involvement. No muscle damage. No nerve damage." Lucky. That word again. I'd been shot and she was calling me lucky. But she was right. An inch to the right and I'd be dead. An inch down and Charlotte might have been hit. "It's going to hurt for a while," the doctor continued, applying antibiotic ointment. "And you'll have a scar. B

The hospital room felt smaller with each revelation. Marcus paced beside Sienna's bed, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white. "He blackmailed you." Marcus's voice was low. Dangerous. "For months. Using footage of your assault." Sienna nodded weakly. "He said if I didn't play along—if I didn't pretend to be his girlfriend, pretend to be pregnant with his baby—he'd send the edited video to everyone. To your business partners. To our family's remaining friends. To the media." "What did he make you do?" I asked quietly. Sienna's eyes closed. "Everything. He made me help him forge Elena's signatures on documents. Made me stand by during the gender reveal party. Made me smile while he destroyed her life." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "He made me watch when he pushed her down the stairs." The room went silent except for the steady beep o