After He Fled the Wedding Ninth Time, I Left

Chapter 7

"I have already taken care of your grandmother's funeral arrangements. You do not need to worry about any of it, and you should not dwell on it any longer. Just focus on recovering. If you make yourself sick again, it will destroy me."

Sebastian went on and on until he finally rose and left.

The moment the door clicked shut, the room fell into dead silence.

Not long after, my phone erupted with a violent series of vibrations. Message after message poured in from an unknown number.

With trembling fingers, I opened them. One glance sent the blood rushing to my head, and in the next instant, it turned to ice.

The unknown number had sent me words meant to cut straight to the bone.

Unknown Number: Aurora, do you know why your grandmother really died?

Unknown Number: It was me. I told her everything. I told her how I turned you into a cripple, how the whole world turned against you, and how your name was dragged through the mud. She burst into tears on the spot and tried to climb out of bed to find you.

Unknown Number: Do you think I let her? I turned around and pulled out her oxygen tube.

Unknown Number: And that old woman? She stopped breathing in minutes. She kept calling your name right until the end. It was honestly laughable.

Unknown Number: You never knew, did you? I was never injured at all. I faked the whole thing so that Sebastian would pull every doctor away. I wanted the person you loved most to die right in front of your eyes.

Unknown Number: You wanted to destroy my reputation? This is what you get for coming after me.

The final message hit like a sledgehammer that shattered the last shred of my sanity.

Unknown Number: Oh, and your grandmother's ashes? I flushed them down the toilet a long time ago. You do not even have that much left of her.

The phone slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.

My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Only an endless coldness surged from my feet to the crown of my head.

Even in her final moments, my grandmother had been thinking of me.

And I could not even protect what was left of her ashes.

At that moment, the last flicker of warmth inside my heart went out forever.

My tears had run completely dry. The pain was so absolute that I could no longer even cry.

The world around me sank into a dead, hollow silence, and all that remained was a heart burning with nothing but revenge.

Sebastian must have been afraid I would lose control and go after her, because he shielded Genevieve like an impenetrable fortress.

But some people are simply incapable of staying out of their own grave.

Genevieve appeared before me, holding an ultrasound report.

"Aurora, I am pregnant. With Sebastian's baby."

I had long since stopped loving Sebastian, yet my heart still seized with a familiar, gutting pain.

Sebastian and I had lost a child, too, once, before it could ever be born.

But he had left me stranded alone in the frozen wasteland of Astoria so he could run to Genevieve, and I had been abducted. That was how I lost the baby.

I sobbed until I could barely breathe back then, and all Sebastian said was that there would be other opportunities later.

Genevieve stroked her belly with open smugness.

"This is Sebastian's first child. He treasures it beyond words. He has been cooking for me himself and driving me to work every day. He will not let me lift a single finger. Ah, compared to some people, I really am just too fortunate."

Some people.

She meant me. The one he abandoned in a foreign country. The one who lost her child there.

My lips curled into a slow, cold smile.

"Is that so?"

I did not hesitate for a single second.

I grabbed the solid wooden stool beside me and brought it down hard across her head.

Genevieve did not even get out a scream before her eyes rolled back, and she crumpled to the floor.

Sebastian adored her, did he not? He held her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

Well then.

I wanted to see what became of his most precious thing now that she was in my hands.

The shore was cold and black, and the wind carried the thick scent of brine and blood.

Genevieve was bound tight against the jagged rocks, her face streaked with red handprints, her hair torn into a matted mess, the fabric beneath her soaked dark with blood.

I had done every bit of it with my own hands.

I did not want her to die quickly. I wanted her to suffer.

Her broken, piercing wails reached my ears while I calmly lit a cigarette and took a slow, unhurried drag.

Before long, blinding police lights cut through the darkness nearby.

Sebastian came charging toward us with the officers, completely wild-eyed, his face twisted with anguish the moment he took in Genevieve's battered state.

He roared at me, his voice shredded with desperation.

"Aurora. What are you doing? Let Genevieve go right now. Take it out on me. I was the one who pulled the doctors away. I was the one who killed your grandmother. Hate me if you have to, but please, please let her go. Aurora, do not cross this line. Do not do something you can never walk back from. Come here and let her go now."

And I laughed.

I laughed until the tears streamed down my face in rivers.

Something I could never walk back from.

My reputation, my dreams, my grandmother, my entire life.

They had already made every last thing impossible to walk back from.

I lifted my gaze to the man I had once loved with everything I had, and my voice came out light as the sea wind but carrying a dead serious weight.

"Sebastian, I am asking you one last time. If you have to choose between Genevieve and me, who do you choose?"

His face twisted with conflict and anguish.

And the very next moment, I had my answer.

A gunshot cracked through the air.

The bullet tore straight through my shoulder.

I screamed as the agony exploded through my body. I doubled over, blood soaking through my clothes in an instant.

In that same instant, Sebastian lunged forward. He pulled Genevieve tight into his arms and checked her frantically for injuries, his eyes brimming with terror and fierce protectiveness.

He did not look at me once.

His world held only Genevieve, cradled and shielded in his arms.

Blood poured relentlessly from my shoulder and bloomed vivid red across the sea wind.

Watching his back as he protected someone else, I laughed again. I laughed until the tears came mixed with blood.

"Sebastian, I truly regret it. If only I had never donated my bone marrow to you all those years ago. If only I had never loved you at all. My life would have been so different. It would never have hurt this much."

At those words, Sebastian went rigid, and he finally turned to stare at me in disbelief.

His pupils contracted, and for the first time, panic spread across his face for a reason that had nothing to do with Genevieve.

But I could not bear to look at it any longer.

Not even one second more.

Before he could open his mouth, I let myself fall backward without a trace of hesitation.

Weightlessness swallowed me whole.

"Aurora."

Sebastian shoved Genevieve aside and lunged toward the edge, his hand reaching frantically for me.

But just as his fingertips grazed my sleeve, I plunged into the freezing black water below.