The Wife He Left to Die

Chapter 4

Violet writhed awake in the dead of night, her body scorched by a sudden raging fever.

She tried to call out, but her throat was raw. No words came, only a painful rasp that scraped against her inflamed vocal cords.

Cedric's room was just next door. She could see the light bleeding under the doorframe, hear the low murmur of his voice. Yet he had not glanced her way once, too consumed by his devotion to Clara.

She forced herself upright, and the room spun around her.

"Violet? What is wrong?"

The door burst open as he rushed in, called by some sound she had not realized she made. His voice tightened with worry when he saw her flushed face.

"You are burning up. You are on fire."

He pressed a hand to her forehead, and his skin felt cool as marble against her fevered skin.

"I am taking you to the hospital right now."

She opened her mouth to respond, to say something, anything. But before she could form the words, a soft whimper cut through the air from the room next door.

"Cedric. It hurts. Cedric."

Cedric's hands, already reaching down to lift her from the bed, froze midair.

Violet clutched his sleeve with trembling fingers. Her eyes pleaded silently, desperately, with everything she had left.

For one heartbeat, he hesitated. She saw something flicker across his face, some ghost of the man he used to be.

Then he pulled away.

"I am sorry, Violet. I am so sorry. But Clara is carrying my child. I cannot risk her. I cannot risk the baby."

He stepped back from the bed, already turning toward the door.

"Wait here. I will come back for you. As soon as I make sure she is alright, I will come back."

He turned without looking back. Without a single glance over his shoulder. He walked out and left her alone.

Tears scalded her cheeks as she lay there, the fever burning so fiercely that it felt like even her sorrow might evaporate before morning.

'He is not coming back.'

She knew, with a certainty that cut deeper than any knife, that he was not coming back.

Gritting her teeth against the pain and the weakness and the bone-deep exhaustion, she reached for her phone on the nightstand. Her fingers shook so badly she nearly dropped it twice.

She dialed 911.

Then everything went black.

When she opened her eyes again, the world was white and sterile and smelled of antiseptic.

"Awake?"

Cedric's sharp features filled her vision. His dark eyes held concern so genuine that it twisted like a knife in her chest.

She turned her face away from him, but it was too late. The floodgates had already broken. Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and tracked down into her hair.

"Violet, I was not thinking straight. I panicked. Clara was upset, and I just reacted."

"Get out."

He exhaled sharply, a sound of frustration wrapped in impatience.

"My family has given me clear orders. Clara and the baby come first. You know how they are about the succession, about the legacy. I cannot fight them on this."

She said nothing.

"Just endure until she delivers. A few more months. Once the baby is born, she is gone. I will send her away myself. Just think of the Stone family, okay? Think of what we are building together."

"Cedric." She turned her head back toward him, her voice raw and scraped clean of anything soft. "Do you not trust me?"

He looked away. His eyes fixed on some point past her shoulder, somewhere in the middle distance.

"That is all in the past."

His words hung in the air between them like a verdict handed down from a judge she could not see.

A bitter laugh escaped her lips. It hurt coming out, scraped against her raw throat like broken glass.

No one came when she left the hospital.

She signed the discharge papers herself. She called a car service herself. She walked out through the automatic doors and into the gray afternoon light completely alone.

Home offered no comfort.

Instead, she walked through the front door to find the man who had never lifted a finger in the kitchen now fumbling with pots and pans. For Clara.

Even at their closest, back when she believed in forever, she could count on one hand the times he had cooked for her.

"I hate the smell of grease," he had claimed, wrinkling his nose. "It gets in my clothes, in my hair. I cannot stand it."

And she had protected him from it for years. She had cooked every meal, cleaned every dish, made sure he never had to cross that particular threshold.

Love, it seemed, had its limits. And she had simply never crossed his.

He looked up when she walked in. "You are back."

He did not ask how she was feeling. He did not ask about the hospital or the fever or the fact that she had nearly died alone in their house while he comforted someone else.

Instead, he shoved a bag of groceries toward her, his tone as casual as if he were asking for the time.

"Clara wants broth. The kind you make, that wonderful broth. Figure it out for her, would you? She has been craving it all day."

Violet stared at the bag in his hands.

"Violet. Your broth is the best. Could you make some for Clara just this once? It would mean a lot to her. It would mean a lot to me."

"No."

The word came out cold and sharp as a blade.

She crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself together through sheer force of will.

"I just got discharged from the hospital. I have a fever. I can barely stand up. And you are already making me play nursemaid to your other woman?"

Cedric's face clouded over. That familiar darkness settled into his features, the same expression she had seen a hundred times before.

Yet again, all because of Clara.

After years together, how could Violet not recognize that look? She knew every flicker of his eyes, every set of his jaw. But for Celia's safety, for the company assets still tangled up in his family's control, she swallowed her pride.

Silently, she took the groceries from his hands.

She moved to the kitchen and began to work, serving like a servant in her own house.

As the broth bubbled on the stove, a splash of boiling liquid jumped up and landed on her hand. The faint hiss seemed impossibly loud in the quiet kitchen. She jerked back, instinctively glancing toward the living room.

Cedric sat on the sofa with Clara curled against his side. He was feeding her peeled grapes, one by one, popping them between her lips with doting attention.

The sight stabbed through her chest like a physical thing.

He used to do the same for her. In another life. Another marriage. Another world.

"What did I do to deserve Mr. Stone waiting on me?" she had once teased him, lying across his lap on a Sunday afternoon.

He had laughed, that real laugh she used to live for, and popped another grape between her lips. "If it makes my Violet happy, I will serve you for a lifetime. Longer, if you will let me."

That memory burned worse than the broth ever could.

Hot tears fell from her eyes and dropped into the broth with soft, silent splashes. She wondered, in some distant corner of her mind, if they would taste her misery in every spoonful.

She blinked furiously and kept stirring.

When it was done, she ladled a portion into a bowl. Her hands trembled so badly that the liquid sloshed over the sides, burning her fingers again.

She did not even feel it anymore.

She picked up the bowl and stumbled toward the living room, carrying her humiliation and her grief and her broken heart on a silver tray.