Chapter 6
1254 Words
Anne’s assistant rushed her to the hospital, her whole body shaking from cold and fever. She’d been caught in the pouring rain, and now a raging fever burned her skin hot enough to scald.
While her assistant hovered anxiously at her hospital bedside, Wayne was miles away wining and dining with Sasha at a fancy revolving restaurant, floating sky lanterns and outbidding everyone else to win a luxury jewelry piece just for her.
He brought Sasha to the charity gala in full view of the public, and made a point of letting her hold onto his arm the whole time to flaunt them.
He even okayed her wearing matching couple outfits with him, practically shouting their relationship from the rooftops for the whole world to see.
Rumors of a divorce between Wayne and Anne blew up all over the internet, but he didn’t care one bit. Instead, he ordered his PR team to leak the truth that Anne was an illegitimate child, and publicly announced that the Guevarra family was making a comeback.
The comment section exploded into chaos.
A: [So, President Brooks is an illegitimate kid? Guess CEO Salvador has cold feet about marrying her after all]
B: [An illegitimate child can never compare to a proper rich heiress. I’d pick Sasha too.]
C: [With Wayne pulling the strings, the Guevarra family will be back on top in no time. Once they join forces, the first person they’ll kick to the curb is Anne.]
By the time the assistant finished scrolling through all the vicious comments, her eyes were already red with rage.
"President Brooks, this is way out of line! I’ve worked for you for years, and I’ve never seen you forced to endure such garbage!"
But Anne felt nothing but icy numbness spread through her chest. She strained to part her dry lips and whispered, "Schedule the surgery for me."
The brain tumor surgery couldn’t wait another day. If she delayed it any longer, she would never be able to carry her baby to term.
But even so, a sudden jolt of fear spiked through her out of nowhere.
What would Wayne do if he found out she was pregnant? He didn’t love her anymore. He’d already gotten behind the wheel and tried to kill her just for Sasha. Why would he let her keep this baby?
No. She could never, ever let Wayne know this child existed.
Her assistant had barely stepped out of the room when the hospital door came crashing open hard enough to rattle the frame.
Wayne stormed in, his face dark as a thunderstorm. He moved like a wild animal unshackled from its cage, and before Anne could even react, his fingers wrapped around her throat and squeezed hard.
"Anne, you poisonous witch!" His eyes bulged with rage, and the murderous hatred burning in his gaze looked like it would consume her any second. "Sasha had already struggled so hard to get pregnant, and you actually poisoned her just to kill her baby! Even if you hate her that much, the child is innocent! How could you be so cruel?"
"I didn't…" Anne could barely breathe, the words ripped out of her constricted throat in ragged, barely audible scraps.
Wayne ground his teeth so hard they creaked. "Still dare deny it? You instructed someone to slip poison into Sasha's drink! She almost lost the baby, and the guy who did it has already confessed everything!"
Despair crashed over Anne. She knew that when Wayne was this blinded by rage, he would never listen to a single word of her explanation anyway.
"Sasha's baby pulled through, but you have to pay for what you did." He grabbed Anne by the arm and hauled her straight out of the room, not caring in the slightest that her entire body burned with fever.
"You're going to church, kneel on those stone steps, and bang your head against them a thousand times while you pray for her child! If anything happens to that baby because of you, I will never let you get away with this!"
Anne's breath caught in her chest, and her heart leaped right into her throat.
A thousand blows to the head.
She was supposed to have brain tumor surgery any day now. Her doctor had explicitly warned her that her head couldn't take any more impact.
A thousand hard blows to her head... this was a straight-up death sentence!
She thrashed and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Wayne, are you insane? You're making your own wife knock her head for your mistress's illegitimate child? For the woman who bullied us? For the woman who insulted my grandma! If you force me to do this, I'll hate you till the day I die!"
But Wayne didn't even hear her. He shoved her roughly into the car, hard and unyielding. Her shrill, desperate screams hung in the air, utterly powerless against him.
By the time they reached the church, dusk had already fallen. Sasha was already waiting on the front steps, one hand pressed to her lower stomach, her eyes glistening with tears.
"You slut! You tried to murder my baby? You belong in hell!" She stormed forward and slapped Anne hard across the face.
Just as she reared back for a second blow, Wayne caught her wrist.
"Easy there," he rumbled, his dark gaze softening with unmistakable tenderness for her. "You just barely recovered. Don't strain yourself throwing punches right now."
Every ounce of that soft tenderness in his voice drove a thousand sharp needles straight through Anne's heart.
Anne was still burning up with fever, her skin hot from head to toe, every word she forced out weak and breathless.
Even so, she tugged the corner of her mouth into a biting, mocking sneer. "Sasha, you know damn well whether I hurt your kid or not. A rotten person like you never deserves to have a child. Any baby unlucky enough to end up with you is better off dead. Death is the only escape for them!"
"How dare you?!" A flicker of guilt crossed Sasha's face. She clamped a hand over her belly and stomped her foot in a rage. "Wayne! This is your child! Are you just going to stand there and let her curse our baby like that?"
"Of course not." Wayne's voice held not a single shred of warmth. He snapped his fingers and called over two burly bodyguards, who stepped in and pinned Anne down, one on either side.
Anne's heart dropped. She thrashed and fought, but she was no match for their strength. They shoved her down hard, forcing her to kneel on the cold stone steps.
One of the bodyguards even locked a rough hand around the back of Anne's head, holding her in place.
"Wayne, I can't bow my head and knock it on the steps," Anne ground out between gritted teeth, each word a struggle. "I have a malignant brain tumor. I'm supposed to have surgery tomorrow. You can't do this to me…"
She never wanted to bow to Wayne, not for anything. But right now, she couldn't die. Her baby growing inside her couldn't die either.
A flash of icy disgust slid across Wayne's face. "Anne, you wouldn’t even have told this lame a lie when you were in middle school."
When he finished, he pulled Sasha to his side and stood towering over Anne, gazing down at her from his high perch.
His next word came out colder than ice, "Do it."
- Writer
