His voice carried no warmth at all.
“You were throwing yourself at him like a bitch in heat last night. Enjoyed it, didn't you?”
My throat was raw, but I forced out the words.
“Dean, Miles put something in my drink. It was drugs.”
He scoffed, his eyes full of contempt.
“You think I'd believe that? I think you're just cheap to the bone.”
He tossed the rag aside, pulled a thick stack of bills from his wallet, and flung them in my face.
“You know why I'm marrying Gwendolen? Because she's ten thousand times cleaner than you.”
I got on my knees in silence and picked up the bills one by one.
This was the last installment for the house.
Dean's phone erupted with a frantic ringtone.
He answered, and the color drained from his face.
“What?”
He hung up. The look he gave me could have cut through steel.
“The hospital just called. Juliana's heart stopped for several minutes!”
He seized my arm and hauled me up, speeding toward the hospital the entire way.
“If anything happens to my sister, you're going in the ground with her!”
When we reached the ICU doors, Gwendolen rushed up and slapped me across the face.
“This is all because of you, you jinx!”
“Everyone near you gets destroyed. Why don't you just die!!”
Dean didn't stop her. He shot me one cold look, then walked into the room.
After the resuscitation was over, the doctor said Juliana's heart was beating again.
“Mr. Henson, the international specialist we mentioned before has recently made a breakthrough in his research. If we could bring him in for a consultation, there may still be hope for your sister.”
Dean's eyes lit up. “Even if there's a one-in-ten-thousand chance, I'm taking it.”
Over the next few days, he was on the phone nonstop, firing off emails around the clock.
My English was strong, so he kept me at his side to communicate back and forth with the specialist, a man named Professor Joe.
Gwendolen caught sight of us working together more than once. Each time, her expression soured.
One day, I was carrying coffee to the study, about to knock, when I heard Gwendolen's voice through the door.
She sounded bitter, resentful. “You destroyed her parents' company. You arranged the car accident that killed them. You've been tormenting her for three years already. What's the point of keeping her around?”
My feet nailed themselves to the floor.
Two seconds of silence from the study. Then Dean's voice. “For what my sister went through, every last person in the Pruitt family could die and it still wouldn't be enough.”
I stood by the door. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.
He killed my parents.
Back then, everything had fallen apart so fast I never had time to question any of it.
I'd believed that staying by Dean's side, enduring his cruelty, would at least ease some of the guilt I carried over what happened to Juliana.
I never imagined his hatred for me and my parents ran this deep.
For three years I'd stayed in the Henson household and let him do whatever he wanted to me. For the house. For the guilt. For whatever pathetic scrap of feeling I still had for him that refused to die.
I'd given him everything.
And in the end, I'd been serving the man who murdered my parents.
I pressed my hand hard against my chest, forcing the scream back down my throat.
It hurt. God, it hurt.
The pain doubled me over.
I turned and ran out the front door, faster and faster.
The sky opened up without warning, and rain poured down.
I ran all the way to the cemetery on the outskirts of the city and collapsed to my knees before my parents' headstones.
“Dad, Mom! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!”
“You died and no one ever told me the truth, and I've been waiting on the man who killed you.”
“Three years! I served him for three years. I thought I was atoning……”
“But it wasn't that. It was never an accident.”
“What do I do? I have no proof……I don't even know how to face him……”
