“If my wife or my child suffers so much as a scratch today, I will never let you walk away from this!”
“Now get down on your knees and apologize to Cara, right now!”
A bitter, mocking smile tugged at my lips.
Twelve years of a heart laid bare, and what had it bought me……
The crowd kept swelling.
“Just apologize already. A mistress getting smacked around? She had it coming.”
“Of all the things she could do with her life, she picks wrecking someone else's marriage.”
Every word was a blade, carving into my chest.
I braced myself against the wall and rose slowly, too worn out to keep feeding Zane's little circus.
I turned to leave, but his grip clamped down on my wrist.
The force of it felt like it would crush the bones in my hand.
He dragged me back like a dead dog hauled across the floor.
He bent to my ear, the corner of his mouth curling into something cruel, his voice dropping low.
“Didn't you tell me your old man from that backwater town just came to Harborton to see you?”
“Imagine if every street in the city was plastered with private photos of his daughter……”
“Think those old bones of his could take it?”
My whole body went rigid, my pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
Blood caught in my throat, too thick to swallow, too lodged to spit out.
The man in front of me looked like a monster I'd never known.
Watching my face go paper-white, he tipped up the corner of his mouth and gave his phone a little wave.
“Crystal Donaldson, don't go thinking you're tough enough to flip the table on me.”
Those photos were taken when our love ran deepest.
Zane had said he wanted to capture me at my most beautiful.
So I'd handed myself over to him, whole and complete, full of love and trust.
I never imagined they'd become the leash he'd use to break me.
I met his eyes：“You……”
Zane straightened up.
“From the moment we lost the first child, I swore I'd never let a child of mine come to any harm again.”
“Anyone who dares hurt my child, I'll make her wish she were dead!”
My eyes stung and swelled.
I honestly couldn't tell whether I should cry or laugh.
He was paying off the debt he owed my child by lavishing it on someone else's.
How absurd. How pitiful.
I watched him pull up the photo album, thumb hovering over send.
I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped to my knees in front of Cara with a dull thud.
My knees slammed into the marble floor with a heavy crack.
“I'm sorry.”
The excitement in Cara's eyes nearly spilled over as she directed me, savoring every second.
“Say you had no business being a mistress, seducing another woman's husband.”
“If you've got the nerve to be the other woman, you'd better have the nerve to pay for it.”
Zane stood off to the side, his brow knitting on reflex.
But in the end he said nothing.
I stared up at the man before me in despair, jaw clenched so hard my tongue pressed out a mouthful of metallic sweetness.
I forced the words out through gritted teeth：“I had no business being a mistress, seducing another woman's husband!”
Thud, thud, thud. Three kowtows.
A dead silence settled behind my eyes.
“Satisfied now?”
I held my back straight against the waves of insults and condemnation breaking over me from the crowd.
A magnanimous little smile bloomed on Cara's face as she bent down and reached out to help me up.
“Good that you know you were wrong. Come on, get up. I can forgive you now.”
But the instant her fingers brushed my sleeve, she yanked with sudden, vicious force, dragging me forward so I pitched straight down.
Instinct told me to dodge, but my body wouldn't obey.
Cara's grip hauled me with her, and I was forced to crash to the floor alongside her.
She clutched her stomach, tears flooding out in an instant.
“Ah! It hurts so much!”
“Zane, she's not apologizing for real at all! She's still trying to use this to hurt our baby!”
The stares around me stabbed into me like knives.
