Garland’s POV
Her voice turned hoarse as she questioned me again. “You know how much Barrett means to me. Tell me—where is he?”
I was utterly hopeless, shaking my head frantically. “I told you, I really don’t know! Instead of wasting time interrogating me, why don’t you send someone to go look for him?!”
Cherity was silent for a long while, then she said coldly, “Bring Ashwyn here.”
My breath hitched. A wave of hopelessness crushed over me.
Ashwyn had been a teacher at an international school. He was still in class when Cherity’s men came and dragged him away.
Now, standing in front of me with a confused look on his face, he asked, “Bro, what’s going on? Why are you kneeling?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, then rushed over and grabbed onto Cherity’s pants, begging her, completely lowering myself.
“I’ll do whatever you want! You can even take my life. Just please… let my brother go!”
But her expression remained as cold as stone.
In a panic, I grabbed the fruit knife from the table, pressing the tip hard against my neck—just a bit more pressure, and it would slice through the artery.
“I swear on my life,” I cried out, “if I ever did anything to Barrett, may I bleed out and die right here!”
I asked, “Cherity, didn’t you say that no matter what happened, you’d believe me?”
My voice started to break, trembling with sobs.
“I don’t want anything anymore. I don’t want to be the head of this family! I don’t want my status and name. I don’t even want you anymore…”
Cherity frowned slightly, as if weighing the truth in my words.
Just then, the nanny burst in, holding a wailing baby in her arms.
“Ma’am, where is Sir Barrett? The baby keeps crying for her daddy. He’s never been gone this long. Could something have happened to him?”
The warmth that had started to return to Cherity’s face vanished instantly.
She barked, “Tie Ashwyn up and drag him to the rooftop!”
Then she turned her sharp gaze on me. “Garland, you get one last chance to speak. If you still won’t tell me, I won’t hesitate to let you watch your brother die in front of you—again.”
I was beyond despair, completely drained.
I thought to myself, ‘If she really dares kill my brother, I’ll drag her up that rooftop with me and take her to hell!’
Just as the bodyguards began to move, her assistant ran in, breathless and holding up a phone.
“Ma’am! We’ve found Sir Barrett!” he reported.
Cherity finally located Barrett at a church on the outskirts of Newark.
He was kneeling in front of the altar.
“What do I do, oh Lord?” he cried. “I did something terrible… I never wanted to steal Garland’s woman. I tried everything to stop it, but Cherity insisted on keeping the baby.”
“Lord, do you think I’m an ungrateful traitor too?” he asked. “Garland supported my studies for years, and I turned on him like a bastard. Oh, he must hate me to death! I might as well just die…”
He had taken Cherity’s gun when he snuck out and was now holding it to his head.
But he didn’t even know how to pull the trigger. He fumbled around, completely overwhelmed.
The next second, she rushed in and snatched it away from him.
In one swift motion, she pulled him into her arms.
Even though I was tied up and dragged to the church gates, I could still hear her ragged, panicked breathing from afar.
“It’s okay now. It’s okay…”
Her face was pale with worry as if she wanted to absorb him into her body, to protect him with everything she had.
“Oh, babe, you absolute fool…”
Barrett kept sobbing, trying weakly to break free. But eventually, he collapsed tearfully in her arms, looking heartbreakingly pitiful.
I had imagined that scene countless times in my head.
But even knowing it would happen didn’t stop the sharp, suffocating pain from stabbing through my chest when I finally saw it with my own eyes.
