"Who allowed you to touch my stuff?"
This sentence carried whiskey's ambiguity, yet carried a sharp threat, shattering the silence of the Carlisle Manor library. Chloe looked up from the leather-bound book in her hand. Between her fingers was a faded photograph found in a book—young Julian smiling, arms around Ava Kensington. On the back of the photo, his familiar scribbled handwriting: 'All of me.'
Julian returned home early, already thoroughly drunk. He snatched the photo from her hand, his gaze icy and piercing.
"Your mother asked me to organize your old documents." Chloe's voice was steady. She didn't want him to see how thin and cold the air in the room had become when his presence had made it. "I found this in a book."
"My mother." He sneered; that name sounded like poison to him. "You and my mother...... You all want her to disappear. ”
This accusation came so close to a dangerous truth that it struck her composure. She decided to give him a dose of reality.
"Your mother is protecting you. Ava blackmails her with information about genetic defects. ”
That sentence hit him like a heavy blow. He stared at her, and the drunken haze temporarily faded, replaced by disbelief.
"Eleanor paid her to leave." Chloe continued, her voice merciless. "Pay her to marry a bankrupt European duke to keep our family's secrets. Julian, that was a deal, not a tragedy. ”
He couldn't accept it. Ava, as the image of tragically lost love, is the foundation of his resentment and the reason for his cruel actions. Hearing that she was just another deal was unbearable for him.
"Lies!" He roared, his voice echoing high above the ceiling. "You lie just to look better!"
He lunged forward and grabbed her shoulder. The whisky is so intense it can be suffocating. He shook her, his face twisted with desperate anger.
"You just want to make her a nuisance!"
Chloe was months pregnant and felt dizzy. A dull, warning pain throbbed in her lower abdomen. She tried to push him away, her voice hoarse for the first time.
"Julian, stop...... Kid......"
"Child?" He let out a laugh, a voice full of hatred, chilling to the bone. "Are you talking about the price of this marriage?"
His words twisted in her heart like blades. In his struggle, his anger reached its peak. With one last fierce shove, he shook her off.
Chloe staggered backward, her heel tripping into thin air. The library leads to the main hall by only three short steps. Her body tilted, losing her balance. As she fell, time seemed to slow down—her head hit the cold, hard marble floor, making a nauseating muffled thud.
A wave of burning pain tore her apart. She felt a warm, moist liquid welling up between her legs—a terrifying sensation that obscured everything else. She curled up on the floor, panting, her gaze fixed on Julian.
He stood at the top of the small staircase. The anger fueled by alcohol faded from his face, but instead of regret, it was a cold, chilling disgust.
He did not approach her. He did not call for help. He simply looked down at her, then delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Maybe that's for the best. This child simply shouldn't exist. ”
Her vision blurred with tears and pain. Before the darkness consumed her, the last thing she saw was his figure turning and leaving.
——
Five years later.
Chloe Sanders stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the top office of the Carlisle Enterprise Building, overlooking the kingdom of Manhattan below.
She wore a perfectly tailored Armani suit, her hair styled back into a neat yet elegant bun. Her makeup is impeccable, and her gaze is sharp. The helpless, broken woman on the marble floor had vanished. That woman was already dead.
There was a gentle knock at the door. Her assistant Elizabeth walked in, holding a tablet.
"Ms. Sanders, all the media reports about Mr. Carlisle's latest partner, Jessica Morgan, are here."
Chloe took the tablet. The screen was filled with photos of her husband on a yacht—his arms possessively wrapped around a young, beautiful socialite. They were laughing heartily. Chloe's expression showed no change at all. Over the past five years, those women have changed face after face like a revolving lantern, each a pale imitation of Ava Kensington.
She skimmed through the photos with a professional, detached attitude.
"Keep an eye out." She handed the tablet back, her voice calm and steady. "I don't want it to affect the third-quarter earnings call."
Elizabeth nodded and left. Chloe's gaze once again drifted out the window to the city. In an instant, a shadow of pain swept across her face.
After the fall, she woke up alone in the hospital ward. Julian never appeared. The doctor gave her devastating news—and then, a miracle happened. She was pregnant with twins. She lost one. But another, a fighter, survived.
This is a secret she guarded with her life. A secret Julian Carlisle would never know.
