“With the ties between my family and the Pruitts, even if I did something to you, they'd never turn on the Hensons over a nobody like you.”
“Aren't you supposed to be born with that extra soul and spirit? Never sick a day in your life? Let's see exactly how much of a beating you can take.”
He had the bodyguards pin me down, then drove his foot into my stomach, again and again.
A wild grin spread across his face.
But never falling ill wasn't the only trait that came with carrying an extra soul and spirit.
There was another.
I couldn't feel pain.
The driver, still tied to the car, watched it all with mounting panic.
“Mr. Henson, doing this only speeds up Ms. Pruitt's death.”
But Ernest didn't hear a word of it.
Not until he wore himself out and stopped.
The whole time, I never once cried out in pain, and it made him frown.
Seeing that, a bodyguard murmured something in his ear.
Then he gave a cold laugh and produced a vial of serum from somewhere.
“I brought this back from abroad just for this. It magnifies a person's pain a hundred times over. Might as well test it on you.”
With that, he jammed the serum into my body.
The next instant, my senses changed.
Every spot where I'd been struck began to burn, and my strength started bleeding away with it.
So this was pain.
But pain came with something else: the trembling of my soul.
To protect me, that extra soul and spirit began to thrash, calling the rest of itself back.
Seeing this, Ernest sneered.
He was about to start in on me again when the satellite phone rang once more.
This time, Ernest answered.
The voice of Aria's attending doctor came through, urgent with warning.
“Where are you? Get Zachery back here now. Ms. Pruitt's already slipped into a coma! Hurry!”
But Ernest ignored it, his eyes on me where I lay curled on the ground in pain.
“Tell Aria I'll have this fraud confessing the truth any minute now.”
“Fraud? What fraud?”
The next moment Ernest hung up again and looked at me coldly.
“I really do admire you. Spinning so many people in circles. I'd love to know what method you used. You didn't actually resort to some kind of dark art, did you?”
The driver called out, “Mr. Henson, he's been at Ms. Pruitt's side for three years. If he were a fraud, they'd have caught it long ago. There's no way it could have gone on this long!”
“Three years?”
Ernest's gaze turned cold and dark.
“You've been by Aria's side for three years? And she never told me.”
The driver went on, “It wasn't that she didn't trust you. It's the Pruitt family's most closely guarded secret. Only a handful of people know, because if it ever got out, it could put Ms. Pruitt's life in danger.”
Ernest muttered, :
“I'm her fiancé. You're telling me even I'm not to be trusted?”
“Why?!”
“No. No, it can't be. He must have bewitched every last one of them!”
He pointed at me and snapped, :
“Keep hitting him. Don't stop until he talks.”
The bodyguards' fists and feet came down on me again.
And all the while, in the venue, the breath of life in Aria grew fainter and fainter.
Just as Ernest landed the last blow on me,
that soul and spirit solidified completely.
The Pruitts had shown me kindness.
From the day I became Aria's shadow, she had never once looked down on what I was. Every time she saw me, she called me brother.
Over our three years together, I had come to think of her as my own sister.
But now, the full solidifying of that soul and spirit meant one thing: Aria's life had reached its end.
My eyes red, my voice raw,
“Ernest, you deserve to die.”
