Chapter 5
660words
When he learned about the video of me begging, he froze.
"What video? There's no video!"
Outside my room, he grabbed Eva by her clothes.
"You recorded that night?!"
Eva looked completely bewildered.
"I didn't! Someone sent that footage to my phone!"
"I thought you sent it! I thought you wanted me to put her in her place..."
"Weren't you the one who said I was supposed to keep her feeling insecure..."
Before she could finish, a sharp slap cut her off. Her pitiful sobbing now earned only an impatient "shut up."
The day I'd begged for reconciliation, Lane had deliberately brought Eva along to intimidate me.
But he never expected me to show up half-dressed and desperate. My eyes had been full of shame and rage. How could he possibly imagine I'd record my own humiliation?
The bomb I'd planted a year ago was finally detonating.
During my "unconsciousness," Lane discovered the truth I'd hidden.
The old medical records revealed everything.
The bloody tissue I'd thrown on his desk wasn't from an abortion but a miscarriage caused by extreme distress.
He paid a tech team a fortune to recover security footage from three years ago.
He saw me sobbing for help in the hospital corridor, blood pooling beneath me.
My screams from the operating room reminded him that because he'd cut off my credit cards, I couldn't even afford anesthesia.
While I knelt begging doctors to save our baby, he'd been lounging on a cruise ship with Eva.
Outside my room, he howled in anguish, his fists pounding the wall.
He kept vigil by my bed, his voice raw.
"How did we end up like this, Ashley?"
Yes, how did we end up like this?
I listened with ice in my heart.
Lane Silver knew exactly how we'd ended up here.
I was sixteen when we met. He was outside the restaurant where I worked summers, beaten to the ground by his half-brother, urine soaking his clothes.
When he pulled a knife on his retreating tormentor, I stopped him.
"He's not worth it."
When he started high school in a secondhand uniform, shunned by everyone, I sat beside him.
He told me to fuck off.
"Never seen a poor kid before? Aren't you afraid I still smell like piss?"
I offered my hand with a smile.
"Hi. I'm Ashley Joseph. I'm an orphan."
For three years, the two outcasts ranked first and second in our class.
On prom night, we lost our virginity to each other.
In a cheap motel room, wearing his shirt, I traced his features with my fingertip.
Lane held my hand, our fingers intertwined.
"My father's family was in a car accident. His mistress and their kid died. He's paralyzed. He wants me back—to agree to an arranged marriage and inherit the business."
My hand froze as he whispered in my ear,
"Screw arranged marriages. I'll only have one wife in this life—Ashley Joseph."
To marry an orphan girl, he gave up his inheritance. His father blocked every opportunity, just as Lane would later do to me.
At our poorest, he took a semester off to work three jobs, even selling his blood to pay my tuition.
Afraid I'd feel guilty, he'd acted carefree.
"Who told you to always beat me on every test? I must have owed you in a past life."
One tuition for two students—whatever I learned at school, I'd organize and teach him that night.
When he started his business, I—a top finance graduate—sat on clients' laps and drank until my stomach bled to secure his deals.
The day his business finally took off, I thought heaven had finally smiled on me.
But that night, while we made love, he whispered,
"Husband-wife business partnerships never work. From now on, just be Mrs. Silver at home."
I'd underestimated the power of money and blood.
