part 5

The door clicked shut.

The change in Clara was instantaneous. The weakness vanished. The soft, grateful expression melted away like snow under heat, replaced by a cold, triumphant smirk that turned her beautiful face into something ugly and cruel. She sat up straight, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sauntered over to where Elara lay barely conscious, her breathing shallow and rattling in her chest. She leaned down close to Elara’s ear, her voice dropping to a silky, venomous whisper only the dying woman could hear.

“Did you see that, Elara? Did you see how he looks at me? How he touches me like I’m something precious, while he drags you around like garbage?” She laughed softly, enjoying the way Elara’s eyes fluttered open, swimming with pain and tears. “None of it was ever real. Not the sickness, not the fainting, not the blood counts. Every single doctor, every single test, every single time I ‘almost died’… I paid for it all. And he believed every word. Because he wants to believe me. He wants an excuse to bleed you dry, because you are nothing to him but a nuisance he was forced to marry.”

She trailed a long, manicured nail lightly down Elara’s cold, damp cheek, her eyes glittering with malice. “You think he’ll ever love you? You’re dying, Elara. Stage four cancer, isn’t it? I heard your little doctor friend talking. You have weeks left, maybe days. And when you’re finally gone… I’ll be right here. I’ll wear your rings. I’ll sleep in your bed. I’ll be Mrs. Blackwood for real. And he will never, ever know how much you suffered for him. He’ll only remember you as the jealous, bitter wife who hated her poor sick little sister.”

Elara could not speak. Her throat was closed up with tears and exhaustion, every muscle in her body screaming in protest, and all she could do was stare up at the girl she had raised, loved, protected as her own blood, and feel her heart turn to ash inside her chest.

Clara’s smirk widened. And then, without warning, she reared her hand back and slapped herself hard across the face—hard enough that a bright red handprint bloomed instantly across her pale skin. She threw herself backward onto the floor, knocking over a tray of water glasses so they shattered loudly across the tiles, and burst into great, heaving, gut‑wrenching sobs that echoed all the way out into the hallway.

“Elara—why?!” she wailed at the top of her lungs, curling into a ball on the floor, her hands clutching her burning cheek. “I only came to say thank you! I only wanted to tell you I love you! How can you say such terrible things about me? How can you hate me this much just because Vincent cares about me?!”

The door was ripped off its hinges.

Vincent stormed inside, his face black with unbridled rage, and in two strides he was on his knees gathering Clara up into his arms, holding her shaking, sobbing form against his chest, his eyes locking onto the bright red mark on her face. Then he turned his gaze to Elara.

It was the look of a beast. Not a man. Something cold, predatory, and utterly without mercy.

Elara forced the words past her lips, broken, breathless, barely audible. “Vincent… she’s lying… she hit herself… she told me… she admitted everything… she was never sick… please… you have to believe me…”

She reached out one trembling, skeletal hand toward him, the last desperate plea of a woman who had nothing left to give but the truth.

Vincent did not even flinch. He did not lean closer. He did not look for evidence. He did not glance at the shattered glass or the way Clara’s sobs conveniently peaked whenever she thought he might waver. He simply stood up, shielding Clara completely behind his body like she was something holy and Elara was something filthy and contagious, and every word that left his mouth was sharp enough to flay her alive.

“Shut your mouth,” he snarled, his voice low and dangerous, vibrating with a hatred so profound it stole the last of the air from the room. “I have stood by and watched your jealousy poison everything around you for three years, but this… this is a new low even for you. She nearly died because of her condition, and she dragged herself out of bed just to come and thank you, just to show you she loves you—and you attack her? You say vile, made‑up things to break her heart, and then you lay your hands on her?”

He took one menacing step toward the bed, and Elara flinched back into the pillows as if he had struck her.

“You are a poison, Elara. Ungrateful, hollow, and cruel. You will never be half the woman Clara is—not on your best day, not if you lived a hundred years. I married you out of duty to a dying old man’s wish, and every single second I have spent bound to you has been a curse. You think I don’t know you only agreed to this contract for my money, my name, my status? You have given nothing to this marriage. Nothing but lies and bitterness and now this.” He gestured coldly at Clara, still weeping into his shirt. “If you ever speak to her like that again. If you ever so much as look at her the wrong way, let alone touch her… I will throw you out of this house, out of this city, with nothing but the clothes on your back and not a cent to your name. Do you understand me? You are nothing to me. Less than nothing.”

He turned his back on her then, gathering Clara carefully into his arms to carry her out, and paused only once in the doorway without looking back.

“And for the record,” he added, his voice ice cold and final, “I will never believe a single word that comes out of your mouth ever again. Not when every word out of hers is kindness, and every word out of yours is venom.”

The door slammed shut. The lock clicked into place from the outside.

Elara was left alone in the quiet, dim room, surrounded by the sound of her own failing heart and the faint echo of his cruelty. The tears came then—not soft, quiet tears, but great, wracking sobs that tore through her frail body until she was gasping for air, until her chest felt as though it had been ripped wide open. Her mind repeated the truth over and over until it was carved into her soul: He will never love me. He will never see me. He chose her. He will always choose her.

And even then—broken, discarded, bleeding out in every way a human being can bleed—when she whispered his name into the empty dark, it was still with every last piece of the love she had never been able to kill.

(To be continued…)

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***