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Chapter 811:
“I married you because you have his exact face p>
A crack of thunder exploded over the Manhattan skyline. But the sound was nothing compared to the detonation that went off inside Cole’s skull.
His pupils trembled. The blood rushed from his head so fast he felt dizzy. He stared at her, his mind violently rejecting the words.
“No,” Cole whispered — a pathetic, wet sound. He raised a shaking hand as though to block the words from reaching him.
𝖲tо𝘳іеs y𝗈𝗎 𝘄о𝗻’𝘵 𝗽u𝗍 𝘥𝘰w𝗻 𝗈ո ѕ.c𝗼𝗆
June showed absolutely no mercy. She swung the hammer down.
“Seven years ago, the man who pulled me back from the cliff was Caleb. The man who tapped Morse code through the wall to keep me sane was Caleb p>
Her voice trembled slightly on the name, a raw edge of grief bleeding through her anger. But her eyes only grew harder. “The man who pulled me from the snow, the man who promised he would find me — was Caleb p>
She stood up straight and looked at Cole as though he were a piece of rotting meat.
“And you,” June said, her voice dripping with absolute disgust, “are just a pathetic, empty shell that happened to share his DNA p>
Cole stopped breathing. The rain hitting his face felt like needles.
“For three years, I looked at your face across the dinner table and imagined what my life would have been if he had survived instead of you. To me, Cole — from the very first day until now — you were never my husband p>
June paused, letting the silence hang in the rain.
“You were nothing but a living stand-in p>
Stand-in.
The word was a guillotine. It severed his pride, his manhood, and his entire perception of reality in a single stroke. He had spent three years believing he held all the power. He thought June loved him so desperately she had lost her dignity. He thought he was the one withholding affection.
He had been wrong. He was just a thief wearing a dead man’s face. A cheap, defective prop she had used to mourn her true love. He had never had the right to be loved by her in the first place.
The sheer absurdity and crushing humiliation of the truth broke Cole’s body from the inside.
His stomach violently contracted. He lurched forward, his hands splashing into the puddle. A guttural retch tore from his throat, producing nothing but bile. He collapsed onto his side in the freezing street water, curling into a fetal position, his hands clawing at his own chest as though trying to rip the truth out of his heart. The pain was physical and tearing — like a dull saw working slowly through muscle and bone.
“So keep your disgusting apologies,” June said, looking down at the bile in the water with zero empathy. “You do not have the right to speak his name. And you do not have the right to use his dying wish to guilt me p>
June reached into her cashmere coat and pulled out a folded document — the final divorce settlement her lawyers had drafted. She tossed it casually into the air.
The paper fluttered down and landed in the bloody, muddy puddle directly in front of Cole’s face.
“Sign it,” June commanded, turning her back on him. “Take your dirty money and get out of my life. It is the only thing you can actually do for Caleb p>
She did not look back. Easton placed a firm, protective hand on the small of her back. Together they walked up the marble steps and through the glass doors, stepping into the warm, golden light of the lobby.
The heavy doors clicked shut, sealing the building.
Cole lay in the freezing rain. He stared at the wet divorce papers floating in his own blood. He opened his mouth and let out a long, agonizing wail that echoed down the empty Manhattan street — the sound of a beast with a broken spine, left to die in the mud. The three-year lie was finally, brutally over.