Chapter 531

Chapter 530:

“Obsessed? Yes!” Chloe’s eyes widened, blazing with a twisted sincerity. “Because I was his doctor. I’m the only one who ever saw the real man behind the armor. The man who tried to die after his first crash p>

The words struck Jocelyn like a physical blow. She had never known that. Gaston’s recovery had always been a black box — a period of his life he never spoke of, a door he kept permanently closed.

“He didn’t just break his body, Jocelyn,” Chloe continued, her voice dropping to a low, urgent whisper. “He shattered his mind. He was diagnosed with severe PTSD. His paranoia, his obsessive need to control everything around you, his surveillance — none of it was the calculated behavior of a sociopath. It was the desperate, terrified action of a man who believed he was too broken to protect you any other way. He built a cage to keep you safe because he was trapped in one himself p>

The revelation carved through Jocelyn’s chest like something dull and rusted. She had never known this. The manipulations she had spent so long learning to accept as a dark expression of his love were suddenly reframed as the symptoms of a wound she had never been allowed to see.

A violent storm moved through her — terror, and beneath it, a strange and aching pity she hadn’t expected.

But then she looked at Chloe. She looked at the gloating, feverish satisfaction on her gaunt face. And something in Jocelyn hardened completely.

𝘋о𝗐𝘯l𝘰𝘢𝗱𝗮b𝗅𝖾 𝘗𝖣𝖥𝘴 𝘰𝗻

She would not bleed in front of this woman.

Jocelyn lifted her chin. She summoned every ounce of the cold, composed authority she had built over years of standing at the center of the Collins world. She let out a slow, dismissive laugh.

“I have absolutely no interest in your armchair psychoanalysis,” she said. “You broke your professional oath, and now you’re breaking the law. It’s simply pathetic p>

She turned her back on Chloe without another word and walked away along the path — posture flawless, pace unhurried, every step deliberate.

Behind her, Chloe’s voice rose into a scream of impotent rage that the forest absorbed and swallowed whole.

Jocelyn walked five paces before she stopped.

The crunch of leaves beneath her feet went silent. She stood perfectly still, her back rigid. Then she turned around slowly and looked at Chloe with eyes so devoid of warmth they could have frozen the Hudson River — the look a person reserves for something beneath contempt.

Chloe’s hysterical screaming died in her throat. A flash of desperate hope ignited in her manic eyes. She took a half-step forward, convinced her revelation had finally broken through.

Jocelyn raised one hand — a sharp, slicing motion that commanded absolute silence.

“You didn’t come here for justice, Chloe,” she said. Her voice was a quiet, lethal hiss that carried perfectly through the cold air. “And you certainly didn’t come here to save me p>

She took a step forward. The sheer force of her presence made Chloe physically recoil.