.
7
I said nothing.
After a long, heavy silence, I finally spoke. “What good is your apology now? Leo… this is the last time I will ever call you that. Don’t ever show your face to me again. I want nothing to do with any of you.”
A month later, it was done. The assets were divided. To make up for what he’d done, Carter was surprisingly
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generous, giving me exactly half of everything.
The day we got the divorce certificate, he tried to say something. “I’m sorry for everything. If you ever need anything, just call me. I’ll do what I can to help-”
He was cut off by Claire, who sauntered over, beaming, and looped her arm through his. “Let’s go, darling,’ she chirped. “Time to get our marriage license.”
They couldn’t even wait five minutes.
In the next second, a swarm of reporters materialized out of nowhere, surrounding them.
“Mr. Prescott! The Prescott Group just released a statement naming your younger brothers as the new heirs
Do you have a comment?”
“Mr. Prescott, your father just held a press conference announcing he has officially disowned you! Was thi:
woman worth giving up your family and your entire fortune?”
The reporters pressed in, a feeding frenzy of cameras and microphones.
Listening to their questions, Carter’s face went slack with shock, all composure gone. He looked utterly lost.
Claire’s sweet, innocent facade finally cracked, her expression twisting into a mask of pure horror.
I pushed my way out of the crowd. From a distance, I watched their world crumble, and I threw my head back and laughed.
Maya was waiting to pick me up.
A week later, I heard that Carter had knelt outside the Prescott family gate for a day and a night, but no one
came out. Claire was there too, apparently, trying to use her pregnancy as leverage, but she was met with
only scorn.
Two weeks after that, Eleanor and her husband brought me to their home abroad. They took out a full-page ad in the paper announcing me as their adopted daughter, with full rights of inheritance to the Prescott Gro- up. They gave me a future, and a family.
My biological parents found out, of course. They tried desperately to get my address, wanting to visit. Leo
tried to find me several times, too, without success.
I was living in a castle on a hill, finally at peace.
Eleanor gave birth to two beautiful, healthy twin boys. They looked nothing like Carter, which made me love them all the more.
The last I heard of Carter, he and Claire had a nasty breakup. The fall from grace was too much for him. He
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Chapter 2
couldn’t handle the loss of status, the ridicule, the abandonment by his family. He tried to kill himself a few times, but was always saved. A man like him doesn’t get to die that easily. He has to live a long life, marinat-
ing in his misery.
As for Claire, without my financial support propping up her family, her life of luxury was over. A vain, shallow woman like her could only end up as some rich old man’s mistress.
A few years later, I met a young man who looked so much like Ethan.
And just like that, the final wall in my memory crumbled.
The Ethan I had loved died in a fire.
Carter was the one who pulled me from the flames.
That was why I had loved him so fiercely, so blindly. A love born from misplaced gratitude.
But Maya told me the whole story. Carter had only grabbed my hand at the very end. The real hero was Eth- an. He pushed me toward Carter, using the last of his strength. He saved us both, but in the final moments,
as the building collapsed, he was too weak to pull himself out.
‘Take care of her for me,” were his last words to Carter.
Maya had been afraid to tell me, thinking it was better to let that pain stay buried.
Carter had been given a sacred trust. And he had failed.
Now, the world stretched out before me, a vast and beautiful map.
And I was finally ready to explore it. Alone.
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