Chapter 6
One by one, the documents began popping up on my phone. I read through each of them-from the first heart-pounding revelation to the final wave of relief.
“Dr. Blake, Lucian’s been completely duped by that woman! You have to warn him!”
I looked down at the divorce papers I’d just signed, still sitting on the table. The weight that had crushed my chest for so long… finally, finally began to lift.
So it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t driven a girl to despair.
It felt like coming up for air after drowning. I didn’t even notice the Westover woman had broken free from the officers. She came storming toward me again, screaming like a banshee.
“You filthy bitch! You couldn’t kill my Laney, so now you’re playing victim? Calling the cops to hold us
hostage?!”
“Did you see your husband when they were beating the crap out of you? He didn’t even look your way!”
“I’m telling you now-you better tell the police this was all a big misunderstanding. Otherwise, don’t expect Laney to give you a single cent from this house!”
Her words-reeking of malice-jolted me awake.
And then all I could see was Lucian-his arms around another woman. His back to me.
Our marriage? Dead and buried.
I brought the phone back to my ear. My voice was soft. “Jonathan, I’ll explain everything later.”
First, I had business to take care of.
He had sent me the entire chain of evidence. I handed it straight to the police. Miles Harrington, the reporter
who’d spent the whole time taking pictures instead of helping, was suddenly pale and sweating-but still
clinging to the hope of a viral headline.
“Ms. Blake, I… I’m sorry. I misjudged you.”
“But listen, I can break this story-make it public! Get revenge on that homewrecker and your scumbag
husband!”
I gave him a smile.
I hadn’t forgotten how he stood by and watched me get beaten to a pulp-camera in hand.
I turned to the officers and gestured to the mob still surrounded outside. “I want to press charges. Assault
and battery. Every last one of them.”
Once the house finally quieted down again, I realized Jonathan was still on the line. His English was atrocious-stumbling, broken-but persistent.
“Dr. Blake, please-don’t let Lucian fall for her lies any longer.”
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“I tried calling him just now. Couldn’t get through. Don’t tell me he’s still taking care of that woman!”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“Wouldn’t make a difference anyway.”
Lucian’s heart was no longer mine.
Even if the woman he loved turned out to be a fraud, that betrayal had already been carved into me.
So let him deal with it.
I shook the thoughts away. “Jonathan, you said your project’s still short-handed. Have you found someone
new yet?”
He sighed. “No. This field is just too specialized. The other student you recommended showed promise, but…
not enough experience.”
A flood of memories washed over me. After Laney’s scandal made headlines, the internet turned its pitchforks on me-accusing me of using my influence to push her into going abroad, just because the program she’d been accepted into happened to be in the same niche field I’d spent years researching.
They didn’t care that Harperfield’s entry standards were brutal-almost impossible to meet.
What they also didn’t know-was that Laney had spent three years in grad school working in the same domain. That was why Lucian kept bringing her up. He said she reminded him of the woman I used to be.
And I had seen her work-her lab reports, the rough data, the shaky hypotheses. Flawed, yes. But also full of spark. She had potential. That much was real.
