3
was finally home, back with the people who had always truly loved me.
left the Wheeler estate behind.
Before I went, I started a fire. I watched as the villa, along with every memory of Julian, burned to the grol
id, turning it all to ash.
Julian and I had known each other since childhood. When Sybil’s betrayal nearly bankrupted his family, m
parents had been against bailing them out. They said Wheeler Corporation was no longer a sound investme
It.
t was only because I loved him that I begged them, pleaded with them, until they finally agreed to save hi amily’s legacy.
Now that we were divorced, there was no reason to cling to the past.
A rose, once crushed by a storm, does not wither. It grows back, its thorns sharper, its blossoms more brilli
ant than before.
Julian arrived just in time to see the back of my car as it pulled away, leaving him in a cloud of dust anc
smoke.
That same day, I bought a plane ticket and left the country.
My passion had always been architecture, studying the world’s most beautiful and innovative designs. I had put that passion aside for Julian. Now, free of him, I rediscovered the path I had once longed to walk.
9/12
12.58
Chapter 2
12.59
A year later, I returned as an up-and-coming architect, with a reputation that was beginning to precede me.
I was at a press conference for Thorne Financial’s new landmark building project when a woman who looked like a beggar suddenly burst through the security line, screaming my name.
My bodyguards surrounded me, but I stared at her for a long moment before I recognized the haggard, craz ed face of Sybil Bristow.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd, and from their hushed conversations, I pieced together her story.
After Julian threw her out of the hospital, his grief and guilt had twisted into a venomous hatred for her. He
hadn’t just blacklisted her from every company affiliated with the Wheelers; he had frozen all her accounts leaving her utterly destitute.
But Sybil, having been spoiled and pampered by Julian for so long, had forgotten how to work for a living
Desperate to reclaim her life of luxury, she started selling her body.
Trading on her reputation as “the woman Julian Wheeler used to keep,” she found a steady stream of clients
But the price was steep. Within a month, she had contracted HIV, syphilis, and a host of other diseases. The
money she earned went straight to medical bills.
She begged everyone she knew for loans, even showing up at Julian’s door, but he had his security beat her
and throw her into the street. She became a pariah.
After my departure, Julian had focused all his rage on her. Even when she was homeless and sick, his thirst for revenge wasn’t slaked. He hired men to torment her, with one simple instruction: don’t kill her, just make
her life a living hell.
Over the past year, though she lived like a hunted animal, she hadn’t escaped their grasp. Her face was scar- red, her body broken.
So when she saw me, returned and triumphant, the dam of her hatred finally broke. She had stormed the press conference with a small knife, intent on killing me.
But the security at a Thorne event was no joke.
People in the crowd recognized her and began filming with their phones. She darted around, cornered and frantic, before finally running blindly out into the street.
A speeding truck, its horn blaring, never had a chance to stop. It struck her, and a moment later, its heavy wheels rolled over her body. She died instantly.
The crowd gasped and whispered, but I felt only a profound sense of release.
News of Sybil’s death spread online, unearthing even more sordid details about her and Julian, the disgraced CEO of the now-defunct Wheeler Corporation. The public outrage was even greater than it had been a year ago. Even in death, she found no peace. Her gravestone was pelted with rotten eggs.
As for Julian…
12.59 C
Chapter 2
He had tried to see me, again and again, since my return.
One night, during a torrential downpour, he knelt outside my gate. “Rosalie!” he shouted, his voice hoarse over the storm. “I truly love you! I know I was wrong! Please, come back to me! I can’t live without you! Ever
Grandpa… he wants to see you again!”
I stood on the porch, dry and unmoved, and threw his own words back at him. “Give me a break, Julian. Who do you think you’re fooling with this little act?”
He was stunned into silence. After a long moment, he bowed his head in shame.
I looked down at the pathetic man kneeling in the mud, my voice cold as the grave. “A blade never feel:
sharp until it cuts your own skin.”
I
‘Julian, the pain you feel now is nothing. The agony I felt, crushed under that beam… it was a thousand time:
worse than this.”
I turned without another word and went back into the warmth and light of my home.
I left him to the storm.
heard later that he fell gravely ill after that night. A fever took hold and wouldn’t let go. With Wheeler Corpo ration bankrupt, his team of private doctors had long since abandoned him,
By the time his grandfather found a doctor willing to make a house call, the fever had done its damage. Hi was left paralyzed, unable to ever stand again.
The elder Mr. Wheeler called, begging me to see Julian one last time.
Though he had been kind to me, the past was the past. I refused.
The final act came when Thorne Financial acquired the land where the old Wheeler Tower stood. It was sch eduled for demolition to make way for my new design.
On the day of the implosion, crowds gathered to watch. And they all saw it.
There, on the rooftop of the crumbling skyscraper, was Julian. No one knew how a paralyzed man had man- aged to drag himself up there.
He was covered in dirt and blood, a broken man at the top of his broken empire. He screamed one final sentence into the sky, his voice a raw cry of anguish.
“Rosalie, I was wrong! I’ll pay you back in the next life!”
Then, he pushed himself over the edge.
I watched it all, impassive.
My heart was still.
I finally understood.
This twisted fate was finally over.
