Chapter 4

“So you’re the one who hurt my girl?”

He looked down at me, his eyes filled with impatience and disgust.

I brushed my messy hair away from my face and pushed myself up, staring straight at him. His eyes widened in utter shock.

“Jason,” I whispered. “Who exactly is your girl?”

Jason’s face froze instantly.

“Chloe?”

“How... how is it you?”

I let out a hollow, bitter laugh. “Because I am the pet communicator Freya hired.”

Jason's gaze slowly drifted down to my stomach, his voice trembling. “The... the baby...”

I kept my voice flat, almost detached. “Dead. Obviously.”

His eyes turned red instantly.

He rushed to my bedside and dropped to his knees. Reaching out, he pulled back the blanket, trying to touch my stomach the way he always did.

“No... how is this possible?” he stammered, in complete denial. “Just one more month, and we would have felt the baby kick.”

I smacked his hand away. “Jason, how long have you been sleeping with her?”

Jason froze, a cold sweat breaking out across his palms.

I didn't press. I just watched him quietly.

After a long silence, he hung his head. “Five months.”

Which meant every time he touched me, he had just come from her bed.

A sudden wave of intense nausea hit me. I leaned over the side of the bed and dry-heaved.

Panicked, Jason jumped up, poured a glass of warm water, and handed it to me.

Looking at my distorted reflection in the glass, my hatred boiled over.

I grabbed the glass, threw the water straight into his face, and slammed the cup hard against the wall.

“Get the hell out!”

Panic flared in his eyes.

“Chloe, please listen to me. I was set up. It was a trap.”

I laughed mockingly. “The first time was a setup, and what about the rest? Did someone force you to use lube with her too?”

“‘Don't you want to see the new lingerie I bought?’”

I mimicked Freya's whiny voice, laughing so hard that tears streamed down my face.

“When you bought her a luxury penthouse and spent thirty thousand dollars on her dog's collar, did you think about me and our baby once?!”

Jason’s fists trembled at his sides.

“She was only twenty when she was set up to sleep with me. I felt like she was an innocent victim, so I wanted to compensate her.”

I couldn't believe such a raw, screeching voice was coming from my own throat:

“Compensate her in bed?! Jason, do you even remember?!”

“When I first got with you, I was twenty too!”

“You didn't have a single penny back then! You wanted to start a business, so I worked three jobs just to keep a roof over our heads!”

“You were allergic to alcohol, so I drank for you at corporate dinners until my stomach literally bled!”

By the end, my voice cracked, dissolving into choked sobs.

Five years of sacrifice, poured down the drain. My tears flowed endlessly.

Jason closed his eyes in agony.

“It's because I owed the twenty-year-old you too much.”

“Whenever I look at her... I just see shadows of you.”

For a second, the million things I wanted to scream got stuck in my throat.

I stared at his face as he guiltily looked away.

“So that’s how you justified it to yourself,”

I whispered, a hollow feeling settling in my chest.

“Tell me, did you see shadows of Lucky in Ruby too?”

Jason froze. He suddenly snapped his head back to look at me, his entire body trembling.

“Where... where is Lucky?”

I stared coldly at his pale face.

“Didn't Freya tell you? She threw Lucky to the ground and killed him to protect Ruby.”

“Oh, that's right. You even praised her for doing a good job.”

Jason pulled out his phone with shaking hands. “No. No, that's impossible. It must have been a rescue dog. It's just a coincidence.”

He frantically dialed our private vet. “Where is Lucky? FaceTime me right now!”

The vet answered honestly:

“Chloe was heading out this morning, and Lucky refused to leave her side. He was holding onto her jeans.”

“So she had no choice but to take him with her.”