Chapter 17%
The footage didn’t stop.
[Security camera: Driveway view AND Jessica’s installed camera footage)!
The video showed a body landing in a heap on the stones in the garden and the sound of a desperate cry that was heartwrenching to hear resonated making Xander’s clutch his heart in pain
One leg twisted in a direction that defied the human body he saw me unable to move. A pool of blood gathered slowly under my leg. Finally, a staff member screamed from the garden.
Cut.
the iPad
Xander’s hand could no longer hold onto the IPad as struggled breathing, the misery carving deep in his bones of how he made love to me and left me in pain that night.
“H made her miserable after she endured so much! No!
His entire body shook from the memory of Jessica’s birthday when I was stripped naked infront of everyone and he called me prostitute…someone who would go to any lengths for attention and even strip someone without any self respect.
He fell down the chair, shards of glass digging in his palm as Xander roared like a wounded beast, horrified by what he did. “Master…if you think it has ended then you are wrong, until you know of Miss Athena’s wounds you will never know how much have you wronged her.”
The room spun around Xander as he felt like his heart was twisted with a dagger and yet William Morell played the video once again.
was a footage from hospital where I was in a wheelchair. A cast down my leg as I was surrounded by men in suits, my father, board members and Jessica who face was twisted in fury that her plan failed.
My biological father shouted so loudly, the hallway camera trembled.
“You shamed this family! You threw yourself out of a window just to stop your sister from entertaining a guest…her own uncle?! No matter how much you hate Jessica and her mother but to resort to such lowly tricks to attract attention!
Do you know what they’re saying about us?“}
“Think whatever you want!” I said in the video and soon a slap came before I even explain what happened to me.”
Jessica, standing to the side touched my shoulder gently and looked up at Mason Velcruz.”
“Maybe it’s best we send her away. Somewhere quiet. Private. Until she learns what dignity is.”
Then, the final shot came making Xander unable to bear.
I was curled in her hospital bed alone…… fingers twitching over the blanket as a voice whispering softly in the background:
“Poor thing. Screamed herself hoarse the first two nights. Not a single visitor”
The video ended.
“Not only this Master, we have found a servant from Valcruz estate who has confessed that he saw Jessica deliberately cutting off Miss Athena’s dress starp in her birthday party.
It was her plot to make Miss Athena humiliated.“}
The memory of that night flashed that undid Xander completely.
He thought I did that for attention, sympathy….for taking Jessica’s spotlight
He remembered the way he had dropped his jacket at my feet when I was stripped off everything, my entire body trembling
He recalled how I stopped breathing for a second.
How my eyes dimmed.
I hadn’t yelled. I hadn’t even cried in the party when they were clicking photos.
He sank to the floor, kneed on marble, hands in his hair.8
“God. What did I do to her.“}}
He had guarded me for three years.
And not once had he seer the real me.
He wanted to scream her name into the floor until it cracked like his chest!
She had trusted him.
I trusted him with my life…. Hope and above all love!
And he had thrown it all into Jessica’s waiting hands like it was worthless.
He remembered the way I used to wait for him with quiet patience but what did he do? He traded that same warmth for praise from the wrong woman.
Xander gripped his hair tighter, his throat torn raw from the grief he didn’t know could live inside a man like this.
“How many nights had she cried alone”
How many bones had she broken to protect a name that never wanted her? How many times had she stitched herself back together in secret while I guarded that bitch Jessical“}}
He killed the innocence of that quiet girl from the hospital bed.
10:03 AM ď ď
The one that didn’t ask for love.
The one that didn’t ask for help.
The one that never got a single visitor!
Xander bent forward, his forehead pressed to the cold marble, body trembling like a man mourning the living.
He didn’t just cry.
He shattered.
And the name he whispered again and again was mine.
“Athena… I am sorry.. I’m so sorry.”
A knock interrupted the moment and Xander’s butler came in with a pale face. “Young Master, Jessica Valcruz has broken all barriers of shamelessness.
She went online and gave a statement that you are in love with her and as if that was not enough she visited Thorne’s legal corporate firm demanding to meet you….even asking for special treatment.”
Xander stared blankly before a eerie smile covered his face, a laughter spilled like he had gone crazy.
“Invite that father–daughter pair to a party on our founding party.” he said “I will make them suffer so much that they would wish for death.”
