Chapter 11
Seeing me trembling, Knox chuckled softly.
“No need to panic. You didn’t stab hard enough to kill him.”
Then, with a few casual swipes of his knife, he shaved Vivian Monroe and her mother’s heads clean.
“Dump them on Westmoor Street,” he ordered flatly.
A horrified gasp ran through the room. Everyone knew that place–an infamous red–light district, the kind where people turned up dead in alleyways.
“No–please, not there!” Vivian shrieked, her face white with terror.
“Damien, save me! I’m carrying your child!”
But Damien didn’t even flinch. He walked toward me like a ghost, his eyes filled with something between desperation and delusion.
“Jasmine, I’m sorry. What I had with Vivian was just a game. I never meant to divorce you or marry
her.”
“That night–I came back down for you. I did. But you were already gone.”
“Jasmine, these past few months without you… I thought I was going insane.”
The dark circles beneath his eyes looked real.
But the moment my mother jumped to her death in front of me, all bonds between us had been
severed.
The twisted love and dependence I once had for him had long since turned to ash.
Victor gave a cold snort. “So you’re the bastard who flushed my daughter’s ashes down the drain and chained my granddaughter up like a dog?”
Damien looked away from my face, momentarily lost–until he suddenly grasped what was happening.
“No! That wasn’t real! None of that was real!”
“It was all for show! I only ever loved Jasmine. I’d never hurt her! I was planning a wedding–the moment I secured the Monroe land, she was going to be the happiest bride in the world!”
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I let out a sudden laugh.
Damien froze. “Jasmine…?”
But I didn’t bother replying. I turned to Victor:
“I want him gone. For good. I never want to see him again.”
Damien’s eyes turned red. “You don’t love me anymore?”
Tears welled in my eyes, but there was no warmth in them–only grief.
“Damien… my mother was on her way to our wedding that day. She had dressed up beautifully, put
on a dress just for the occasion.”
STRO
“But her condition relapsed. And you–you deliberately held back the hospital payments, just to manipulate me.”
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“You wanted me to beg. To kneel before the woman who destroyed my family, on the very day that
should have been mine.”
“She watched the entire ceremony unfold in a livestream. She saw me lose my mind on screen,
begging you for money.”
“The last words she ever said to me were: Don’t ever beg him again.”
I handed him a medical report confirming the miscarriage, tears streaming freely down
“Damien, there will never be another chance for us in this life.”
my face.
“You could die a thousand times and still never bring my mother back.”
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At that moment, Old Mr. Lancaster dropped to his knees before Victor.
Tears poured down his weathered face as he sobbed,
“Victor, for the sake of our brotherhood–everything we’ve been through–please, spare his life. He’s my only grandson.”
Then he turned to me, pleading with a trembling voice.
“Jasmine, I beg you. Let Damien go. If not for him, then for me–an old man begging for
And with that, he pulled out a blade and stabbed himself in the chest.
Chapter 11
mercy.”
With blood pouring from his wound, he clutched my hand one last time.
“His sin is mine to bear. Please… let him live.‘
In the end, Victor relented.
In the early years, before everything fell apart, Damien had once treated me with genuine care.
And his grandfather–apart from my mother–was the only elder who had ever shown me kindness.
Victor was a man who valued loyalty among brothers. And so, for the sake of old debts, he honored the plea.
But from that day on, the Lancaster empire ceased to exist.
The once–powerful heir, Damien Lancaster, was left with nothing.
Now, he spends his days lingering by the road, waiting to catch a glimpse of me.
Whenever our paths cross, his eyes fill instantly with red.
And his lips still whisper the same three words over and over-“I’m so sorry.”
But I’ve long said goodbye to the past.
Knox Carter’s large hand wrapped gently around mine.
“So, Miss Sinclair,” he asked with a small smile, “where shall we go today?”
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