Chapter 11
Olivia’ s perfectly made-up face contorted in fury.
“Your daughter?” she shrieked, her voice shrill. “With that … that tramp?
She’ s a bastard, Ethan! A nobody!”
Ethan looked at Olivia.
For the first time, he saw her cruelty, her possessiveness, her ugliness,
with stark clarity.
The veil of his obsessive guilt over her past, his twisted sense of
responsibility, had lifted.
Sarah’ s sacrifice had burned it away.
“She is my child, Olivia,” he said, his voice firm, cold. “And she is
staying here. End of discussion.”
Olivia stared at him, speechless for once.
She saw something new in his eyes. Something that wasn’t there before.
Something that scared her.
Ethan’ s days became a blur of trying to connect with Lily.
He saw Sarah in her every feature.
Her smile, though now tinged with sadness.
Her observant eyes.
Her quiet strength.
He was haunted by memories of Sarah.
Her laughter in their college days.
The way her eyes lit up when she talked about her dreams.
Her pain, her quiet suffering in his penthouse.
The image of her, small and defiant, slapping him.
Her final text.
Her sacrifice.
He realized the depth of his “love” for Olivia had been an obsession.
A desperate attempt to reclaim a past he had lost, to atone for a guilt
that had consumed him.
But his feelings for Sarah … they had been real.
Twisted and corrupted by his all-consuming need for revenge, but real
nonetheless.
He had loved her.
And he had destroyed her.
A fierce storm hit the city.
Wind howled around the penthouse. Rain lashed against the windows.
Ethan sat alone in his study, a bottle of expensive scotch nearly empty
beside him.
He thought of Sarah.
Sarah in the cold pool, shivering, her face pale, her eyes full of a despair
he had refused to see.
He had forced her into that icy water.
He had watched her suffer.
Drunk, despairing, he wandered out of the penthouse, out into the storm.
The rain soaked him instantly. The wind tore at him.
He didn’t care.
He stumbled through the deserted streets, his mind a vortex of guilt and
grief.
“Sarah,” he whispered into the storm. “Sarah, I’m sorry.”
He found himself on a busy road.
Headlights blurred in the rain.
A horn blared.
The screech of tires.
A massive truck bore down on him.
In that last, fleeting moment, as the world dissolved into blinding light
and deafening noise, his only thought was:
“Sarah … I’m coming.”