I Worked 18 Years for His Son, He Pushed Me Off a Roof for Her Chapter 08

I Worked 18 Years for His Son, He Pushed Me Off a Roof for Her Chapter 08

The other patients in the ward watched the whole performance with obvious envy.

“You husband and in-laws are so sweet to you.”

“You’re so lucky — families like that are hard to find these days.”

“You can tell they really love you. My husband blamed me when I lost mine.”

I almost laughed. Almost. The sheer audacity of this family was something I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around.

I looked at Julian. “What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the precinct? You know — for the whole faking-your-death-and-forcing-your-wife-to-adopt-your-affair-baby thing?”

The smiles fell off all three Thorne faces at once. The patients who’d just been gushing sat there with their mouths open.

Julian seized my hand, squeezing too hard, and pasted on a smile.

“Clara, I talked to Mom. We’re done with the kid — and with Fiona too. She’s not worth it anyway.”

“Drop the case. I’ve cut her off completely. Can’t we just… start over? You and me?”

“I’ll put everything in our joint account. I’ll pay for everything. I’ll wait on you hand and foot. Whatever you say goes.”

Martha and Arthur nodded frantically. “That’s right — you’ll run the household. Whatever you want.”

“Clara, we can still be a family. A real one. If you’ll let us.”

“But.” The word came out cold enough to cut.

“The only thing I want is to watch every last one of you go to prison. The only thing I want is to see you rot. So tell me — what do we do about that?”

Julian stared at me. It took him a long moment to understand that I meant every word.

I didn’t want the marriage. I didn’t want him. All I wanted was to watch the three of them go down.

“Clara.” He tilted his head, genuinely baffled.

“It was one mistake — is it really worth blowing everything up over? Think about it, Clara. You’re an orphan. All you’ve got is your grandma. Without me, who else is going to put up with you?”

I blinked. For a second, I genuinely didn’t know how to respond. Then I looked at his face — completely serious — and I laughed so hard I nearly cried.

That was his card. After everything — the fake funeral, the broken finger, the baby I’d just lost — he still thought the worst thing in my world was being alone.

And that was exactly why he’d gotten away with it — in this life and the last. He saw an orphan with no family to fight for her, and he thought that meant he could do whatever he wanted.

He’d always been this person. I just never saw it. Years sharing a bed with a stranger.

“Julian.” My eyes burned, but I held his gaze.

“Your whole family staged a funeral. You played dead so you could guilt me into raising the baby you had with my best friend. You needed a sucker to pay for your son’s leukemia treatment — and I was it.”

“Your father broke my finger. Fiona nearly killed my grandmother. And you stand there and call it one mistake?”

“How do you even look me in the eye?”

The other patients had gone dead silent. When they looked at the Thornes now, the warmth was gone — replaced by open disgust.

“What scumbags.”

“The whole family’s shameless. Walking in here with homemade soup like they hadn’t just ruined her life.”

The humiliation hit Julian like a match to gasoline. Something ugly surfaced behind his eyes.

“Say whatever you want! Drop the case, and we walk out of here with our heads held high. But if you don’t…”

“Or what?” I didn’t flinch.

Julian shot to his feet. His face was crimson, the whites of his eyes laced with red.

“Maybe I need to knock some sense into you!” His hand came up — open palm, full swing, the air snapping before it landed.

“Stop!”