The Midnight Show That Ended with My Husband’s Affair Chapter 17

The Midnight Show That Ended with My Husband’s Affair Chapter 17 After Seven Years

Seven years.

Seven full years.

In those seven years, I dominated the international media world. My marriage to Preston was happy and fulfilled. I even had a beautiful daughter.

There were no more traces of Spencer Whitmore in my life.

And Spencer-like a worm in a sewer-lingered on in that dark, utility-cut mansion for seven years.

Seven years later. Christmas Day.

Fairhaven saw a blizzard of a scale not seen in a century.

Outside, the windows were filled with the twinkling lights of Christmas trees in a thousand homes. Stars atop the trees glowed like beacons against the snowy sky.

Bells jingled from somewhere in the distance. Laughter and snatches of Christmas carols cut through the wind and snow.

But inside the mansion’s nursery, it was as cold as the deepest freezer.

Four degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Your breath froze the moment it left your lips.

Spencer wore a tattered shirt, curled up next to the old, broken crib,

He was so emaciated he no longer looked human. His lungs had completely failed from years of infection and unhealed wounds.

Hunger, cold, and pain had left him without even the strength to move a finger.

But his eyes were strangely calm.

The calm of someone who, after endless torment, was finally approaching destruction.

With agonizing slowness, he raised one withered hand and felt around the dusty floor beside him. He pulled out a white plastic pill bottle,

It was filled with the strong sleeping pills he had been hoarding for seven years.

Spencer didn’t hesitate. He bit off the cap with his shaking teeth and poured the entire bottle of white tablets into his mouth.

No water.

He tilted his head back, swallowing the dry pills one by one, enduring the pain as they scraped his throat

raw.

When he was done, as if he had used the last ounce of his life’s strength, he slumped against the wooden rail of the crib.

He reached into the pocket over his heart and pulled out two things.

The two things he had clutched like lifelines for seven years.

One was the crumpled, folded D&C consent form I had signed alone in the emergency room.

The other was the prenuptial agreement he had written himself seven years ago, using the legal logic he was so proud of.

On the last line of that agreement, printed clearly, were his words:

Spencer Whitmore shall perform a lifetime of loyalty and duty of support to Lena Foster.

Spencer clutched both papers, pressing them against his cold, gaunt cheek.

“Lena… I’m sorry… I messed everything up…”

His tears fell silently, landing on the yellowed paper and freezing instantly into crystals.

The pills worked quickly.

Spencer felt his body grow heavier. The sharp pain in his stomach and the tearing agony in his lungs began to fade.

His vision blurred. The darkness around him seemed ready to swallow him whole.

In the last moment before his consciousness plunged into the abyss-

He had a hallucination.

He thought he heard, in the silent air, a faint sound of radio static.

That voice that used to come through his car speakers every night seven years ago, on his drive home from work.

“In this noisy city, I’ll leave a light on for you. This is Lena, at ten o’clock, right here with you…”

“Lena…”

A tiny glimmer of light appeared in Spencer’s dead-gray eyes.

With infinite slowness, he reached out his scarred, withered right hand toward the phantom in the void.

He seemed to see her-Lena, standing under a warm streetlight in the heavy snow, smiling, reaching out to him.

A single, cloudy tear slid from the corner of his eye and fell to the cold floor.

He clutched the prenuptial agreement and the D&C form. With the very last shred of his life’s strength, he whispered his final words.

“Lena… I’m going… to the other side… to perform my duty of support… for our child…”

The outstretched hand froze in midair.

Then, heavily, it dropped to the dusty floor.

Spencer Whitmore was dead.

He died in that cheap, broken nursery.

He died on Christmas Day, surrounded by the lights of a thousand homes, on the coldest, loneliest snowy night.

The snow fell softly in Paris. My daughter giggled in Preston’s arms.

On the morning of Christmas Day, my personal assistant, Anna, walked quietly into the living room. Her expression was somber.

She handed me an encrypted email report from overseas.

“Mrs. Ashford, news from Fairhaven. Spencer Whitmore… was found dead last night in his old mansion.” Anna lowered her voice, careful not to disturb the little girl playing on the carpet.

My gaze lifted from my daughter’s innocent smile and fell on the cold death report.

It said that when the police broke in, the mansion-without heat or electricity-was cold as an icebox.

He was found curled up next to an old broken crib.

The coroner ruled it an overdose of sleeping pills combined with long-term organ failure.

Hearing the name that had haunted half my life, I felt nothing. Not a single ripple.

No vengeful satisfaction. No pity for the dead.

“Noted.”

I handed the tablet back to Anna. “Tell our legal team in Fairhaven to cooperate with the police as usual. Beyond that, I don’t want his name appearing in my briefing again.”

“Understood, Mrs. Ashford.” Anna withdrew respectfully,

Preston came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me. His broad hand covered mine.

“Cold?” He kissed my hair.

“No.” I said, leaning back against his chest, looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the bustling Parisian streets.

Seven years ago, on that snowy night, Spencer had left me alone in the blizzard for a girl full of lies.

He once said that law was the minimum standard of morality, and his loyalty and love for me would be the highest principle of his life. He forgot that once love and trust are torn apart, no law can ever stitch them back together.

But in my world, he had been dead for a long time already.

“Mommy!”

My daughter toddled over and threw herself into my arms.

I lifted her gently. Preston put his arm around both of us.

The firelight from the hearth shone on the faces of the three of us-warm, bright.

Now, finally, I had my own light. A light that would never go out.