The Night He Chose Her, I Chose My Revenge Chapter 24

The Night He Chose Her, I Chose My Revenge Chapter 24

After my divorce from Elara, my life collapsed like an old house eaten by termites.

The Croft Group didn’t survive the winter.

I begged for help everywhere, but my old Charleston friends now avoided me like I carried the plague.

Liam Vance delivered the final blow.

The company went bankrupt.

I was left with astronomical debt.

The apartment, the yacht, everything was liquidated.

The Croft ancestral house, passed down for a hundred years, was purchased by the Vance family and turned into a museum.

On opening day, I blended into the crowd and saw the enormous gilded title at the entrance:

*The Rise and Fall of a Southern Dynasty.*

I became the laughingstock of Charleston, surviving by selling off the few worthless antiques my mother had left me.

Penelope’s belly grew larger by the day.

So did her expenses.

She still expected me to spend lavishly on her, the way I used to.

She wanted the newest Chanel. She wanted the most expensive maternity package at a private hospital.

“Julian, my child will not be born in a place like this!” she screamed, throwing a pregnancy magazine in my face.

I couldn’t afford it.

Until one day, I found her carrying a Hermès Birkin bag I had never seen before.

I demanded to know where the money came from.

She rolled her eyes, her expression one of pure entitlement.

“You owe me this, Julian. You owe your son.”

I rushed into the bedroom and dug out the key to the bank safe-deposit box my mother had secretly left me.

The box was empty.

The money I had been counting on to make a comeback was gone, down to the last cent.

I was shaking with rage.

That day, I lost control. I just wanted her to shut up. I reached out and shoved her.

The child was gone.

After she came home from the hospital, only a dead silence remained between us.

On the third night, I was in the study, polishing an antique letter opener—one of the few family heirlooms that hadn’t been sold.

Penelope walked in and looked at me, her face blank.

Then she seized the blade and, with all her strength, stabbed it into my chest.

As I fell, I saw her face, twisted with hatred.

“You killed my child,” she whispered, her voice a curse. “You killed everything I had. Now you can die, too.”

Blood poured from the wound. My consciousness began to scatter.

But another face suddenly appeared before my eyes.

It was years ago. My vintage Jaguar had broken down on a country road in Texas.

A girl in a pickup truck had stopped, crawled under the car, and fixed the problem in less than half an hour.

She slid out from under the chassis, black engine oil smeared across her face, but her smile was brighter than the Texas sun.

“Done! Looks like your old buddy can run another hundred years.”

That was Elara.

I suddenly smiled. Even the agony in my chest seemed to vanish.

Elara, I regret it.

If… if the first time I brought you to Charleston, I had planted an entire garden of Texas yellow roses for you…