I Was Keeping Her Alive While Her Fiancé Tried to Destroy Me Chapter 04

I Was Keeping Her Alive While Her Fiancé Tried to Destroy Me Chapter 04

The Bennetts had been good to me.

From the day I became her shadow, Clara had never once treated me like I was beneath her. She called me Julian. Just Julian, like I was a person, not a job.

And in three years, she had stopped being an assignment. She was just Clara.

But now the extra piece of my soul had fully returned to me. And that meant Clara was dying.

My vision blurred. When I spoke, my voice came out broken.

“I’ll kill you for this, Preston.”

He struck me across the mouth with the back of his hand.

Another kick knocked me flat on my back. He stood over me, sneering at my clothes.

“Still not talking? Fine.”

“Three years living off Bennett money. Designer clothes, luxury cars, all on their dime. Clara’s mine. That fortune will be mine. And you don’t get to touch a cent of it.”

“You had your chance to come clean. Remember that.”

“Strip him. Everything. Clothes, watch, all of it. None of that belongs to him.”

They tore at my jacket, and something fell onto the ground.

My stomach dropped the second I saw it.

The spiritual totem. Years ago, the Bennetts’ spiritual guru had performed a binding ritual on Clara and me and forged two of them, one for each of us.

They were the bridge between us, the thing that let our auras connect. Without them, my extra piece couldn’t have reached her at all.

The totem still held a trace of our combined energy. If it stayed intact, Clara still had a chance.

I reached out with the last of my strength, and there it was—faint, barely a whisper, but real. Clara’s aura, still alive inside the wood.

I scrambled for it. A boot came down on the totem before my hand could reach it.

“This is what you’re so desperate for? This little piece of wood? Is this how you’ve been pulling it off, some kind of charm?”

Preston ground his heel into it.

“What happens if I break it? The whole voodoo trick falls apart?”

“Clara’s going to thank me for this when we get back.”

He raised his foot to crush it.

Something inside me snapped.

If the totem shattered, there would be no saving her. Not ever.

“DON’T!”

Preston froze mid-stomp. A slow grin spread across his face.

“You don’t want me to break it? Then get on your knees and beg.”