Beg On Your Knees: Erasing My CEO Husband Chapter 16

Beg On Your Knees: Erasing My CEO Husband Chapter 16: Footsteps Away From the Edge

“Sign the release, Julian. I have a plane to catch in three hours.”

I stood exactly ten feet from the ledge of the hospital’s north tower. The wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my eyes.

Julian didn’t look at the clipboard in my hand. He didn’t look at the legal assistant trembling near the roof access door. He stood precariously on the concrete lip of the building, his hospital gown flapping open to reveal his gaunt, pale legs. One hand gripped a rusted lightning rod; the other reached out pathetically toward the empty sky.

“You’re really going to talk about joint debt while I’m standing on the edge?” Julian’s voice was a ragged howl. “Is that all I am to you now? A balance sheet?”

“You’re a liability,” I said, my voice cutting through the wind. “The bank won’t freeze the shared accounts until you sign the indemnity waiver. If you jump before you sign, you’re just leaving me with your mess one last time. I won’t let you do that.”

“I’m dying, Clara! My heart is failing!”

“The doctor said your blood-alcohol level was the only thing failing,” I replied coldly. I took a deliberate step forward, extending the pen. “Sign it. Then you can do whatever you like with your afternoon.”

“You don’t mean that.” Julian’s eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a frantic, wet red. “You loved me. You spent seven years taking care of me. You can’t just turn it off.”

“I didn’t turn it off, Julian. You starved it to death.”

A shadow moved rapidly in my peripheral vision. I didn’t have time to turn before a high-pitched scream pierced the wind.

“You bitch! You’re pushing him!”

Seraphina Thorne lunged violently from behind a ventilation unit. Her designer coat was stained, her makeup smeared into a hideous mask of pure, unhinged desperation. She didn’t go for Julian. She put her head down and charged directly at me, her hands outstretched to shove me toward the unprotected drop.

I didn’t freeze. I didn’t scream.

I simply pivoted effortlessly on my left foot. I swung my body completely out of her path, using her own momentum against her.

Seraphina’s hands caught nothing but air. She stumbled wildly, her knees hitting the gravel-covered roof with a sickening crunch. She skidded toward the edge, her fingers clawing frantically at the concrete.

“Help! Julian, help me!” she shrieked, dangling inches from the void.

Julian didn’t move. He didn’t even glance at the woman who had spent months in his bed. His eyes remained locked fiercely on mine, wide and pleading.

“See?” Julian shouted, completely ignoring Seraphina’s sobbing. “Everyone is trying to tear us apart! She’s nothing! I’ll fire her again! I’ll make sure she never works in this city!”

“She’s already fired, Julian,” I said, watching Seraphina scramble back to safety on her hands and knees, utterly humiliated. “And so are you.”

“Clara, look at me!” Julian stepped further out. His heel dangled dangerously over the twelve-story drop. “If you take one more step toward that door, I’m letting go. I mean it. I’ll be on the evening news, and your name will be the last thing I say.”

“Then say it clearly,” I said, entirely unfazed. “I’d hate for the reporters to misspell it.”

“I can’t live without you!” he bellowed. The sound was raw, vibrating with a theatrical agony that used to successfully make me weep. “The world is gray! I can’t breathe! Everything I built was for you!”

“You built it for your ego, Julian. I was just the wallpaper.”

I looked down at the clipboard. The wind tried to tear the papers away, but I held them incredibly firm.

“The lawyers said your signature here officially ends the Vance family’s claim on my future earnings,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, icy level. “It also ensures I’m not responsible for the fraud charges the SEC is filing against your shell companies tomorrow morning. Sign it, and I won’t testify against you.”

Julian froze entirely. The mention of the SEC acted like a bucket of ice water. The fake “suicidal” haze in his eyes flickered, instantly replaced by the sharp, calculating glint of the CEO I had married.

“You have evidence?” he hissed.

“I have everything you left on the home server,” I said. “Sign the paper, Julian. Or don’t. Either way, I’m leaving this roof.”

He looked at the terrifying drop. He looked at me. Then, with a jerky, deeply humiliated movement, he stepped off the ledge and back onto the safe gravel of the roof. He snatched the pen from my hand aggressively. He scrawled his name across the bottom of the document so hard the nib tore the paper.

“There,” he spat, throwing the clipboard childishly at my feet. “Take it. Take everything. I hope you starve on your little violin solos.”

I picked up the board. I checked the signature. It was legible. It was legal.

“Thank you,” I said. I turned my back on him.

“Clara? Clara!”

I didn’t stop. I walked briskly toward the heavy steel door of the roof access.

“You can’t just walk away!” Julian’s voice broke entirely. The anger vanished, replaced by a pathetic, high-pitched wail. “I’m sick! I’m a sick man! You’re supposed to stay! You promised!”

I pushed the door open. The stairwell was cool and quiet, smelling of concrete and stale air.

“Clara! Please! I’ll do anything!”

The sound of his voice followed me down the half-flight of stairs to the elevator bank. I pressed the down button.

Behind me, the roof door flew open again violently. Julian stumbled out into the hallway, his hospital gown fluttering. He looked exactly like a ghost, a remnant of a life I no longer recognized.

“I love you!” he screamed, his voice echoing loudly off the sterile walls. “I’ll change! I’ll go to rehab! I’ll give you the company!”

He hit the floor. He didn’t fall; he collapsed dramatically, his knees giving out as he slid down the wall. He buried his face in his hands and began to sob. It wasn’t the quiet, dignified weeping of a man in grief. It was the loud, ugly howling of a child who had finally realized his favorite toy was broken beyond repair.

“Please,” he blubbered through his fingers. “Don’t leave me in the dark.”

The elevator chimed. The silver doors slid open with a soft, mechanical hiss. I stepped inside.

I turned around to face the hallway. Julian was a pathetic heap of blue cotton on the floor, his shoulders shaking with every ragged breath. Ten feet behind him, Seraphina Thorne stood in the doorway, watching him with a mixture of pure horror and disgust.

Julian looked up. His face was wet, his nose running, his dignity completely stripped away by his own desperate performance. He reached out one hand, his fingers trembling as they brushed the air toward the elevator.

“Clara…”

I reached out and pressed the button for the lobby.

“Goodbye, Julian,” I said.

The doors began to slide shut. The last thing I saw was the light from the hallway narrowing into a thin, vertical line. Julian was still on the floor, his mouth open in a silent, jagged cry.