He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 07

He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 07

I didn’t sleep.

Isat in the dark watching my own execution trend, and by 3 a.m. I’d read the word whore so many times

it stopped looking like a word. Sienna gave two more statements before dawn. Tearful. Brave I just

couldn’t watch an innocent man like Mr. Cross be deceived the way I was.J She’d never been more beautiful

Destruction suited her.

Julian went on a morning show at 6 a.m. He didn’t confirm the baby was his.

He just went quiet, looked down, and said, “I’d rather not hurt anyone further, which confirmed it to two

hundred million people more elegantly than a DNA chart.

And Damian-

Nothing. Silence. His study empty. His phone off. His head of PR answering my call with a smooth, horrifying)

Mrs. Cross, we’d advise you not to make any statements before the press conference.J

Before the press conference. Where, sources said, the marriage would be ended.

The arrangement’s done, he’d said on the phone, and I move to the endgame.

Instrument

Maybe this was the endgame. Board votes closed. Instrument used. What better exit than the deceived billionaire, nobly cutting loose the scheming bride? He’d walk out clean. I’d walk out a punchline for the second time in a month-except this time with a baby the whole world had already assigned to another man.

At 7 a.m., a courier delivered an envelope to my room.

Inside: a single card, Damian’s handwriting, four words.

【Wear red. Trust me.]

I laughed until I cried. Trust me. From the man who’d called me an instrument. Trust me, says the axe to the

neck.

But here’s the thing about having nothing left to lose.

You get free.

So at 8:40 a.m. I walked into the Cross Industries press hall through a wall of camera flashes so violent it felt like being shot, in a blood-red dress, chin up, hand steady over my child, while three hundred journalists screamed my sister’s accusations at me. I climbed onto that stage alone, because whatever was about to happen to me, I would take it standing, facing forward, on my feet.

Whore Liar. Gold-digger.

Say it to my face. All of you. I buried my whole life a month ago. You think headlines frighten me?

The room lights dropped. The screens behind the podium lit up with the Cross logo.

8:59.

And then the side door opened, and Damian Cross walked across that stage in dead silence, three hundred cameras swiveling-

-straight past the podium.

Straight to me.

He stopped in front of me, close enough that only I could hear, and for the first time since the studio, since

the paintings, since the phone call, he let me see his eyes without the shutters.

They were devastated. And furious. And absolutely, incandescently certain.

“Forgive me for the silence, he murmured. They had someone inside my house. I had to let them believe

they’d won.J

Damian, what-J

You heard me on the phone Thursday night. It wasn’t a question. His jaw tightened. I know. I saw you

in the hall, and letting you walk away believing it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. That call was bait, Aria.

The mole reported it in nineteen minutes. Your sister moved in six hours. Exactly as designed.J

The floor tilted underneath me.

Then-the press conference-you’re not-J

Ending the marriage? Something crossed his face that was almost a smile, and it was the most dangerous thing I’d ever seen. He took my hand. Laced his fingers through mine. Turned us both toward three hundred cameras and two hundred million people.

Aria, said my husband, I’m about to commit the only reckless act of my entire life.J

“Stand still and let me ruin them.J