Beg On Your Knees: Erasing My CEO Husband Chapter 13

Beg On Your Knees: Erasing My CEO Husband Chapter 13: Stepping Over Him in the Hallway

“Five minutes, Ms. Whitmore. The house is full.”

I nodded professionally at the stage manager. My fingers tightened around the neck of my violin. The wood was cool, a grounding weight against my palm. I adjusted the strap of my performance gown—a deep, stunning midnight blue that didn’t cost ten thousand dollars and didn’t require Julian’s prior approval.

I started down the narrow, dimly lit hallway toward the wings. The air back here smelled authentically of old dust and floor wax. It was a far cry from the velvet-lined halls of the Philharmonic, but it was mine.

Then I heard the frantic commotion.

“Oh god, is he having a heart attack?” a girl’s voice shrieked in terror. “I don’t know! Get the manager! Should I call 911?”

I rounded the corner near the dressing rooms. A small, panicked huddle of stagehands and interns stood completely blocked by a figure slumped against the wall.

My heart didn’t skip a beat. It didn’t race. It turned into a solid block of ice.

Julian Vance was on his knees.

His expensive charcoal suit jacket was violently twisted. His custom silk tie was ripped open at the collar, hanging limp like a noose. His face was a terrifying shade of gray, glistening with a

frantic, sickly sweat that made him look like he’d been dragged through the rain again.

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?” an intern asked, hovering a shaking hand over Julian’s shoulder.

Julian didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His chest heaved in violent, incredibly shallow jerks. His fingers were clawing aggressively at the carpet, digging into the cheap industrial fibers as if trying to hold onto the earth.

“Clara…”

The sound was barely a whisper. It was a ragged, wet rasp that broke pathetically through the frantic chatter of the staff.

“Wait, do you know him?” the intern asked, looking up at me with wide, panicked eyes. “He just collapsed. He was asking for the lead violinist.”

“He’s having a panic attack,” I said. My voice was utterly steady. It was the exact voice I used to order tea or tell a driver to wait.

“Should we call an ambulance?” the stage manager arrived, breathless and frantic. “He looks like he’s suffocating.”

“Call if you feel the need,” I replied coldly.

Julian’s head lolled heavily back against the doorframe. His eyes were bloodshot, searching the dim light wildly until they finally landed on me. The very moment he saw me, a fresh, violent wave of tremors racked his frame. He reached out a trembling hand, his fingers twitching in the air between us.

“Clara… please… can’t… breathe…”

He sounded exactly like he was drowning on dry land. His lungs whistled sharply with every desperate attempt to pull in oxygen. This was the man who had stood arrogantly in a Paris hotel room and told me I was overreacting. This was the man who had tried to buy my career back with a million-dollar bribe. Now, he was a pathetic heap of expensive wool and shattered pride.

“You need to move,” I told him flatly.

Julian’s hand caught the hem of my skirt. His grip was incredibly weak, his knuckles white as he bunched the fabric desperately in his fist.

“Stay… just… a minute…”

“You’re blocking the way to the stage, Julian.”

“Help me,” he wheezed. His eyes were wide with a raw, naked terror. “Everything’s… spinning… Clara…”

The stage manager looked between us, utterly confused by my lack of movement. “Ms. Whitmore? If you know him, maybe you can help him breathe? We have three minutes until the curtain.”

“I have a performance,” I said, looking directly at the manager.

“But he’s—”

“He’s fine,” I interrupted sharply. I looked down at Julian. His face was contorted, his mouth hanging open as he fought for air. “He’s just realizing that the world doesn’t stop turning when he’s unhappy. It’s a shock to his system.”

“Clara… don’t… leave me like this…” Julian’s voice cracked. A single, pathetic tear tracked through the sweat on his cheek.

He looked entirely pitiful. He looked like the victim he had spent years pretending he could never be. He desperately wanted me to kneel. He wanted me to stroke his hair and tell him to count to ten. He wanted the submissive wife who used to automatically soothe his ego after a bad board meeting.

I reached down. For a split second, Julian’s eyes flared with a desperate spark of hope. He thought I was reaching for him.

Instead, I gripped the fabric of my own skirt. I firmly and violently wrenched it out of his trembling fingers.

“You’re wrinkling the silk,” I said.

“Please,” he gasped, his head thumping back against the wall. “I’m… dying…”

“You aren’t dying, Julian. You’re just losing. It feels exactly the same to you, I know.”

I didn’t wait for his response. I didn’t look at the horrified expressions of the theater staff. I gathered the voluminous folds of my midnight blue gown elegantly in both hands. I lifted the hem high enough to clear the floor.

Then, I stepped directly over him.

My heel landed inches from his twitching thigh. I swung my other leg fluidly over his slumped body, my shadow passing over his face like an eclipse. I felt the heat radiating off his panicked skin,

heard the frantic, sobbing hitch in his throat as I moved completely past him.

I didn’t stumble. I didn’t look back.

“Ms. Whitmore!” the intern called out, her voice high with profound shock.

I kept walking. The hallway stretched out before me, leading toward the bright, golden glow of the stage wings. Behind me, I could hear the muffled sounds of Julian’s struggle—the heavy thud of his boots against the floor, the frantic voices of the staff trying to find a paper bag for him to breathe into.

I reached the wings. The conductor stood by the podium, checking his watch. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Everything alright back there? Sounded like a riot.”

“Just some trash in the hallway,” I said, tucking the violin securely under my chin. I checked the tuning of the E-string one last time.

“You’re on,” the stage manager whispered into his headset.

The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The low hum of the audience died down into a heavy, expectant silence. I stepped out into the spotlight. The heat of the lamps hit me, blinding and intense. I couldn’t see the faces in the front row, but I knew the room was absolutely packed. I could feel the incredible energy of hundreds of people waiting for the first note.

I thought of Julian, lying helplessly on the dirty carpet of a backstage hallway, clutching his chest while the woman he

betrayed walked flawlessly into the light.

I raised my bow. I didn’t think about the SEC files. I didn’t think about Seraphina Thorne’s screaming exit from the Vance Global building. I didn’t think about the empty penthouse or the pawned diamonds.

I thought about the music. I drew the bow sharply across the strings. The first note of the solo was a sharp, piercing cry that echoed off the high ceiling. It was impeccably clean. It was perfect. It was a beautiful sound that Julian Vance couldn’t buy, couldn’t control, and could no longer hear.

As the orchestra swelled powerfully behind me, filling the hall with a wall of sound, I felt a sense of gravity permanently shifting. I was no longer the wife in the shadow. I was the center of the universe.

The performance lasted forty glorious minutes. When the final note faded, the silence lasted for a heartbeat before the room exploded. Applause crashed over the stage like a tidal wave. People stood up, their shadows dancing wildly against the back wall. I bowed, my face flushed, my heart finally racing—not with fear, but with the pure adrenaline of a clean break.

I walked off the stage, the roar of the crowd still ringing vibrantly in my ears. I returned to the hallway. The interns were gone. The stage manager was busy at his desk. The spot by the dressing room door was entirely empty.

Only a single, dark smudge remained on the white paint of the wall where Julian’s sweaty head had rested. A crumpled white handkerchief lay on the floor, abandoned and stepped on.

I walked past the spot without slowing down a fraction of a second. I reached my dressing room and shut the door, locking it firmly behind me. I leaned my back against the wood, breathing in the scent of my own sweat and the rosin from my bow.

My phone sat on the vanity, the screen dark. I picked it up. There was a notification. Not a call. Not a text. A news alert from a financial blog.

*Vance Global Stocks Plummet Amid Rumors of Internal Fraud and Leadership Crisis.*

I set the phone back down. Julian had come here desperately to find a sanctuary. He had come to find the only person who had ever truly looked out for him. And I had stepped over him exactly like he was an obstacle in my path.

The fire was burning wildly. I had lit the match in Paris, and now the flames were licking aggressively at the very foundation of his life. I wondered vaguely if he was still gasping for air in the back of an ambulance, or if he was already furiously on the phone with his lawyers, trying to find a way to sue the air for not entering his lungs.

It didn’t matter.

I started to unpin my hair, watching my reflection in the mirror. I looked entirely different. The softness was completely gone. The accommodating curve of my shoulders had sharpened into something far more dangerous.

A sharp knock sounded at the door.

“Clara? It’s Elias.”

I froze. Elias Sterling. Julian’s rival. The man who had confidently walked me onto the red carpet just to watch Julian bleed.

“The door is locked, Elias,” I said.

“I know. I just wanted to tell you the performance was… enlightening.” His voice was low, vibrating through the wood of the door. “Julian is outside. Or he was. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“He saw a woman going to work,” I replied.

“He’s waiting by your car, Clara. He’s not going home.”

I looked out the window. The rain had started again, heavy streaks of water blurring the city lights. Julian was out there. Waiting. He was a man who simply didn’t know how to exist without a target for his obsession.

“Let him wait,” I said coldly. “He’s good at that now.”

But as I reached for my coat, I saw the handle of the door jiggle slightly. Not a polite knock this time. A slow, deeply insistent pressure. Julian hadn’t gone to the hospital. He hadn’t gone to his lawyers. He was on the other side of the door.