Eight Years Of Love, A Wedding Ring For Another Woman Chapter 04

Eight Years Of Love, A Wedding Ring For Another Woman Chapter 04

That night, Ethan came over dressed in a sharp suit, but the dark circles under his eyes made it obvious he hadn’t slept in days.

“Claire.”

I said nothing, and he looked back at me with an unreadable expression.

“The Sinclairs have taken a huge hit. Their stock keeps dropping, partners are pulling out, and her father’s losing his mind.”

“So?”

He took a deep breath before saying, “You need to post a statement.”

I stared at him.

“Saying what?”

He pulled out his phone, tapped a few times, and handed it to me. A statement had already been drafted on the screen.

I took the phone and read through it line by line.

[I’m Claire Bennett. I want to clear up what’s been happening lately.

Ethan and I were together once, but that was a long time ago.

After he married Vanessa in 2022, we broke up.

I was the one who couldn’t let go, who kept clinging to him and trying to win him back.

I got pregnant on purpose because I wanted to use the baby to force him to divorce her.

Vanessa was furious when she found out, and the post was meant to scare me off.

This is all my fault. Ethan is not to blame. Vanessa is not to blame.]

I looked up at Ethan.

“You want me to post this?”

“The Sinclairs need an explanation. If you say all that, Vanessa becomes the victim, the wife blindsided by her husband’s mistress. Her family can repair their image, steady the stock price, and win their business partners back.”

“And if I don’t?”

“In this situation, you’re the only one who can fix this. If you post it, the Sinclairs back off, and I keep helping your father. If you refuse, neither side walks away clean.”

Ethan gave me three days to think about it.

Three days later, he sent me a message. [Claire, have you decided?]

I didn’t reply. When he called, I declined it, and when another message came through saying, [Claire, don’t push me.]

I still gave him nothing.

I was gambling on the eight years we had shared, on whatever conscience he had left.

I lost.

On the seventh day, my father’s company was pushed into bankruptcy liquidation.

Someone had reported tax problems, accounting irregularities, and contract violations, one after another.

When my father called me, his voice was hoarse.

“Claire, the company’s gone.”

I stood by the window, gripping my phone.

“Dad…”

“A bunch of people came in and took all the books. They said there’s more to investigate, that things may get even worse…” He couldn’t finish.

“Dad, don’t panic. I’ll think of something. I’ll figure it out.”

“Claire.” He cut me off, and suddenly his voice turned steady. “Tell me the truth.”

My heart sank.

“What truth?”

“Is this because of Ethan?”

I said nothing.

“The day the company first got into trouble was the day you broke up with him. Then the project suddenly came back to life the day you got back together. And now this has happened again…”

His voice was shaking.

“Claire, is he using me to threaten you?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“Dad…”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I closed my eyes.

“…Yes.”

Silence stretched out on the other end of the line.

Then he said, “I understand now, Claire.”

“Dad, listen to me. I still have a way to fix this…”

But he had already hung up.

That night, I could not sleep. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling until three in the morning.

Then suddenly my phone rang. It was my father’s number.

I answered, but it was not my father’s voice on the line. It was crying, sirens, a chaotic mess of noise all blended together.

Then a strange man spoke.

“Hello, are you the daughter of the owner of this phone?”

“Yes. Where’s my dad? What happened to him?”

There was a pause.

“Your father jumped from the building. He’s already gone…”

I could not hear anything after that. My phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor.

I ran out barefoot. By the time I got to the hospital, it was still dark outside.

The hallway was full of people. Police officers, nurses, and several strangers I did not recognize.

My mother sat hunched over on a bench, completely motionless.

I walked over and crouched in front of her.

“Mom.”

She lifted her head, and her eyes were empty.

“Claire. Your father is gone.”

Then her eyes rolled back, and her whole body collapsed backward.

“Mom! Mom!”

Nurses rushed over.

The heart monitor started screaming.

“Move, move! Heart attack! Get her to the ER now!”

I stood there watching as they pushed my mother through those doors.

The red light above them came on.

I did not move. The hallway stretched on forever under those harsh white lights.

When I looked down, I saw that my bare feet were covered in blood. At some point they had been cut open, but I had not felt a thing.

They worked on my mother for four hours, but in the end they still couldn’t save her.

By the time Ethan arrived, I was already in the morgue, sitting beside my parents’ bodies.

He came running toward me, breathing hard, with the buttons on his suit done up wrong in his panic.

“I’m sorry, Claire. I didn’t know it would turn out like this…”

“Ethan.”

I turned to look at him.

“From now on, you have nothing left to threaten me with.”

He froze.

I looked at him, this man I had loved for eight years and hated for two months.

Now, as I stood there looking at him, I felt nothing at all.

I took one step toward him, and he took one step back.

“From this moment on, every last one of you will pay for what you did to my parents.”