He Sold My Future to Please Her, I Bought My Freedom With His Money Chapter 07

He Sold My Future to Please Her, I Bought My Freedom With His Money Chapter 07

Julian vanished for a couple of days. I assumed Chloe’s pregnancy had finally blown everything up.

It was pouring the night he came back. I’d stayed late at the office, and I stepped out into the rain with my umbrella.

I’d barely made it to the corner when someone came toward me out of the dark. Julian.

He was soaked through — rain streaming down his face, his hair plastered flat. He stepped in front of me, and his eyes were so swollen they barely looked like his.

“Valerie — I took her to the hospital. She’s not pregnant. She lied.” The words tumbled out of him, half-drowned by the rain.

I stopped. “Why should I care either way?”

“Because I didn’t betray you!” He reached for my hand, his voice raw beneath the downpour.

I stepped out of reach. “You think it only counts as betrayal if you get her pregnant?”

I looked him in the eye, and he went still. “You handed my work to someone else. You used everything I built to impress her. The day I left the country, you drove her home instead of me. Tell me that’s not betrayal.”

The color drained from his face with every accusation. “I was—” He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“You got comfortable,” I said. “You got so used to me giving everything that you took me completely for granted. So you stopped caring what you did to me.”

He dropped to his knees in the gutter. Dirty water soaked through his suit.

“I was wrong. I know that now — I know.” He looked up at me. The rain and the tears on his face blurred together.

“These past two days, all I can think about is how you used to wait up for me every night. I can’t live without that. Without you. One more chance — that’s all I’m asking.”

He pulled a soaked envelope from his jacket and held it out to me with shaking hands. “It’s a transfer agreement. Everything I own — all of it, transferred into your name.”

“I don’t care about any of this,” he pleaded. “Just come home. I’d give you everything — my life, if you asked.”

I stared at the ruined paper in his hands. “Julian, you put a price tag on three years of us with that hundred thousand dollars.”

“Now you’re trying to buy me back with everything you own, and I don’t want it.” I stepped around him and kept walking.

Behind me, he screamed my name into the rain. I didn’t look back.

Back at my building, I shook out my umbrella and stepped into the lobby. Chloe was waiting. Her hair was wild, and one side of her face was swollen almost shut.

She came straight at me. “Happy now, Valerie?”

Her teeth were clenched so tight the words barely got out. “He hit me. He wants to destroy me — for you. You’ve ruined my entire life!”

“You did that yourself.”

“That’s bullshit! If you hadn’t been in the way, he would’ve married me!” Her finger was an inch from my face.

“You pathetic bitch — you actually think he loves you?”

“He only kept you around because you were free labor!” I looked at her — unhinged, shaking — and reached for my phone.

Something in Chloe snapped. A box cutter came out of her pocket — its blade catching the light.

“Go to hell!” She came at me.

I threw myself sideways — not far enough. The blade caught my arm, and a red line opened across my skin.

She raised the blade again. The front door slammed open.

Julian.