I Was Keeping Her Alive While Her Fiancé Tried to Destroy Me Chapter 03

I Was Keeping Her Alive While Her Fiancé Tried to Destroy Me Chapter 03

The piece of my soul had been bound to Clara for so long that even now, I could feel it hadn’t fully returned.

The moment the last psychic thread between us snapped, she’d be gone.

But if I got back to her in time, and my soul remained intact before then, she could still be saved.

I met Preston’s eyes.

“Take me back. Now. Or the Bennetts will lose everything.”

“Oh, so begging didn’t work, and now you’re making threats?”

Preston scoffed and snapped his fingers.

A fist slammed into my gut.

They didn’t stop with the first hit.

Preston circled me while they went to work.

“Who the hell do you think you are, threatening me?”

“The Sterlings and the Bennetts go way back. You think they’d throw that away over some nobody? Even if I buried you out here, they’d look the other way.”

“So you’ve got that extra piece to your soul, huh? Never been sick a day in your life? Let’s see what you can actually take.”

The bodyguards pinned me to the dirt, and Preston started kicking me himself, over and over, right in the ribs.

He was smiling the whole time.

But there was something else the extra piece gave me.

I couldn’t feel pain.

The driver was tied against the side of the car, watching it all, straining against the ropes.

“Mr. Sterling, every hit is breaking the bond!”

Preston ignored him.

He kept going until his legs nearly gave out.

Through all of it, I hadn’t let out a sound. That bothered him.

One of the bodyguards leaned in and muttered something.

Preston’s expression shifted. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small vial.

“Brought this back from Europe just for a special occasion. It triggers every nerve ending in your body. And lucky you, I’ve been waiting for a chance to try it.”

He grabbed my arm and drove the needle in.

It kicked in instantly.

Every bruise, every cracked rib, all of it caught fire at once. My strength drained out of me like blood from an open wound.

So that was what pain felt like.

But the pain wasn’t only physical. It tore at my very soul.

The extra piece was reacting, thrashing inside me, violently severing the last threads of the psychic tether to Clara.

Preston watched me writhe and laughed.

He drew his foot back to kick me again, but the satellite phone shattered the silence again.

This time, he answered.

The doctor’s voice was ragged with panic.

[Where are you?! Julian needs to be here NOW. Ms. Bennett is unconscious. We’re losing her! Do you hear me?!]

Preston didn’t even glance at the phone. His eyes were on me, crumpled in the dirt.

“Tell Clara I’ll have a full confession from this fraud by tonight.”

[Fraud? What are you talking about?!]

Preston ended the call and crouched down in front of me.

“I’ve got to hand it to you. You’ve got every single one of them wrapped around your finger. How’d you do it? Some kind of black magic?”

The driver shouted from where he was tied up.

“Mr. Sterling, he’s been by Ms. Bennett’s side for three years! Three years! If he were running a scam, someone would’ve figured it out by now!”

Preston’s face darkened. “Three years?”

“You’ve been with Clara for three years. And she never breathed a word to me.”

“It wasn’t about trust,” the driver said. “This is the Bennett family’s most closely guarded secret. Only a handful of people know. If it got out, Ms. Bennett’s life would be at risk.”

Preston’s voice dropped, but the edge in it was sharp enough to cut. “I’m her fiancé. And they didn’t trust me with this?”

“Why the hell not?!”

“No. No, he did something to them. He’s got them all under some kind of spell!”

He jabbed a finger at me.

“Don’t stop until he talks.”

The bodyguards closed in again.

And miles away, in the conference hall, whatever was left of Clara kept slipping away.

Preston threw one final punch.

And in my chest, the last psychic thread tying me to Clara snapped permanently.