My Husband Married Me for Revenge, I Ruined His Plan Chapter 08

My Husband Married Me for Revenge, I Ruined His Plan Chapter 08

“Once I file for asset preservation, everything gets frozen—your accounts, this clinic. All of it.”

Winston’s voice was calm, but something desperate lurked underneath.

“Unless I let you go, you’re tied to me. For life.”

Villagers stood outside the clinic.

Every single one of them stared at him coldly.

“Winston.” I stared at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No.” A bitter smile crossed his face. “I’m not crazy. I’ve never been crazy.”

His eyes were red from exhaustion.

“I just can’t let you be with him.” The words hung in the air.

“When I married you, I was eaten up with hate for Bianca. Obsessed with getting even with Cade.”

“Even during our three years of marriage…”

He laughed at himself.

“And even when we signed the divorce papers… I was still lying to myself.”

“I thought once you were gone, I’d go back to being who I was. Thought everything would snap back to normal.”

His voice grew quieter.

“But I don’t even know when it happened. At some point, Bianca stopped mattering.”

“The property with the trust debt attached…” His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t a scheme. It wasn’t calculated. It was fear.”

“I was terrified of losing you.” His eyes met mine.

“So terrified that I was willing to become the villain if it meant keeping you in my life.”

He swallowed hard. “So marrying you started out as revenge. But somewhere along the way…”

“It became a joke.” I finished the sentence for him.

His face went blank. He lowered his head.

Winston sat there on the clinic steps for a long time.

The mountain wind swept through the valley.

Something slipped from his sleeve and landed beside him.

I recognized it instantly. My old wedding ring. The one I’d left behind.

He’d been carrying it on him all along.

Without saying a word, Cade stepped up and draped his coat over my shoulders.

The familiar scent of spiced cider and prairie clung to it—warm, steady, like home.

That evening, Cade took me to a little restaurant in town and ordered beef broth, making a point to tell them no parsley.

I looked up. “You remember I don’t eat parsley?”

Cade ducked his head and took a sip of broth.

“I remember everything.” He said it like it was nothing—like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He paused. “The year you left at eighteen, I sat out on that hillside every day, counting sheep. One by one.”

“When I hit a thousand, I’d write you a letter.”

I blinked. “The letters?”

“I never sent them.” His voice softened. “I wrote more than three hundred.”

I stared at him. “Why didn’t you mail them?”

Cade laughed quietly. “I was scared. Scared you didn’t want me anymore. Scared you were out there alone with no one looking out for you.”

His gaze settled on me.

Then, without even thinking, he reached over and wiped a smudge of sauce from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. So natural. So easy.

My eyes suddenly stung.

“Cade.” I looked down. “What did you write? In those letters?”

His expression became impossibly gentle.

“I wrote about the lambs born that spring.”

“I wrote about the day the snow finally melted on the mountains.”

A smile appeared in his eyes. “And every letter ended the same way.”

My heart tightened. “How?”

Cade leaned back slightly. The look he gave me felt as warm as sunlight over the prairie.

“Cade’s going out of his mind missing his Laurel.”

My throat tightened.

He chuckled. “You want to hear them? I’ll read you every last one tonight.”

For the first time in a long time, I laughed—really laughed.

But the matter wasn’t over.

The next morning, before sunrise, frantic knocking sounded at my door.

“Laurel!” Zachary’s voice. Urgent. “Wake up! Something’s happened.”

I pulled open the door.

Zachary stood outside, breathing hard. His face was unusually grim.

“Mr. Sterling’s in trouble.”