My Reborn Ex Dumped Me Again. Joke’s on Him, I Married Better Chapter 11

My Reborn Ex Dumped Me Again. Joke’s on Him, I Married Better Chapter 11

On the other end, Grayson gripped his phone, staring at the words Call Ended on the screen.

He turned to the bar cart, poured a whiskey, and knocked back most of it in one swallow.

Images from his last life flickered through his mind, frame by frame.

The day Seraphina married into the Blackwood family, she wore a gown that didn’t fit. The waist

gaped empty. She had to pinch the fabric to keep it from slipping.

He stood beside her. He never looked at her. Not once.

At the reception, someone whispered that the real Vance daughter couldn’t even afford a decent wedding gown.

He heard it. He said nothing in her defense.

After the wedding, she moved into the guest room next to the master suite.

**

Every morning, she rose early to make him breakfast. He walked past it without a glance.

She ironed his shirts. He threw them in the trash. “Who knows if your hands are clean.”

She ran a fever of a hundred and four and called him. He was out shopping with Celeste. He picked up, said “Stop pretending,” and hung up.

She never called again.

Later, she grew sicker. She wasted away until she was barely recognizable. Even the household staff couldn’t bear it and secretly brought her meals.

He knew. He did nothing.

The day she died, he sat at Celeste’s grave from dawn until dark.

Celeste’s grave lay in the cemetery on the west side of the city. A white headstone carved with her name. Fresh flowers always arranged before it.

He sat there as the sun rose and set. His phone rang again and again. He ignored every call.

When he returned to the house, the butler told him Seraphina had passed away at the hospital.

He stood frozen for a long time. Then he said it –

“Seraphina Vance, stay the hell away from me in the next life.”

He carved those words onto a headstone in his heart. They stayed there for an entire lifetime.

But now, he wasn’t sure anymore.

What exactly had he hated her for?

For the swap?

But the swap had been the Vances‘ idea. Seraphina had never once protested.

For stealing Celeste’s place?

But Celeste had been meant to marry a dying old man.

No.

Grayson’s hand stopped mid–air, the glass suspended.

He remembered something.

In his last life, before Celeste took the poison, she had called him one

final time.

Her voice on the phone was very soft, almost like she was smiling. “Grayson, I don’t blame my sister. I don’t blame you either. It was just fate.”

Then the line went dead.

He had rushed to the Vances‘ like a madman. Celeste was already in the hospital by then.

He knelt on the morgue floor and cried the whole night. He felt hollowed out, completely empty.

After that, he channeled every ounce of hate onto Seraphina.

Because if there was no one to hate, he would have to hate himself.

Hate himself for failing to protect Celeste. Hate himself for letting her be sent to that deathbed. Hate himself for his own weakness.

Hating Seraphina was easier than hating himself.

Grayson drained the rest of the glass and slammed it onto the table with a dull crack.