My Rescue Was Their Reunion, My Hell Was Their Project Chapter 12

My Rescue Was Their Reunion, My Hell Was Their Project Chapter 12

After the funeral, Arthur went back to the hotel. He stood on the eighteenth–floor rooftop where I had jumped, looking down at the traffic below, and closed his eyes. 

“You stood right here. Alone. Looking at those headlights. Thinking about everything they did to you.” 

“And I wasn’t here.” 

He opened his eyes. 

“I’m here now.” 

He stepped off. Eighteen floors. The same height. The same 

fall. 

Julian didn’t stop him. There was nothing left in him to 

protect. 

He went back to the wedding car. My blood was still on the windshield. He ran his hand across the glass again and again. 

It wouldn’t come off. It would never come off. 

“Elena… I know you don’t want to see me.” 

“But I want to see you.” 

“If I don’t deserve it in this life, then the next one.” 

He started the engine, floored the accelerator, and the car launched off the embankment and into the river. Water poured in from every side. He sat in the driver’s seat, looked at the empty passenger seat where I used to sit, and smiled. 

Through the glass, through the rising water, he thought he saw her – white dress, standing on the surface of the water, smiling the way she used to. 

He reached for her. The water closed over his head. 

Chloe didn’t last three years. During one of the invasive experimental surgeries, she bled out on the table. By the time she died, her body was unrecognizable. No one came to claim 

her. 

Nolan didn’t die. He lived – which was worse. 

With hands that had never fully healed, he typed out a confession. A hundred pages. Every crime committed against me, documented in full. Then he donated his entire stake in 

Vance Tech to fund a foundation for abducted women. 

He moved into the same streets where I’d once slept. Wore the old clothes I’d given him. Ate the stale scraps I once shared with him. Walked every road I’d walked, over and over, retracing my steps like a prayer. 

He didn’t die. He didn’t deserve to. If he ever saw me on the 

other side, he wouldn’t have the right to beg.