She Taught Him How To Love: He Used It To Destroy Me Chapter 05

She Taught Him How To Love: He Used It To Destroy Me Chapter 05

I called Ethan.

He picked up right away.

“Changed your mind?”

“Call off the Live Stream.”

“Too late.”

“My mom just woke up.”

“She can’t handle this.”

Ethan glanced at Vanessa beside him.

Vanessa shook her head.

His tone hardened immediately.

“You’re using your mom to pressure me again,” he said.

“The Live Stream is just a clarification.”

“That money was a Loan.”

“You’re saying I tricked her into the Thumbprint.”

“If there’s a dispute, take it to court.”

He hung up.

At 7 p.m., the Live Stream went live.

I put my mom’s phone on silent and buried it in the bottom drawer of her nightstand.

I asked the nurses not to play anything related in the ward.

But someone pretending to be a relative got onto the floor and shared the Live Stream link in the patient support group chat.

While I was at the nurses’ station picking up medication, my mom used her good left hand to open the drawer.

She sent Ethan a voice message first.

Then she clicked the link in the group chat.

By the time I got back, Ethan’s voice was already playing through her phone.

“Mrs. Clarke used to say that as long as I was willing to marry Ivy, all her money would be mine someday,” he said.

“I was young back then. I really believed she saw me as a son.”

The statement with my mom’s Thumbprint appeared on screen.

Vanessa sat beside him.

“So when Ms. Clarke demanded twenty thousand from you using her mother’s critical condition—how did that make you feel?”

Ethan looked down.

“Disappointed,” he said.

“It wasn’t about the money.”

“It’s that giving in without limits only feeds a person’s appetite.”

Comments flooded the screen instantly.

My mom sat upright in bed, her face chalk white.

I lunged for her phone and yanked the charger out.

She grabbed my arm.

Her mouth made broken sounds.

“Loan…”

“Loan…”

She was trying to say the two hundred eighty thousand was a Loan.

But on the stream, Ethan pulled out the Promissory Note.

A giant red X had been drawn across it.

“Mrs. Clarke already clarified that the Promissory Note was just for bookkeeping purposes,” he said.

“So I won’t pursue any action for past behavior. But starting today, all financial support stops.”

My mom’s eyes stayed locked on the screen.

Her chest heaved.

The monitor suddenly screeched.

Doctors and nurses rushed in.

“Suspected second bleed!”

Her bed was wheeled toward the ER.

I ran after it for two steps, then my legs gave out and I slammed into the wall.

Ethan’s Live Stream kept going.

Vanessa announced that course sales had broken a hundred thousand copies.

Applause thundered from the audience.

I picked up my phone and called him again.

Once.

Twice.

By the seventeenth time, he still hadn’t picked up.

The ER light stayed on for three hours.

The doctor came out and shook his head at me.

“I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

When my mom was wheeled out, a white sheet covered her face.

Her left hand—the one stained with ink—hung off the side of the bed.

I crouched down and tucked it back under the sheet.

My phone kept buzzing.

Vanessa’s Live Stream had hit number one on the platform.

On screen, Ethan was answering the host’s final question.

“If Ms. Clarke apologized right now, would you still marry her?”

He looked down and adjusted his cuff.

The dark gray suit—I’d bought it for him to wear the day we got our Marriage License.

“It depends on whether she can truly recognize her mistakes,” he said.

“Marriage isn’t charity. I’m not going to abandon my principles just because she cries hard enough.”

Applause filled the room.

The stream moved into its victory segment.

An assistant rushed onstage with a tablet.

“Mr. Cross, your personal phone has been ringing nonstop.”

Ethan looked down.

Seventeen missed calls on the screen.

An unknown number was calling again.

Vanessa put a hand on his arm.

“The stream isn’t over yet.”

The ringing went on for a long time.

Ethan finally picked up.

“Hello?”

The nurse’s voice carried through the open mic across the entire broadcast.

“Is this Mr. Ethan Cross?”

“This is Mercy General Hospital.”

“You were listed as the secondary emergency contact for Margaret Clarke.”

“Ms. Clarke passed away at 10:27 p.m. tonight after unsuccessful resuscitation.”