The Don’s Secret Wife Chapter 08

The Don’s Secret Wife Chapter 08

I watched Joseph cry and felt almost nothing.

There was a time I would’ve died for this man without thinking twice. I knew how proud he was, how fragile that pride really was, and I’d spent every day finding ways to keep him from breaking.

Even when the lies cut deepest, I smiled through it. Swallowed it whole so he wouldn’t have to see.

Now, all I felt was relief.

Because at his core, Joseph had never been worth it.

The only thing I regretted was the baby. I didn’t even know I was carrying him, and I took away whatever life he might have had without knowing that either.

I’d already lost two pregnancies before.

Maybe this was the price for those losses. Theirs, and mine.

I don’t know why I didn’t disappear after I died. Instead, I stayed, tethered to Joseph, unable to

leave.

I watched him tear into Ruby, and none of it surprised me. She’d known about me from the start.

She married him for the money and the power. She played the loving wife for appearances.

In their world, love was always the cheapest currency on the table.

When they slid my body toward the incinerator, Joseph lunged. He wrapped his arms around my lifeless form and wouldn’t let go, not even when the heat seared his hands raw. He held on like I was the last real thing in the world.

It made me sick.

Alive or dead, I wanted nothing to do with him.

Joseph took my ashes home. He kept them with him everywhere he went.

He kept his word about revenge.

It cost him half his empire, but he saw it through.

The Mantles collapsed and never recovered. Ruby lost her mind. They put her in a psychiatric ward,

where she spent her days cursing Joseph’s name, swearing he’d rot for what he’d done.

The lawyers couldn’t get the divorce through, so Joseph left her there like something discarded and

never went back.

When it was done, Joseph carried my urn to Greenshade Cemetery.