The Truman Cage: My Husband Faked My World Chapter 06

The Truman Cage: My Husband Faked My World Chapter 06

“How could you just you were fine. You were right there.” Leo’s voice cracked. “Open your eyes. Talk to me. I’m your brother – it’s Leo. Clara, please.”

He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, and he couldn’t stop, oblivious to the violence of his own grip. No matter what he said, the body on the floor didn’t move. Only my hair moved, shifting against my lifeless face, and that only made the stillness worse.

He sank down beside me, his shoulders shaking, hollow, animalistic sounds tearing out of him,

completely beyond his control.

Ethan stood frozen in the doorway.

He’d come in a step behind Julian and Leo, just in time to hear everything. The older doctor calling

the time of death. Leo’s voice shattering. He stopped at the threshold, where the coppery smell of

blood hit hardest, and went no farther.

If he didn’t cross that line, he could still pretend none of it was real. There was still time. He could

still show me I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. No countdown. No rules. No overseers. No whips.

He would find the best doctors. He would help me heal, all of it, inside and out. They would start

over, and they would have their child.

Á faint, broken smile touched his face.

Then, before he could stop himself, he saw it–my pale body marinated in all that blood.

Clara was dead. Their child was dead. It had all come down to a spreading pool of blood darkening at the edges.

And then, without warning, he heard her voice again, right beside his ear.

“Didn’t you say… no one would hurt me here?”

He had almost relented right then. But Vivian had been crying, and Sunny had been crying, and he’d told himself he had no choice but to turn away. But now it wouldn’t stop.

“No one would hurt me here?”

“No one would hurt me here?”

“No one would hurt me here?”

In his head, the image of me kept changing, my hand catching at his pants, then clutching at my stomach, then lying here soaked in blood, still asking him the same question.

The hallway tilted. The floor seemed to vanish under him. He had lied to me and locked me away. He

had killed me.

It was him. It had all been him.

Ethan went down where he stood. He hit the hallway floor hard, and everything went black.

Three hours later, Ethan jolted awake to the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He shot upright in the hospital bed, cold sweat running down his face. His eyes swept the room.

Had it been a dream? He knew it hadn’t.

He grabbed the nearest nurse by the arm.

“Where is Clara?”

“Where is she? I need to see her right now.”

The nurse flinched and stepped back. “Mr. Thorne, please Miss Miller’s body has been taken down to the morgue. It’s at the end of the hall.”

Body.

The nurse’s voice dissolved into static, and Ethan couldn’t hear any of it anymore. He threw back the blanket, ripped the IV out of his arm and stumbled frantically, still unsteady on his feet, toward the end of the hall. He hit the half–open door with one hand and shoved through it.

There were people inside.

Leo looked up at the noise. Julian turned slowly.

“Clara’s autopsy report is back. Something doesn’t add up.”