This Heiress Doesn’t Fight Anymore Chapter 11

This Heiress Doesn’t Fight Anymore Chapter 11

Graham swayed. Like something holding him upright had just snapped.

He looked at me, and for the first time, tears spilled down his face.

“I can’t do this without you, Maren…”

“One more chance. That’s all I’m asking. One.”

“I’ll do whatever you say. Cook for you. Give you the whole company. Every share. All of it. Just…”

I looked at the face that used to be my entire world.

Honestly? If he’d reached for me on that yacht, or even just looked back once, maybe things could have gone

differently.

But love that shows up at the funeral is a little too late.

“Let go.” Flat. Empty.

“No. I won’t. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m not So I stopped trying to prove myself..”

He was sobbing, shaking his head, holding onto me like I was the last solid thing in his world.

I sighed.

This was draining what little energy I had left.

I pulled out my phone and dialed.

[Mr. Vance. It’s Maren.]

Graham’s crying stopped. He stared.

[I need you to file a restraining order for me.]

I looked down at Graham, still on the ground. [I’ve had someone stalking and harassing me. It’s become a

serious problem.]

Graham’s hands went slack.

His arms slid off me.

“Stalking… harassing…”

The words came out hollow, his face drained white. “That’s what I am to you now? A stalker?”

“What else would you call it?”

I hung up and stepped back.

“Mr. Caldwell. Our engagement ended. What you’re doing right now is harassment, and it needs to stop.”

Graham crumpled. He dropped to his knees and completely fell apart.

Bennett moved toward me, hands up, trying to mediate. “Maren, come on. He’s like this because he’s in love

with you…”

“And you?”

I turned on him.

“Was it love when you mocked me every day? Was it love when you cut my cards and threw me out for

Brielle?”

Bennett had nothing.

He pressed his hands over his face and sank against the gate.

“I know… I know I was wrong…”

“Enough.”

I turned my back on them. “I’m tired. I don’t want to watch this anymore. If either of you is still here

tomorrow, I’ll sell this house and disappear. For good.”

That did it.

Graham dragged himself up.

He looked at my back. Whatever was left in his eyes went out.

“Okay…”

His voice was barely there. A thread.

“I’ll go. As long as you don’t disappear… I’ll go.”

Graham walked out of the yard like a man leaving his own funeral.

Bennett looked at me one last time, swore at himself under his breath, and followed Graham out. His eyes

looked wrecked.

The yard went quiet.

“Maren…” Milo came up beside me, careful.

“I’m fine.” I yawned and dropped back into the rocking chair. “Is the meat done? I’m starving.”

The next morning, rain hammered Bluehaven Island.

I slept until noon.

I opened the window.

Graham and Bennett were gone.

The Maybach. The red sports car. All of it, gone.

Quiet at last.

One year later.

Summer on Bluehaven dragged on the way summers should: slow and golden.

I’d planted sunflowers in the yard. They were taller than me now.

My days had exactly three items on the agenda: sleep, stare at the ocean, and do absolutely nothing.

Sometimes Milo roped me into modeling for his shoots. I’d give him a few shots, then go home and collapse.

Something in me was slowly coming back to life.

At least breathing didn’t feel like a chore anymore.

I caught pieces of the outside world through the occasional headline.

Caldwell Group was bleeding. Its numbers had tanked over the past year.

Graham was doing business like a man with a death wish, using scorched–earth tactics that burned his rivals

and himself in equal measure.

Word was he’d spiraled into depression. Couldn’t sleep without pills.

Someone had photographed him at a bar at three in the morning, burying his face in the hair of some woman who looked like me, sobbing. Then shoving her away and throwing up on the sidewalk.

The Whitmores had it worse.

After Bennett threw her out, Brielle refused to give up the lifestyle.

She latched onto a married man.

His wife caught them and dragged her out of a restaurant by her hair. The video went viral. Brielle’s reputation was finished. She fled the country buried in debt.

My mother had a stroke from the stress. Bedridden ever since.

My father couldn’t hold the company together anymore, so everything fell on Bennett.

Bennett was never the business genius everyone thought he was. That had always been me, working behind the scenes, making him look good.

Without me, Whitmore Group’s biggest projects collapsed one after another. The company was circling the

drain.

My reaction to all of this: oh.

None of it was my problem anymore.

A breeze rolled through the yard. The sunflowers tilted with it.

I yawned and went inside to take a nap.