He threw money on the bed after our one-night stand.
I threw it back in his face at his own inauguration.
By sundown, we were engaged. By the week's end — married.
Franklin Flemington needed a wife to secure his empire. I needed a miracle to save my family. For two years, we played our parts flawlessly — the golden couple the whole city envied.
Behind closed doors, I was invisible to him.
When the two years were up, I handed him divorce papers without blinking.
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "I've given you everything a husband should. What more do you want from me, Octavia?"
I smiled, signed my name, and walked out.
I thought that was the end. I thought I'd finally won.
I forgot one thing — Franklin Flemington has never lost anything in his life. And he has no intention of starting with me.
Game on.

The drive to Manhattan General felt like a journey across a desert that had no end. Every second stretched into a painful infinity, every passing streetlamp blurring into a smear of cold light as my mind replayed the same harrowing loops. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned a ghostly white, trying to steady a tremor that started in my chest and radiated to my very fingertips.


Franklin couldn't just be gone. Not like this. Not while the air between us was still thick with the things we hadn't said. Life wasn't supposed to end on a cliffhanger.


I pulled into the hospital lot, the towering glass building looming over me like a tombstone. As I stepped out into the biting air, my phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I didn't need to look to know it was my mother. I had already missed a dozen calls.


Chapter 179 - ~ 179