A Love Built On Scorn Chapter 05
Kayla tilted her head, her stare blank, as if she still hadn’t fully processed what Sebastian had just said.Â
But when she saw Jonas actually step forward to take her away, her eyes flew wide, and she staggered back with a shrill scream.
“Sebastian! You can’t do this to me! I’m carrying your child! You have no right to force me to get rid of this baby! Sebastian, you wouldn’t be this cruel to me, would you?”
Sebastian was already irritated past reason by the noise, but then he suddenly remembered something. He turned to Jonas, his gaze cold enough to cut.
“Didn’t I tell you to buy everything at the auction? Why did Caitlin’s mother’s keepsake end up in Edmund’s hands?”
Jonas was trembling under that look. “When I was about to place the bid, Ms. Ludlow suddenly called and said it was her birthday, and she didn’t want to see something that belonged to a dead person. She said it was bad luck. You had previously instructed me that on Ms. Ludlow’s birthday, whatever she wanted was to be granted unconditionally, and there was no need to report it to you, so that lot was allowed to go…”
At Jonas’s explanation, Kayla went pale with fright. Sebastian’s fury deepened.
He had planned everything down to the last step. If things had gone according to that plan, nothing would have gone wrong. But this stupid woman, too full of herself to know better, had gone and ruined it with her own little scheme.
If not for her, Caitlin would never have fallen into Edmund’s trap.
“Kayla!”
The slap landed fast and hard across her face. Sebastian had put real force behind it. Half of her face swelled almost immediately.
The arrogant boldness she had once carried so brazenly was nowhere to be found now. That slap shattered every foolish fantasy she had still been clinging to.
So the rumors in their circle had been true after all. The one line Sebastian could never bear anyone to cross had always been Caitlin.
Back then, Kayla hadn’t believed it. She had thought youth and beauty were enough to keep Sebastian in the palm of her hand. So she had staged the whole thing herself. Those explicit photos on the school forum had been posted by Kayla, by Kayla alone.
And the result had gone exactly the way she wanted—it had handed her a victory. When people in their circle warned her, she had only sneered. Because Sebastian had firmly believed she was the innocent victim. And Caitlin, whose injuries had been worse, was left behind in the hospital, ignored.
Up until last night, Kayla had believed she was the winner of this game. But now… she was the biggest joke in it.
She pressed her lips together, then shouted at Sebastian with the reckless fury of someone who had nothing left to lose. “Sebastian, stop pretending in front of me that you’re so deeply in love with Caitlin! Aren’t you just blaming everything on me because you’re trying to run from your own guilt? If you hadn’t allowed it, how could I have hurt Caitlin again and again? When it comes down to it, if anything happened to Caitlin, you’re just as responsible!”
Kayla’s words struck directly at the one truth Sebastian most desperately did not want to face. He had been avoiding it, pushing off blame, as though doing that could somehow lessen the guilt eating him alive.
Sebastian’s hand shot out and clamped around Kayla’s slender throat. His eyes were bloodshot as he roared hoarsely, “Shut up! Shut up!”
Even as her face flushed red from lack of air and she began to suffocate, the woman in front of him still forced herself to say the words Sebastian least wanted to hear.
Only when it looked as though she truly might die did Sebastian finally let go. Her whole body went limp. Choking and coughing, Kayla collapsed onto the couch and dragged in great gulping breaths of fresh air.
“Jonas! Deal with the bastard inside her, then get her out! I don’t want to see her anywhere in New York! Get her out!”
After Jonas took Kayla away, Sebastian drove frantically to the agreed location.
Faced with Edmund, he wanted nothing more than to tear the man apart with his bare hands. But he couldn’t. Because Caitlin was still in Edmund’s hands.
Calm and composed, Edmund stirred his coffee. “As long as you sign the papers and hand over that downtown property, I’ll return the video personally.”
When the flash drive was placed in Sebastian’s hand, Edmund rose to leave. Sebastian panicked. “You still haven’t told me where Caitlin is!”
Edmund looked innocent, though there was still a smile at the corner of his mouth. “When did I ever tell you I knew where she was? My men are all grown men, and I heard you were planning to divorce her anyway. For all I know, after they were done with her, maybe she got sold off to some club somewhere. New York’s only so big, Mr. Wofford. Take your time. Sooner or later, you’ll find her.”
Sebastian felt as if all the blood in his body had surged straight to his head. His ears rang violently. The emotions he had forced down the entire drive detonated all at once. His fist clenched tight and flew without hesitation straight into Edmund’s face.
“Give me back my wife! Edmund! Give me back my wife! You piece of trash! What did you do to her?”
“Trash?” Edmund let out a scornful laugh and swung back. “If we’re talking trash, I’m nowhere near Mr. Wofford. Three years of marriage and cheating the whole time is one thing, but bankrupting the Vernon family over one sentence from your mistress? Now that’s something else. Unbelievable…”
The two of them crashed into each other in a violent brawl. Outside the windows, police sirens rose and fell one after another, but Sebastian seemed not to hear them at all. He only kept driving his fists harder and harder into Edmund’s body.
By the time he walked out of the police station, light snow had begun to drift down from the sky again.
His Caitlin seemed to be truly gone.
