Chapter 8

I was forced to sit up.

My vision blurred, and my stomach churned violently.

I managed to hold it in, barely avoiding throwing up on Alex.

Alex seemed to have gone mad with rage.

He sent the nurse away, his grip on my arm painfully tight.

"You sent your mother to make a scene at my house! Aren't you just upset Genevieve came back?"

"I don't love you. After all these years, this is the first time I wanted Genevieve to come back and see her. Is that so wrong?!"

My heart plummeted.

My mom had found out, as expected. She would never let me suffer.

I desperately tried to push Alex away, wanting to rush to the Thornes' house to find my mom.

But Alex held me tightly, refusing to let go.

His eyes looked like they wanted to devour me whole. "Genevieve has been abroad for seven years."

"Are you so evil that you demand I never see her again?"

A sharp, piercing pain started in my head.

The pain intensified rapidly, as if my skull were being torn apart.

I was trembling uncontrollably, my voice shaky. "Let go. I need to find my mom."

Alex's grip didn't soften in the slightest. He sneered.

"What, you think your mom didn't make a big enough scene? Scarlett Hayes, you didn't marry me for love back then either."

"All these years, haven't you and your mother gotten everything you wanted? Why won't you let me go?!"

I froze for a second, not understanding his words.

He, Alex Thorne, could marry me without loving me.

But I, if I hadn't loved him, would never have married him.

He met my gaze, then suddenly, viciously, threw a stack of photos in front of me.

"Do you really think I'm a fool?"

"Less than six months into our marriage, you were already consulting Julian Vance about how to divorce me and take a share of the Thorne family assets."

I looked, disbelievingly, at the photos scattered across the bed.

They chronicled almost every interaction Julian and I had shared over the past seven years.

The earliest of those photos were, just as Alex said, from less than six months into our marriage.

I racked my brain for a long moment, finally managing to recall that incident.