Chapter 7 - Desperation and Degradation
Losing the company was only the beginning of Liam’s downfall. With no income and a mountain of personal debt, the high-society friends who had toasted his new marriage vanished overnight.
I sat in the penthouse suite of the Stirling estate, watching a private investigator's live feed of Liam and Khloe's new reality. They had been forced to evict their luxury mansion, moving into a cramped, two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city.
Khloe’s health was deteriorating. Without the premium concierge medical care Liam used to fund, she was forced to wait in public hospital lines—the very lines Liam had forced me into.
One rainy evening, Edward informed me that Liam was waiting at the gates of the estate, refusing to leave until he spoke with me. I agreed to let him in.
When he entered the parlor, he looked unrecognizable. His expensive suit was replaced by a worn jacket, soaked through with rain. He fell to his knees on the Persian rug before I could even speak.
"Clara, I am begging you," he sobbed, tears mixing with the rainwater on his face. "Take everything. Take my soul, take my freedom. Just give me enough money to fund Khloe’s treatment. She’s rejecting the heart. The doctors say she needs a highly experimental immunosuppressant therapy that costs fifty thousand dollars a month. I can't lose her."
I looked down at him from my armchair, Beatrice sitting quietly beside me, a look of vindicated satisfaction on her face.
"You care so deeply for her," I mused, my voice flat. "Tell me, Liam. When I was in that bed, throwing up blood, suffocating on my own fluids... did you ever feel a single shred of this panic for me?"
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"I thought you had more time!" he yelled desperately. "The doctors said you could last another month!"
"The doctors told you I would die within days if that heart was redirected," I corrected him sharply, my voice cutting through the room like a whip. "You chose to murder your wife to save your lover. And now, poetic justice has come to collect its debt. The very heart you stole from me is failing inside her body. Your crime was entirely in vain."
