Chapter Four #3
"Shut up, Marcy!" Gabriela screamed, the sound of her turning violently in her seat clearly audible over the engine noise. "You always defend her! You’re just as pathetic! Do you think Kade is ever going to look at you? You're an orphan! You're nothing!"
"Gabriela, watch out!" Kinsley screamed from the backseat.
There was a horrifying, violent jerk of the steering wheel.
The sickening, visceral screech of tires losing traction on wet asphalt ripped through the boardroom speakers.
Marcy screamed in pure terror. The sound of metal crushing against metal, the shattering of safety glass, and the violent deployment of airbags ended in an abrupt, deafening silence.
The audio file clicked off.
The boardroom was plunged into a silence so heavy and so intense, it felt like all the oxygen had been instantaneously sucked from the room.
Cruz and Kade were deathly still. The color had drained completely from their faces, leaving their aristocratic, sculpted features looking like they had been carved from pale marble. Their eyes were wide, locked onto the black screen of the tablet in a state of sheer, unadulterated shock.
She lied.
The thought echoed in their minds, a catastrophic earthquake tearing down the very foundation of their reality. Gabriela had lied. She had looked them in the eyes, weeping delicate tears, and blamed Marcy for a nightmare she had caused herself.
Connor swallowed hard, stepping back from the table as if the tablet were a live explosive. "We ran into Marcy and Kinsley in the parking lot this afternoon. Marcy officially resigned. They packed up her desk, loaded her things into the car, and left."
"We tried to offer them help," Leon added, his voice hollow, staring at his older brother. "Connor asked if there was anything the families could do. Kinsley told us that if we had a shred of conscience, we would stay far away from them. And that went for you two, as well."
"She said," Connor whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracking down his cheek, "that we should all just choke on the truth."
Kade closed his eyes. The memory of the hospital room crashed over him like a brutal tidal wave.
He remembered the silence that had followed after Camille Monroe had viciously slapped Marcy across the face.
He remembered the way Marcy had just stood there, taking the abuse, her spirit finally breaking under the weight of an injustice he had actively helped perpetuate.
He remembered calling her a parasite. He remembered the cold, dead look he had given her while she begged him to listen.
The horror of the revelations shattered Kade completely.
He gripped the edge of the obsidian table, his knuckles turning stark white, his chest heaving as he struggled to pull air into his lungs.
What had he done to Marcy? He had systematically, ruthlessly destroyed the woman who had only ever tried to save them.
That he needed to apologize was, of course, a given.
But what apology could ever, in a million lifetimes, undo the years of psychological torment he had inflicted upon her?
Would she even listen to his explanations?
Across the room, Cruz Tate was uncharacteristically silent. He looked like a man who had just been violently struck by lightning.
His striking, sculpted features were frozen in an expression of paralyzing horror. The audio played on a loop in his mind. But it wasn't just Gabriela’s cruel, venomous words that were torturing him.
It was a sound.
A sickening, wet, audible crack.
Cruz slowly looked down at his own hands. The hands that built empires. The hands that had reached out grabbed Kinsley Bennet by her delicate wrist, and snapped her bone with the full, predatory force of his rage.
Kinsley... the neurotic, chaotic, unruly girl of his youth.
The girl who had spent her entire life looking at him with a quiet, desperate adoration.
She had actually loved him. She had stood in his corner, she had taken his abuse, and in return, he had physically shattered her wrist to defend a liar.
The realization ripped through Cruz’s chest like a serrated blade. Did he completely lose his chance with her? The question was a physical agony, a fire burning in his veins. Was he beyond redemption?
Cruz stared at his trembling hands, the polished exterior of the formidable titan completely stripped away, leaving only a broken, devastated man.
He would beg. He would strip away every ounce of his pride, his wealth, his legacy, and he would gladly crawl on broken glass if it meant Kinsley Bennet would just give him one chance to apologize.
He would bleed for her, if only she might actually listen.
But as the four men stood in the suffocating silence of their own making, the terrifying truth settled over them. They had destroyed the only two women who were inherently good, women who had fiercely protected the truth even when the world had turned against them.
And looking at the black screen of the tablet, the billionaire titans realized they might have lost them forever.