The Wedding Debt: Chapter 11

My knife is still stinging me in my pocket, but it doesn’t even fucking faze me anymore. I’m just staring at the glass of water our butler gave me. The one I haven’t touched.

Because my parents are currently crying in the fucking bathroom.

And my mother’s screeching cries go through marrow and bone.

“Sir … do you want me to fetch you some new clothes?”

I turn away, not wanting to even look at him. “No.”

My mother’s wails fill the house, and I can’t fucking stand it.

I get up from my seat and go to the window to stare out at the dark clouds. I always thought the clouds in my own heart were darker than I ever saw them out there. But not tonight.

“Sir,” our driver says as he steps inside. “The car is ready.”

I throw him a glance and nod. “Go tell my parents. I’ll wait in the car.”

Thirty minutes later, we’re walking into the hospital, my father clutching my mother as she struggles to walk, while I slouch behind them like a damn zombie.

“Follow me, please,” one of the nurses who greeted us at the entrance says.

We step into an elevator, where my mother’s soft sobs slowly eat away at my heart. Still, I ignore the sting because from here on out, everything will only get darker. Fast.

My parents step out of the elevator, my father clutching my mother tight so she doesn’t collapse. Because where we’re going, there is no happiness.

Only death.

Jill

When my eyes finally open, I feel like I’ve been asleep for hours, but I’m not rested at all. Machines bleep all around me as I blink away the crustiness. My mouth feels dry, and when I try to speak, all that comes out is a hoarse croak.

“Jill?” My mother’s warm voice makes my heart jump.

“Mom,” I mutter, tears welling up in my eyes.

I’m alive. I’m alive? How?

“Oh, Jill.” Jasmine immediately jumps up from her seat to fall into my lap and cry. “I was so worried about you.”

I don’t know what to do, so I just hug her even though my entire body hurts.

I look around to try to get my bearings. There are white walls all around me, with a painting of a flower on the wall, and a small kitchenette in the corner, while I’m lying in the only bed in this room … a hospital bed.

“For a second there, we thought we’d lost you,” my mother says, grabbing my hand.

Even my father comes to sit close to me. “What you did was very dangerous, Jill. You should be happy we have the very best care in this hospital, or you might not have made it out alive.”

Dangerous.

My eyes widen as everything that happened comes flooding back in. The fight between Luca and Liam. Driving off with the car. Toppling over straight into the water. Drowning.

And a body still sitting there in the passenger’s seat while the car sinks to the bottom.

I sit up straight in bed, ripping all the wires from my body. “Liam!”

My mother pushes me back down. “Don’t get up, Jill. You’re not healed enough yet.”

But I don’t care what she says. “Liam, where’s Liam?!”

“Shhh …” Jasmine tries to shush me even though I can see the hurt in her eyes. “You have to calm down and focus on yourself right now.”

“But Liam …!” I retort, but my father’s stern eyes force me to shut up.

“You should not have stolen my car in the state you were in, Jill,” my father says, clutching my bed railing.

I frown. “What state?”

My mother crosses her arms too now. “Jill, even though we’re glad you’re okay,” she says, sighing, “your father and I are still angry with you for what you did.”

“But … But I just wanted to get us to safety, and—”

“Safety?” my father scoffs. “There was a fucking storm outside, and you decided to take my car and drive it off a cliff!”

“Hugo.” My mother places a hand on his chest. “She’s still our child.”

He swats her hand away. “I don’t care. She needs to hear this.”

“Hear what?” I look at both of them, but neither of them seems to want to answer me. When I turn my head to Jasmine, even she refuses to answer. What’s going on?

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I—”

“Jill. We know the truth,” my father interjects. “You can’t talk your way out of this one.”

“What?” I’m thoroughly confused now. “Who told you?”

Footsteps are audible outside my room, and we all turn to look up when someone appears in the doorway.

But the dark eyes that connect with mine send a chill down my spine.

Luca.

His brown hair falls over his face like a curtain to hide the spite, and it makes me forget my parents are even here.

Of course it was him.

Of course he told them everything that happened.

“Luca,” my mother says. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“I’m not here for you, ma’am,” Luca says, eyeing me down so much that it makes me want to tug this blanket over my head and pretend I don’t exist.

“Of course,” my mother says, throwing in a lukewarm smile. “Your parents, are they here too?”

More footsteps are audible, the click-clacking sound sending my heartbeat into overdrive. And the second they show their faces, I feel like I might as well prepare my own burial.

Silence fills the room as they look at me first and then my parents.

“Baas,” his father says.

“De Vos,” mine responds.

The air is filled with electricity. Not the empowering kind, but the kind that predicts war.

“So … Jill is alive,” Lex sneers in an unimpressed manner.

As my father flicks his eyes at Jasmine, she steps away from my bed in obedience.

“We’re very lucky,” my mother replies with a warm smile in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“You call that luck?” Lex retorts.

I frown, feeling terribly confused as I look at both my parents, who are standing up with fists balled like they’re ready to fight. “What’s happened? What’s going on?” I ask. “And where’s Liam?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Luca says, his lip curling down viciously. “Liam is dead.”

My heart stops right there and then.

Oh God.

Liam.

Liam is … dead?

No, it can’t be.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “He was right there.”

“Where you left him, in the water, trapped in his seat,” Luca says.

Anne approaches me and stares me down.

SLAP!

The sting of her hand on my cheek takes a while to register.

My mother steps in and grabs her wrist.

“Don’t you touch my daughter.”

They have a standoff, eyeing each other down before Anne finally retracts her hand.

I can still feel her hand on my cheek as the red mark begins to glow, but it doesn’t faze me.

“She deserved that. And plenty more,” Anne spits, fighting the tears.

She’s right. I do.

I’m broken. Shattered into a million bits. That’s how I feel.

And no amount of repairing my body here in this hospital bed will fix the destroyed remains of the hearts inside this room.

I killed him.

I killed Liam.

I drove that car straight into the storm.

Straight into the water …

Tears well up in my eyes, and I can’t keep them from running down my cheeks.

“Is he really dead?” I mutter.

“You tell me, girl,” Lex says, throwing me a deadly glare. “Because they can’t fucking find my son’s body.”

“And now they’ve declared him dead,” his mother adds, unable to keep the tears at bay.

Oh, God.

He’s really gone.

Down there in the deep, all alone.

And he begged me to go back.

I bury my face in my hands. “I’m sorry,” I mutter. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” Luca spits. “You killed my brother.”

I wish more than anything that I could take it back.

That I could’ve stopped myself from losing control over the car. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“But it did,” Lex replies, his anger taking over his grief.

“I will never have my son back,” Anne says, blinking away the tears with the fury of a scorned woman.

Lex throws my father a look. “And someone has to pay the price.”

What? Pay the price? How?

I can’t exchange my life for his even though I wish more than anything that I could.

He deserved so much more from the life he was given. And I took it all away from him.

“You will hear from us.” With a final warning, Lex and Anne De Vos leave the room.

Only Luca remains, staring me down from the doorway, the spot he hasn’t left since the second he stepped in.

“I told you, you shouldn’t have run away from me,” he says.

Through the tears, I scream, “Get out!”

“Jill!” my mother scoffs at me.

But I pay her no attention as my gaze locks with Luca.

Because he knows exactly why all of this happened.

Why I dragged Liam into that car to begin with.

To escape him.

“Hope the hospital takes good care of you,” Luca says, licking his lips as he turns around to walk out the door. But not without a final glance … and a warning. “You’re gonna need it.”