Chapter 8
In the end, it was Finn who took Liam away.
He refused to leave without seeing me one last time.
Even with more than ten bodyguards trying to hold him down, he broke free and, covered in bruises, stumbled his way to our front door.
Amidst my parents‘ furious protests, I finally agreed to see him.
When his eyes landed on me, his tears streamed down without
restraint.
He stared at my face with such hunger, as if afraid I’d vanish the second he blinked.
“Melanie, come back with me,” he pleaded.
“Do you need to hear me say I hate you before you’ll leave?”
Disgust flashed through my eyes as I kept scrubbing at the spots on my arm where he’d touched me.
Liam’s face turned ashen. His voice sounded like it was stuck in his
throat.
“How could you hate me, Melanie? You swore you’d stay with me forever–even if my manic episodes were gone-”
He suddenly stopped, then his eyes lit up like he’d found a lifeline. He raised his voice in a desperate shout.
Chapter
“That’s right, Melanie, you can’t leave me! The doctor said my disorder might be coming back–I need you! I’ll only listen to you!
“If you don’t believe me, ask Grandpa! Grandpa, tell Melanie I’m not lying! Not this time!”
With a loud thud, he dropped to his knees in front of Finn, nearly ecstatic in his panic.
I looked over at Finn, who met my eyes and gave a small nod.
“When I found Liam, his mood was clearly unstable. I had a doctor check on him–there are definite signs of a relapse.”
He lowered his head, unable to face me.
“Melanie, everything that’s happened is Liam’s own doing. Whether or not you come back is your choice. I no longer have the right to ask you for anything.”
But Liam wasn’t ready to give up. He crawled to my feet, still on his knees.
“You heard him, Melanie! I’m not lying! You know I go completely out of control when I’m like this–only you can help me. Come back with me, please! I can’t live without you!”
He reached for me, but his hand grasped at empty air.
I looked down at his tear–streaked, pleading face, took a long breath, and stepped back.
“I’m not going back.
“Liam, you can’t use your illness to chain me to you for the rest of my
life.”
“Maybe the Melanie who loved you would’ve said yes. But she already died the day you smashed that vase over her head at the psychiatric hospital.”
Liam didn’t scream or lash out like I expected.
He collapsed to the ground in silence, too broken even to look up at
- me.
After a long while, he rasped out a hoarse. “Okay,” his smile was more painful than tears.
After Liam left, my life returned to normal.
I didn’t think about him anymore, though sometimes I caught news of the Whitaker family on TV.
Liam’s condition eventually did relapse.
Once a high–flying executive in the business world, Liam was now reduced to a madman, tormented by his illness.
He refused to let anyone enter the villa we once shared, guarding it like a wild animal clinging to its territory–surviving off the last traces I left behind.
Not long after, I got a call from Finn.
Liam had attempted suicide and was being resuscitated. But when the doctors cut open his clothes, they were shocked to find his body covered in self–inflicted wounds–there wasn’t a single patch of intact skin.
He had even carved my name into his skin.
On the other end of the line. Finn choked back sobs. “I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but Melanie, I can’t watch him die. His parents are already gone–I only have one grandson left.”
Though I’d long stopped feeling anything for Liam, I couldn’t harden my heart against Finn, who loved me like his granddaughter.
He had always been warm and kind–he didn’t deserve to end up without any descendants.
So I sent him a photo of me and Liam.
It had been tucked inside my phone case, forgotten, and never burned. It became the only piece of proof that our relationship had ever existed.
Maybe that photo really did something. Liam stopped locking himself in the villa.
He reappeared in public, still the successor of the Whitaker family.
But the shadows in his eyes told the truth–Liam never truly recovered.
He just stopped hurting himself. He learned to live like a normal
person.
But that photo he now carried with him at all times became a new kind of cage.
One that would imprison him for life.
