Gone After The 28th Wedding Chapter 07
Cassandra’s POV
Zurich had been snowing for two months, burying everything under silence.
I’d been counting days in the sanatorium, waiting to run out of them, when he walked in and shattered the quiet.
I almost didn’t recognise him. The Vincent I knew had been untouchable. This man wore a coat that didn’t
fit, hadn’t shaved in days, and clutched a crumpled boarding pass like a refugee who’d made it out of somewhere terrible. He crossed the room as though the floor might give way beneath him.
“Cassandra…”
“Don’t come any closer.”
I watched the drip feed liquid into my failing veins and didn’t look at him. “Don’t poison the air in here.”
He stopped. Something moved through his face.
“Come home.” His eyes were raw, his smile a grotesque
attempt at warmth. “My parents have forgiven me. We can get married the moment you’re back.”
“Married.” A small laugh, I looked past him at the bare branches outside the window.
“The engagement is already void. Vincent, there’s barely a thread of what we once were left between us. Don’t make me cut that too.”
“It’s not void. I never signed anything it’s not void!”
He dropped to his knees. His knuckles drove into the bedsheet, his face buried in it, and he wept like a
man coming apart at the seams. “I know what I did. Cassandra, please. Don’t leave me. You’re all I have.”
I looked at the man who had once thrown me onto the street like rubbish, now broken at my feet, and felt nothing but a vast, empty quiet.
“Vincent. Look at me. Really look.”
He raised his face and flinched at what he saw.
“The doctors say it doesn’t matter how many kidneys I’m given. This body is too far gone.” I said it the way you’d describe someone else’s prognosis.
“No.” He shook his head wildly. “I have money. I’ll find
the best doctors in the world – you are not going to die-”
“It’s done.”
I cut him off. Something almost like a smile touched my mouth
not kind. “I’m not just dying, Vincent. I’m setting you free. You love Amelia, don’t you? I’m stepping aside. You can bring her home, make her the Romano wife. Isn’t that everything you wanted?”
“Don’t say that–please-”
He beat his fists against the floor until his knuckles bled. Then he snapped his head up, wild–eyed, desper+ ate to be believed. “Amelia is gone. She’s finished. The Rosewood family went bankrupt her father jumped.
And the kidney – her body rejected it. She’s rotting in some slum, waiting to die. It’s justice. Cassandra, I can make this right – we’ll have a wedding. Twenty–eight weddings. One for every accident I put you through I’ll spend the rest of my life-”
Twenty–eight accidents.
A blunt blade drawn slowly across a wound that had never properly healed.
“Make it right.”
I reached up and undid the buttons of my hospital gown.
The fabric fell open. Vincent’s breath caught. His face froze.
Every inch of skin beneath was a record. The blast burns across my chest, purple–red and monstrous.
Three sets of caved–in ribs. The gash across my thigh from the truck. No unmarked skin. Not one centimetre.
Every scar, a casualty of an accident he had approved.
“This one.” I traced a finger along my collarbone. “The chandelier. And this one-” along my side “along my side – “where
your surgeons took my kidney.”
“Stop-“His tears fell onto my skin, burning where they landed. “Please, I can’t – don’t make me look-”
“Does it turn your stomach?” I fastened the buttons back up, unhurried. My eyes went flat and final. “Good. Because I don’t love you anymore, Vincent.
Whatever you’re feeling right now feel sick.”
“Get out.” I pointed at the door.
it only makes me
“I’m not leaving. I’ll stay here. I’ll wait-”
My patience ran out. I picked up my phone.
“Eleanor. It’s me.”
A sharp inhale, then her voice, breaking: “Cassandra… sweetheart, we failed you. We didn’t raise him right—”
“Send someone to take him away.” I was so tired. “I don’t want the last of my time contaminated by the sight of him.”
The military–precise sound of boots in the corridor came less than ten minutes later. Four of the Romano family’s elite guard filled the doorway. They had their
orders.
“Get off me – let go-”
Vincent fought them. It didn’t matter. He was hauled upright and dragged toward the door, all his former dignity worth nothing against four pairs of hands.
“Cassandra! You can’t do this – I love you I know I was wrong-”
He dug his fingers into the doorframe. His nails tore. He left bloody streaks in the wood.
“Please – just let me stay – I won’t say a word, I’ll just stay-”
His voice broke apart in the corridor. It echoed
through the whole floor. I heard nurses stop moving.
I stayed against my pillow and watched the drip.
I did not look at the door.
Not once.
Until the sound faded completely, until the wind and
snow outside filled the silence again.
Quiet. At last.
Whatever life remained was draining out like sand not violently, not with the tearing pain I’d grown used to. Just a slow, clean release. Twelve years. Twenty–eight times. All of it drawing to its close.
I closed my eyes.
A faint smile. The first one in a long time that belonged entirely to me.
Maybe this is the best ending I was ever going to get.