Chapter 9
631words
That was the punishment she chose for herself. However, no amount of pain carved into her own body could dull the deeper agony of losing me.
When she woke again, the only person she wanted to see was Benedict. She needed to ask him whether what she had done could be considered an answer to me at all.
Benedict was exhausted by her. He didn't want to engage anymore.
When he saw her wrapped head to toe in bandages, barely a patch of uninjured skin left, he let out a cold laugh.
"Benedict, the pain I'm in right now, does it even come close to what Myles went through?" she asked, looking at him with desperate hope.
"Even if you died, it still wouldn't make up for what he suffered," Benedict said.
The memory of my final days surfaced again in his mind.
My condition worsened quickly. Near the end, my entire body was swollen, my skin pale to the point of translucence. I coughed up blood constantly.
Because of the stomach ache, my clothes were drenched with sweat, my abdomen feeling as if it were being twisted apart.
But even that pain couldn't compare to what I felt in my heart.
Serena scattered wedding invitations everywhere. The photo on them showed her and Casper leaning close together, looking inseparable, even more affectionate than Serena and I had ever appeared back then.
While I was here, fighting for my life, she was preparing for her wedding night.
At the very end, I tried to say something. Benedict couldn't hear me. He leaned in and listened for a long time before finally catching my words.
"If there's a next life… I don't want to meet you again."
Serena trembled when she heard that. She couldn't accept that, in the end, I had let her go completely. Even if there was a next life, she would never meet me again.
"As for you wanting to see Myles' grave," Benedict said coldly, "why would I ever allow you to disturb his peace?"
He would never tell her the truth.
Before I died, I had signed a body donation agreement, offering myself for stomach cancer research. People would still come to remember me, but there was no reason Serena needed a place there.
Serena broke down sobbing.
She was disgusted with herself.
How could someone like her be allowed to stain my path to the afterlife?
"Serena, you don't need to keep destroying yourself. The law will judge you."
The next second, the police forced their way in.
"Serena Jacobs, you're now being detained on suspicion of murder," an officer announced.
She looked at them calmly and accepted her fate.
News of Serena killing her new husband, destroying Jacobs Group, and mutilating herself spread across the internet instantly.
"She wanted him back so badly she followed him straight into death."
"Am I the only one who thinks she's just doing this for herself? Where was all this when he was alive?"
"This is why you should never carry someone through their rise. Once they make it, all they remember is that you witnessed their worst moments, not that you suffered alongside them."
Public anger boiled over, and people tore into Serena.
Unfortunately, she never heard most of it.
Her condition deteriorated rapidly after that. The injuries she inflicted on herself became severely infected, and she didn't last long.
She died in a hospital bed.
When Benedict received the news, he bought a bouquet and went to my grave.
"Myles, rest easy. If you run into the two of them in the afterlife, don't go soft again. And if there really is a next life, remember this. You deserve every bit of happiness. You don't need to sacrifice yourself for love again."
