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"No!" she shouts. "Please stop."
But he doesn't. "Tell them. Tell them all how much you have always hated the Baxter name. Tell them how humiliated you were when Damien called your engagement off. Tell them how you came to me for help. Tell them how you swore you would do everything to take them down, you were just waiting for your chance."
"Clarissa..." I gasp.
Her face blanched. "It wasn't like that!"
"Oh my god," My-Linh exhales, echoing my own thoughts.
"It's not what happened!" Clarissa yells, backing up.
Gerry keeps going, the only one whose voice stays even, calm. Cold. "You were angry at Damien... Don't lie about that."
She nods. "I was. But everyone knows that. But that has nothing to do with Matthias. I was mad at Damien, and I was stupid. But that's all over."
Gerry continues, "Is it, really?"
Her eyes fill with tears and she pleads with him. "Please. Please, Gerry, stop! Why are you doing this to me?"
His face doesn't even move when he says, "We had a deal, sweetheart, that's why. The deal we made when you were lying in bed. Or don't you remember?"
"Gerry! Stop!" she wails.
I can't breathe
I don't want to hear any more but I can't stop before knowing the truth.
I face her, the question on my lips. "Did you sleep with him?"
"Matthias. Please." Tears stream down her cheeks.
I want to look away, but I won't know the truth unless she says it to my face. "I asked you a question, Clarissa. Did you sleep with him?"
Gerry interrupts, "I—"
I swing around, feeling murderous. "You shut the fuck up. God, if you value your life, you're going to shut the fuck up." I turn to her again, my head suddenly pounding. "Clarissa. I'm going to give you one last chance to tell me the truth. Did you sleep with my uncle?"
Her face tells me everything I didn't want to know. The pain in her eyes cuts me like a serrated machete, slashing, tearing, maiming me forever. I want to reach out for her. I want to hold her until we forget about this day.
"Say it," I whisper. "I need to hear you say it."
She shakes her head, her entire face crumpled into sobs. "God, Matthias, please don't make me. Please. It's the biggest mistake I ever made."
"Say it!" I roar.
"Matthias," Kingsley says, in a soft, but warning voice. But I don't care. I can't know how I'm going to move on from this moment if I don't hear her say it. Or else I won't let myself believe it.
"Matthias, please. I lo—"
I shake my head, not wanting to hear what she's about to say. "Stop. That's not what I asked you. Say it."
"Yes, I slept with him." Sobs wrack through her chest and tremor the entire room.
The admission knocks the air out of my lungs, and my veins burn with betrayal. My heart breaks, shatters, like someone dunked it into liquid nitrogen and then slammed a sledge hammer right into the left ventricle, breaking it into a million pieces, scattering all over the remnants of whatever existed between her and me.
Realization dawns. "And you told him I was at Leanne's house."
"I didn't call him!" she says, panicked. "I swear I didn't call him!"
