I Crawled Through Hell. Turned To Be My Don Husband’s Loyalty Test Chapter 11
Sienna glared at me. “A woman who can’t even handle a little test.”
Her eyes moved to Marcus. “And now you’ve latched onto the next man. That was fast.”
Marcus spat on the ground in front of her. “Be grateful I don’t hit women.”
Then he grabbed Dominic by the collar. His knuckles were white. His voice climbed with every sentence.
“You call that a test? You wanted to check if she’d stay without the money? Fine. But who gave you the right to make her suffer alone?”
He shoved Dominic back a step.
“While you sat in your air-conditioned office playing god, do you have any idea what she was doing? “
“She was carrying the dead up a mountain in forty-degree heat. Step by step. On her back. For your son.”
“Who the hell do you think you are? Who gave you the right?”
Dominic didn’t fight back. Didn’t raise a hand. Didn’t block a single blow.
The others noticed too late. They rushed in and pulled them apart.
Nora Sterling, the oldest of the group, cut through the noise. “What the hell is wrong with you two? Talk like adults.”
“Marcus, what test? What are you talking about?”
“We all grew up together. Whatever this is, we can work it out.”
Dominic wiped the blood from his mouth. Said nothing.
Marcus grabbed a glass off the nearest table and drained it in one go.
“He won’t tell you. So I will.” A cold laugh. “You want to know who he’s been testing for seven years? Who he’s been letting the whole world mock and spit on?”
“My cousin. He let my baby cousin haul bodies for five years. He wanted to break her. “
“And when people called the money she earned dirty, he sat there and let them.”
The room went quiet. Every face changed.
Dominic got up slowly. His eyes found me across the restaurant.
I saw what he was doing. The hits he didn’t dodge. The blood he didn’t wipe.
All of it was a performance. For me.
Look how much I’ll take. Look how sorry I am.
I didn’t care.
Love that costs you your life isn’t love. It’s a leash.
I picked up the little girl and walked out.
…
Marcus beat him bloody and it changed nothing.
Dominic parked outside my grandparents’ house every single day.
My grandfather found me on the porch one morning.
“What do you want to do? Whatever it is, follow your heart. We’ll handle the rest.”
“Ten percent of Valerius Corp. That’s all I want.”
The story went online two days later. Everything.
The fake bankruptcy. The loyalty test. The five years.
It tore through the internet and dragged Dominic straight into a PR firestorm.
Marcus had given me a file weeks ago. Dominic and his uncle had been at war inside the company for years. A quiet, vicious power struggle.
I fed the uncle one piece of information. Just one.
He called an emergency board meeting within the hour.
Dominic’s empire started cracking. And still, every morning, his car was parked at the end of the driveway.
Just to see me.
I walked past him one afternoon. He hadn’t shaved. Patchy stubble. Wrinkled shirt. Dark circles carved into his face.
I used to think he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
Now he was just ugly.
“Dominic?” I stopped. “No. I should call you Domenico Valerius.”
He shook his head. “Dominic was the name my mother gave me.”
“Why do you keep coming here?”
A pause. “I just want to apologize. That’s all.”
Part of me wanted to laugh at him. But the bigger part remembered I’d been even more pathetic.
“You’d be better off worrying about your company.”
He held out a document. Stock transfer agreement. His signature already on it.
“You never needed to go through my uncle. Anything you want, I’ll give you. Just ask.”
“I just want to say I’m sorry. If you could forgive me.”
There it was. The real thing. Finally. Seven years too late.
“I can’t do that anymore.”
“I’m leaving the country next month.”
I looked at him. “If you can do one thing for me, just stay away.”
His face didn’t move. Then something broke in it. Water ran down his cheeks in two straight lines.
“Okay.”
I turned and walked back through the gate.
The gravel crunched under my shoes. Behind me, no footsteps followed.
The end.