My Husband Killed My Eight Children For My Best Friend Chapter 06
By the time Mia and I made it to Iceland, we had both fallen for the northern lights.
They were quiet. Beautiful in a way no photograph could quite capture.
We talked it over and decided to stay for a while. It seemed as good a place as any to start writing the script.
Aside from writing, I also picked up sea fishing.
Some days the haul was more than we could eat, so Mia and I would take it down to the harbor and sell it off.
That morning, the two of us were haggling with a notoriously tightfisted local — an older man who didn’t part with a cent easily.
Then, from behind me, came a voice I knew.
“I’ll take all of it.”
My body went rigid.
I turned around and there he was. Adrian.
He had lost a great deal of weight. Exhaustion sat heavy under his eyes. But the way he looked at me still made my stomach turn.
He stared at me for a long time — as if he were afraid I might vanish the moment he blinked.
“Emily,” he said softly. “I finally found you.”
Before I could open my mouth, Mia had planted herself in front of me.
“You’ve got some nerve, showing up here.”
“Haven’t you ruined her enough? Get lost. We’d sooner throw all this back into the sea than sell it to you.”
Adrian didn’t fire back.
Once, his pride had mattered to him above everything.
Now, cursed at in public by Mia, he only kept looking at me. His eyes were full of guilt, of pleading.
“Emily, I know I’m a bastard. I’m sorry. For everything.”
“Can we talk? Just the two of us?”
I looked at him without warmth.
“Adrian. There’s nothing left for the two of us to talk about.”
“You don’t owe me an apology. Go home.”
Adrian shook his head.
“No, Emily. It took me this long to find you. I can’t lose you again.”
“I never signed the divorce agreement. Legally, you’re still my wife.”
Mia looked ready to lunge at him.
I held her back.
“Don’t touch him. He’s filthy.”
Then I looked at Adrian and gave a small, thin smile.
“So what is it you want?”
“For me to come back. Go on being your wife?”
“Adrian, I’ve lost eight children. My body is destroyed. I can’t get pregnant anymore.”
“There’s nothing left in me that Sophie could still want.”
“By now she must have had your baby. What are you even doing here?”
The color drained from his face.
He shook his head, frantic.
“No, Emily. It wasn’t like that.”
“That child wasn’t one I gave her. She bribed people around me. She took our babies and used them to torment you.”
“I’m cruel — but I’d never—”
I cut him off with a cold laugh.
“So?”
“You didn’t hand them over yourself, so that makes you innocent?”
“She stole the remains. Fine.”
“But the one who killed those children — with his own hands — was you.”
“Adrian. Doesn’t it seem a little absurd, saying all this now?”
His eyes reddened.
“Emily, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. I know.”
“I’ve already had them get rid of the baby in Sophie’s belly. She’s never going to come between us again.”
“If you want it, I’ll go back and fight for the CEO seat at Blackwood Group.”
“Emily — if you’ll just come home with me, there’s nothing I won’t do.”
I watched him cry, and I felt nothing.
I said it slowly, word by word: “Then go and die.”
He froze.
“What?”
“You said there’s nothing you wouldn’t do.”
“Then die.”
“Pay for my children with your life.”
It was the first time I had ever seen genuine panic on Adrian’s face.
He stared at me. His voice trembled.
“Emily. Do you hate me that much?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not just hate.”
“You disgust me.”
“I look at you now, and I want to be sick.”
“So stay as far from me as you can. Do you understand?”
Something in him seemed to break at last.
He dropped to his knees in front of me, and he wept — openly, without dignity.
Everyone around the harbor was watching.
I looked down at him, and I was calm.
“Adrian. When I married you, I really did mean to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“And you?”
“For Sophie, you killed my children. Over and over.”
“You watched my body fall apart, day by day.”
“You watched your mother humiliate me. You watched strangers laugh at me.”
“I didn’t know any of it. I thought I was the one who had failed you.”
“By the end, I already knew there was something in that glass of milk. I begged you not to make me drink it.”
“You forced it down my throat anyway.”
“I never cared about being the first lady of Blackwood Group.”
“Whether you had money, whether you inherited the company — none of it mattered to me.”
“Even the position of your wife — if you’d told me you wanted to give it to Sophie, I would have stepped aside.”
“I would have taken my child and left. I’d have gone somewhere you never had to see me again.”
“But you said nothing.”
“You made the choice for me.”
“You destroyed my right to be a mother.”
“You made me live through losing a child again and again and again.”
“Admit it, Adrian.”
“In your heart, you never saw me as a person at all.”
He shook his head through his tears.
“That’s not true. It’s not like that—”
I stopped listening.
“Adrian, I’m doing well now.”
“After I left you, I found out what freedom actually feels like.”
“I’m happy.”
“If you really want to make it up to me, sign the divorce agreement.”
“And then don’t ever show your face to me again. Not once. Not for the rest of your life.”
I turned and walked away.
Mia upended the entire basket of fish and shrimp over his head.
The stench was overpowering. Water ran down through his hair and dripped from his suit.
Then she slammed the empty basket down on him for good measure.
“Adrian. If there’s any piece of a human being left in you, leave Emily alone.”
“Don’t come near her again.”
Adrian stayed kneeling there for a long time.
People kept watching, kept talking.
He didn’t move.
It wasn’t until late that night that he finally rose, unsteady, and walked away.