The Wife He Tried To Erase Chapter 15
Nicholas did not die on that rainy night.
Elroy took him to the hospital, where he suffered from a high fever and pneumonia, nearly burning his mind into madness.
But the first thing he did when he woke up was to pull out the IV tube and stumble out to look for Emilia.
Since begging had failed, he decided to use the method he was best at: trading.
In his life, Nicholas had never failed to buy anything except Emilia’s heart.
Three days later, at Emilia’s studio.
Zachary was not there, and Emilia was mixing colors.
When she heard the sound of the wind chime at the door, she did not look up, but her brush paused slightly in her hand.
“I told you, if that lunatic comes again, I’ll call the police right away.”
“Not a lunatic, but the largest shareholder of the Gallagher Group.”
Nicholas’s voice came from behind.
He wore a dark gray cashmere coat, his face still pale to the point of transparency, but he had shaved and tidied his hair, returning to that noble and aloof appearance.
Only his eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets.
Only his eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets.
He walked in and placed a thick file folder next to Emilia’s palette.
“What is this?”
Emilia finally looked up, her gaze cold.
“Thirty percent of the Gallagher Group’s shares, and all my overseas trust funds.”
Nicholas spoke calmly.
“Additionally, I have evidence that Valentina framed your father for embezzlement years ago. I’ve had it organized, and it can overturn the case at any time.”
Emilia’s hand holding the brush froze.
Her father had been wrongfully imprisoned and died in despair; it was a thorn in her heart.
“Nicholas, what do you think these can buy?”
“Buy me to go back with you? Or buy the title of Mrs. Gallagher?”
“Buy you a chance.”
Nicholas looked at her, his gaze greedily sweeping over her features.
“Buy you letting me stay, even if only as a servant who carries your shoes, even if only to watch you from the corner.”
“Emmy, these assets are enough for you to squander for several lifetimes. You can use them to fulfill your artistic dreams, you can step over everyone…”
“Even step over you?” Emilia interrupted him.
“Yes.” Nicholas did not hesitate at all. “As long as it relieves your anger, you can dismantle the Gallagher Group as you wish, and you can take my life whenever you want.”
Emilia looked at him and suddenly laughed.
She laughed so hard her body shook, even tears spilled from her eyes.
“Nicholas, you are truly pathetic. Even now, you still think I am the Emilia who would wag her tail for money, for status, for a bit of your charity?”
She stood up and casually picked up the file folder worth a fortune.
“You want to atone?”
She walked to the fireplace, where the flames were burning fiercely.
“Yes, I want…”
“Snap.”
Emilia loosened her grip, and the file folder fell into the fire.
The flames instantly devoured the papers; the Gallagher Group’s assets worth hundreds of millions were, in her eyes, not even as valuable as the coals warming the room.
Nicholas’s pupils contracted violently, and he instinctively wanted to reach out and snatch it, but Emilia’s icy voice pinned him in place.
“Don’t move.”
Emilia turned around and pointed to the tightly closed door deep inside the studio.
“Didn’t you want to see my paintings? You said you understood them? Ha, Nicholas, you actually understood nothing.”
She walked step by step to that door and pushed it open.
“Come in. Let me show you what a hundred rounds of electroshock have left me with.”
The room was unlit, only the bleak white light from the skylight shining in.
The walls were covered with paintings.
Not just one, but a hundred.
This series was called—A Hundred Deaths.
The moment Nicholas stepped into the room, he was struck as if by lightning, frozen in place.
The first painting showed a girl on an operating table, her terrified eyes reflecting Nicholas’s cold silhouette as he signed the consent form.
The tenth painting showed the girl’s fingernails tearing the bedsheet, electricity coursing through her body, her features twisted into an inhuman shape.
The fiftieth painting showed the girl’s mouth drooling, her gaze vacant, while the man beside her was laughing with another woman in his arms.
Nicholas staggered past each painting.
Every single one depicted torture.
In the paintings, he saw Emilia’s despair, her breakdown, and the hideous version of himself.
Until the last painting.
It was the hundredth.
There was no Emilia in the painting.
Only a faceless man, dressed in an elegant suit, holding a scalpel, gently pressing the tip into the shape of a heart.
That heart was bright red, beating.
And in the man’s other hand was the treatment consent form.
“Ugh—”
Nicholas could no longer hold back, clutching the wall as he retched violently.
His stomach was empty; all he vomited was sour water.
It hurt too much.
It hurt too much.
Looking at these paintings was ten thousand times more painful than that night of electroshock.
“Can’t take it anymore?”
Emilia stood behind him.
“Nicholas, these are just paintings. But I lived through a hundred times. Every time the current passed through my brain, I wondered why you didn’t just kill me.”
Nicholas knelt on the ground, trembling all over, his face smeared with tears and snot.
He raised his head, trying to grab the hem of her skirt, but she avoided him in disgust.
“Emmy… hate me… kill me…”
He cried like a child, his voice hoarse and broken. “Please… don’t do this to me… don’t make me look at these… I was wrong… I really was wrong…”
“Hate you?”
Emilia seemed to have heard a joke.
She squatted down, her gaze level with his.
“Nicholas, you overestimate yourself.”
She reached out and gently patted his cheek, her touch soft but chilling to the bone.
“Hate means I still care, means you still have a place in my heart. But now, I don’t even hate you.”
“Look at these paintings.” She pointed to the wall.
“Once I finished them, I was freed. To me, you are just a stain to be erased, a disgusting medical record, a pile of ashes left behind.”
“I don’t hate you, because I don’t hate garbage.”
Even if she said “I hate you,” even if she stabbed a knife into his chest, he could still feel a trace of life.
But she said he was garbage.
She had truly removed him from her life.
The Emilia who loved him as her life was truly gone.
She had been killed by his own hands.
“Go.” Emilia stood up and dusted off her hands. “Don’t dirty my studio. Zachary will be back soon, and I don’t want him to see any outsiders here.”
Nicholas did not know how he managed to walk out of that room.
He wandered into the swirling snow like a walking corpse.
Behind him, the studio door slammed shut.
At that moment, he finally understood.
This was his ending.
This was his ending.
In this life, he had won power and wealth, but lost the only soul in the world who truly loved him.