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He Framed Me to Save His Mistress,Until I Exposed Everything on Live TV
NovelShort
Hoàn thành
Before the wedding could begin, the groom, Clive Sanchez, was hauled away for questioning. He'd raped his widowed sister-in-law. I gathered up my wedding gown and rushed after him, desperate to expla...
Chương (6)
第1章
Before the wedding could begin, the groom, Clive Sanchez, was taken in for questioning for raping his brother's widow.
I ran after them in my wedding gown, gathering up the skirt to explain, but he stopped me.
"I turned myself in."
"Jade's pregnant. Mom and Dad blame her for running off with my brother, and they won't accept the baby. Her family called the police to force the Sanchezs to make a statement."
"I have to marry her. It's the only way to protect my brother's child, the only way to keep people from talking about them."
He took out a wedding ring and slid it onto my finger.
"You'll just have to put up with being my mistress for a while. Wait for me nineteen years. Once the child is grown, I'll come back to you."
He couldn't bear for them to be talked about, but he could bear to let me carry the name of the other woman.
Nineteen years. He said it as lightly as nineteen minutes.
"The premarital exam showed you're pregnant. The timing's wrong for this baby, so I've arranged a termination. Go in after the wedding."
The ache in my chest went cold in an instant.
In that moment, I saw him clearly.
The police car pulled away. I slid the ring off, threw it to the ground, and ground my heel down on it.
You thought you could chain me with this. Clive Sanchez, you think far too much of yourself.
...
I made two calls.
One to my assistant. Halt every deal with the Sanchezs. Without my backing, the company would grind to a stop in no time, and Clive Sanchez would lose everything.
One to the housekeeper at home, going through the things in the house that held our memories, one by one.
The painting Clive Sanchez and I made together. The matching pajamas we picked out. The couple dolls we sewed in each other's likeness...
On my orders, all of it went into the fire.
Watching the flames churn across the screen, I went on. "Pack up Clive Sanchez and Jade Jennings's things and send them back to the Sanchez house."
I paused, then added, "Keep the throw blanket."
Two months ago, Jade Jennings came back with news of Clive Sanchez's brother's death. The Sanchezs wouldn't take her in, her own parents looked down on her, and when she had nowhere left to go, I was the one who took her in, let her move into the wedding home under my name.
If Clive Sanchez meant to marry her, I would help them clear it openly with the Sanchez family.
"Yesterday Miss Jennings had morning sickness..." The housekeeper faltered. "Mr. Sanchez used the throw blanket to wipe her up, then threw it out when he was done..."
A sharp pain shot through my chest, so sudden it caught my breath.
That blanket. I knit it with my own hands, staying up night after night for a month.
Clive Sanchez had bad allergies. Long contact with certain fabrics left his skin red and itchy, sometimes even tight-chested and palpitating. And of course he loved to curl up on the couch to work, so I knit him that blanket, stitch by stitch, in a fabric that wouldn't irritate his skin at all.
It was the first time I'd ever tried to knit anything. When I made a mistake, I pulled it all out and started over. Dozens of times, over and over. By the time I finally finished, I'd worn my wrist down to tendinitis, and the ache still came back now and then, sharp as ever.
Clive Sanchez always rubbed my wrist for me, pained on my behalf. He'd wash that blanket himself, by hand, like it was something precious.
And now he'd used it to wipe up Jade Jennings's vomit and thrown it away like garbage, without a flicker of regret.
I gave a bitter laugh and ignored the swarm of pain in my chest. "Never mind."
"There's a jade good-luck pendant under my pillow. Keep it somewhere safe for me. I'll come back for it right away."
But the housekeeper went quiet for a moment, her voice harder still. "Last night, when you stayed at the old estate, I saw Mr. Sanchez take that pendant into Miss Jennings's room. She wore it out the door today..."
My head buzzed. I hung up at once and called Clive Sanchez instead.
Once, twice, three times...
On the ninety-ninth try, he finally picked up.
His voice was low, gentle in tone but unable to hide how little he cared. "I'm at the county clerk's office signing the papers with Jade. Be good. The sooner I wrap things up here, the sooner I'll have time for you, hm?"
My fingertips had gone numb with panic. "You took my jade pendant?"
"That's all this is about?" His patience snapped, then forced itself soft again. "Didn't you say that thing calms the nerves? Jade hasn't been sleeping well, so I gave it to her. Your pendant came in handy. Means you didn't go through all that trouble getting it for nothing, right?"
He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, taking what was mine and giving it to his new wife, as if I ought to feel honored.
"Don't go bothering Jade over this. I'll buy you ten of them later to make up for it—"
"As if I'd want them!" I finally lost control, my voice tearing out of me. "That was my mother's. She got it for me while she was dying, dragging her sick body to ask for it!"
"You took my things and gave them to Jade Jennings without my permission. Clive Sanchez, that's theft!"
第2章
"Why do you have to be so vicious about it?" Clive paused. "You only want the pendant because of the abortion, don't you?"
There was a sneer in his voice. "It's a minor operation. Was all this really necessary?"
Jade loses a little sleep and he treats it like a crisis, stealing the one thing that mattered most to me. The surgery that would kill our child, in his eyes, wasn't worth a second thought.
The cold swept through me. I shut my eyes, hung up, and drove straight for the county clerk's office.
On the way, Clive called.
I didn't answer. A text came through instead.
*I shouldn't have ignored how nervous you must be before the procedure. I apologize. You'll get the pendant back. Millicent, just pick up the phone.*
My phone buzzed again. I answered, and his voice was there at once.
"I ran into someone I know at the clerk's office just now. Since our wedding fell through today, I'm worried people will start talking about Jade. I need you to step forward and clear things up."
"Just say that Jade and I used to be together, that you schemed your way between us and broke us up, and that now you've come to your senses and want to admit you were the other woman. Apologize to Jade in front of everyone."
"Don't worry about people calling me a cheater over it. Taking a little blame is nothing to me. I just can't let Jade suffer for this."
"Handle it well, and when the child grows up I'll give you the pendant back."
My hands tightened on the wheel, and then I started to laugh.
Laughed until the tears spilled over.
He'd shielded Jade so completely that nothing could touch her, and thought a few harmless insults thrown his way made him some kind of martyr.
I was the one who'd actually been wronged. I wanted only to take back what was mine, and he was shoving me out to carry a crime I never committed, to stand there and be condemned by everyone.
And he didn't care at all.
I said nothing. I just hung up.
When I reached the clerk's office, Clive's car was already pulling away. I went after it at once.
I followed it all the way to an upscale restaurant, and watched with my own eyes as Clive got out of the driver's seat and opened the passenger door.
A foot came out of the car. He dropped to one knee, took that slender ankle in his hand, carefully tied the loose lace, brushed the dust off the toe of the shoe, and only then gently helped Jade out.
The sight drove into my chest like a knife, and my eyes were wet in an instant.
In the Sanchezs' worst days, an investor humiliated him on purpose, stuck out a foot as he got out of the car, and made him shine the man's shoes.
"What I do with Millicent Maddox is none of the business of a lowly servant like you. Understood?"
That became the deepest scar he carried. From then on, he never bent for anyone again.
Once I only asked him to drape a blanket over my mother's legs while she sat in her wheelchair, and he flew into a rage, with no regard for my embarrassment or how it made her feel.
But it only made me ache for him more. From that day on, every morning before he left, I bent down and shined his shoes and slipped them on for him myself.
I had guarded his wound so carefully, and now the sight in front of me threw it all back in my face.
I got out of the car and walked toward them, one step at a time.
"Clive."
His head snapped around. His eyes darted away, his face awkward and panicked, and without thinking he stepped in front of Jade.
"Millicent, what are you doing here?"
The moment Jade saw me, her eyes went red. "It's all my fault! I'm the one who wronged you. Don't blame Clive. If you have to blame someone, blame me..."
Her little performance lit the fuse on his anger.
Gone was the shrinking from a moment ago. He shoved me, hard.
"That's enough, Millicent! I already apologized. What more do you want? You can't have children yourself, so you want to force Jade to go die carrying a Sanchez child?"
第3章
"I forced her?" I looked Clive dead in the eye. "When her own parents and your family had driven her to the wall, I was the one who took her in!"
"If you wanted to keep her and the baby, you could have sent her abroad. Instead you'd rather burn down our wedding to marry her. What is it, Clive—is that your baby she's carrying?"
The slap landed hard across my face.
Clive's expression went black. "You knew perfectly well Mom and Dad couldn't stand Jade, and you took her in on purpose, just so they'd take it all out on her. That wasn't enough for you, and now you want to destroy her name too!"
A low murmur rippled through the crowd. A few of them, I realized, had been guests at the wedding today.
"Wait—so the wedding got called off because of this woman?"
"Tch. A mistress getting caught out in the open..."
Someone raised their voice on purpose. "Mr. Sanchez, what exactly is this lady to you?"
I pulled my mouth into something like a smile. "Yes, Clive. What is she to you?"
Jade pushed forward through all the pointing fingers. "Millicent, hit me, curse me, do whatever you want—just please don't make this hard for Clive in front of everyone..."
I dodged the hand she reached toward me. And then she clutched her stomach and hissed through her teeth.
Clive grabbed her, holding her steady, and at the sight of how pale she'd gone, his eyes went dark.
"Jade was my first love!"
He pushed her behind him and pulled a photo from his pocket. A picture of two people, a boy and a girl in school uniforms, standing side by side.
"I only found out recently—back then it was Millicent who hired thugs to harass her, who forced her to break up with me! This vicious woman is the real mistress, the one who tore us apart!"
My eyes went wide. My voice shook at the sheer madness of it.
"Clive, are you sure that's what this photo is?"
After his older brother died, Clive sank into a deep depression. Watching him like that, I hated that I couldn't carry the pain for him.
He said he wanted every photo of his brother, and I went person to person begging for them, doing whatever it took to give him what he wanted.
The one in his hand, I'd found after pulling all-nighters, digging through tens of thousands of pictures on his brother's old phone.
It had been a photo of three people.
Now Raymond, the one in the middle, had been cut out. Only Clive and Jade were left.
Staring at that carefully edited photo, something cold crawled across my whole body.
So he'd planned all along to pour every bit of filth onto me.
A flat, bitter grief filled my chest. I took out my phone and found the original image, and the moment I lifted my hand, Clive's face flashed with panic and he swatted the phone clean out of my grip.
"Millicent! What else are you trying to do to Jade?"
"You just want to take back the things I gave her, don't you? Fine—you can have it!"
He reached up and lifted the jade pendant from around Jade's neck, then hurled it down against the ground.
"Take it and get out! Don't ever come bother us again!"
I lunged on instinct, but I was still too late.
The jade hit the floor a half-second ahead of me, and a shard burst loose and cut a long line across my face.
Blood welled up. I couldn't feel the pain at all. I just looked at Clive with red, burning eyes.
He stepped back without meaning to, a flicker of unease crossing his face.
He had never once imagined that the way I looked at him could carry hatred.
"Millicent... I..."
Before he could finish, Jade cried out in pain. "My stomach! Clive, the baby..."
Clive snapped back to her and swept her up into his arms.
"Don't be afraid. I'll get you to the hospital right now!"
The leather shoes I had once polished spotless ground down hard over the back of my hand, and his stride didn't falter for an instant.
The pain blacked out my vision, but I forced my eyes to stay open, watching his back as he walked away.
The image in my mind slowly overlapped with another.
In that memory, when that rich boy had drugged me and dragged me off and I had no strength left to fight, Clive had come crashing in without a thought and knocked the man down with a single punch.
Back then, he had held me just like this, and left without a moment's hesitation.
第4章
He saved me, and the rich kid he humiliated came after him for it.
I blamed myself, my chest aching for him, crying so hard I couldn't speak.
He only wiped my tears away, gentle as ever. "I'm here. I won't let anyone hurt you."
And now, for another woman, he's become the one who's hurt me the most.
I should have seen the change in him long ago.
When Jade Jennings first came back, he used to tell me the things she'd shared about his older brother.
Little by little, every word out of his mouth was about her.
He heard she loved roses, so he bought nine hundred and ninety-nine of them and arranged them all through the house.
He'd forgotten I was allergic to pollen.
Driving me to the hospital, he frowned and scolded me. "Why didn't you say something sooner? Such a buzzkill. Jade was finally having a good time."
There was a time he carried a mask everywhere for me, a time even a single sneeze from me set him on edge.
And there was the day a man stopped Jade Jennings on the street, asking for her number.
She'd done nothing but frown, and Clive Sanchez, always so steady and even-tempered, went wild. He slammed the man to the ground and beat him until his face was a bloody mess.
Afterward he ordered the hospital to refuse treatment, leaving the man crippled for life.
I told him he'd gone too far. He just looked at me, disappointed.
"I was only thinking of how it used to be with you. Back then I beat a man bloody for your sake too. So why is it, when it's Jade, you suddenly don't understand me?"
I didn't understand.
Back then he'd hit someone to buy us a chance to run.
But this time, it was simply because Jade Jennings had lost her temper.
The memories churned, and I shook my head, dragging myself up off the ground and walking away alone while the crowd watched.
I don't know how far I'd gone before a few men blocked my path.
"Well, if it isn't the famous mistress, Millicent Maddox."
"Heard you were young enough to hire people to ruin an innocent girl's name. A bitch like you deserves a taste of her own medicine."
The words had barely landed before the thugs lunged at me and started dragging me into the alley.
My clothes tore. They wrenched my injured hand, twisting it so hard the taste of blood rose in my mouth.
I screamed for help, but the moment passersby heard they were beating a mistress, they just stood there and watched, cold-eyed.
Only one person couldn't stomach it. "You can hate a mistress all you want, but you don't get to beat someone in the middle of the street. Let her go!"
I grabbed at it like a drowning woman at a rope. "Please, help me! Please!"
One of the thugs jeered. "You know who this is? This is Millicent Maddox! You'd protect trash like her?"
The man's face changed. "The murderer Mr. Sanchez called out? Forget it. Take her to the police station!"
A sound roared in my head. The thugs froze too, and their grip loosened.
I scrambled for my phone and found the source of it all in seconds.
A video Clive Sanchez had posted.
"The rumors going around that I cheated with my late brother's widow are nothing but Millicent Maddox's slander."
"In high school, to get me, she hired thugs to torment my first love until the girl dropped out. I was deceived by her. I only learned the truth two months ago, and I broke things off with her immediately."
"Considering how young she was at the time, I meant to cover for her. I never imagined she'd refuse to repent, going so far as to spread lies about my first love and my brother. Only then was I forced to tell the truth."
At the end of the video, he held up two marriage certificates.
"If not for Millicent Maddox, my first love and I would have been married long ago. Now everything is back on track. I hope you'll all wish us well."
Beneath the video, one comment had been pushed to the top.
【*Heard your brother's death had something to do with Millicent Maddox. True or not?*】
Clive Sanchez had replied. 【*I've already gone to the police. I trust the truth will come out in the end.*】
That reply blew the comment section wide open.
【*He's already called the cops, so there's got to be proof!*】
【*Killed his brother and then slandered the man too. Pure evil. Why couldn't it have been this bitch who died?*】
【*Quit just cursing her out here. I found this monster's phone number and address. Let's all go say hello to her!*】
第5章
My hands shook as I dialed Clive's number.
"Why would you post a statement like that?"
He didn't even pause. "What happened earlier got put online, and now everyone's coming to me asking about it. What was I supposed to do? If you hadn't thrown a fit, none of this would be happening!"
"Someone at the hospital recognized Jade too. She's a young woman. Getting dragged into something like this is bad for her."
I asked through my tears, "And it isn't bad for me?"
He let out a scornful little laugh. "You got drugged and the next day you acted like nothing happened. A little name-calling is nothing."
"Stop blowing this up. While the statement's still getting attention, I'm going to do a livestream and finally give Jade the proposal I owe her. Bring me the wedding ring. It'll be perfect for you to apologize to Jade in front of everyone on the stream. That'll clear her name completely, and maybe the public will even forgive you."
"I designed that ring with my own hands!" I couldn't hold it back. "And you want me to hand it to another woman?"
His voice turned heavy with meaning. "It's just a ring, Millicent. Once this all blows over, I can come back to you—in nineteen years."
"I know you only have me. If there were any other way, I wouldn't leave you either."
When he proposed, he'd said something almost the same.
"I know you only have me. If there were any other way..."
"I want to be the one you lean on."
After my father had a stroke from the blow of losing my mother, Clive became the only thing I leaned on.
And now he was using exactly that, certain I couldn't get by without him, free to humiliate me as he pleased.
Whatever warmth was left in me went cold.
The second I hung up, someone shouted, "The police are here! Quick! We've caught Millicent Maddox, the murderer!"
So while I'd been on the phone, someone had taken the chance to call them.
I was taken to the police station.
But what waited for me wasn't an interrogation. It was a piece of surveillance footage.
An officer pointed at the timestamp in the lower left corner. "Does this date mean anything to you?"
"It does."
It was the most agonizing day of my life. And the happiest.
Three months ago, at the Sanchez company's annual gala, Clive, who was supposed to take the stage and give the address, never showed.
When I couldn't reach him no matter what I tried, the news broke that there had been a pileup on the road he always took.
I rushed to the hospital and heard the blood bank was running critically low, and an injured man named Sanchez urgently needed a transfusion.
I grabbed a passing doctor. "Take my blood! I'm his girlfriend! Take as much as you need!"
The bag filled slowly with dark red. My vision went black, and still I kept praying for Clive to be safe, even if it meant trading my own life for his.
Then the phone rang.
Clive's voice came through, perfectly fine. "Where did you go? I didn't answer earlier because I was setting up a surprise for you. Stop sulking and come back!"
So it had all been a false alarm. I was beside myself with relief. Ignoring the nurse's protests, I forced my weak, chilled body up off the table, lightheaded from blood loss, wanting only to see him that instant.
That night, with no warning at all, Clive proposed.
I was lost in the joy of getting back what I thought I'd lost, and the happiness of being proposed to by the man I loved.
I never noticed that this "surprise" he'd prepared was nothing but a ring that didn't fit.
The footage in front of me finally showed me the truth of that night.
At the roadside, the window of an SUV rolled down, and a skimpy maid costume was tossed out.
As the car rocked, I could see them clearly inside, Clive and Jade, their bodies tangled and moving, and the ring on her hand.
The ring Clive had used to propose to me.
So while I was begging the nurse to draw eight hundred milliliters of my blood, ready to trade my life for his safety, he had been with Jade in that car.
Even the engagement ring had just been pulled off Jade's finger.
A tearing pain shot through a heart I'd thought long gone numb, and the tears spilled out before I could stop them.
In silence, the officer opened another clip.
When I saw what it showed, my hand froze mid-motion, the tears still on my face.
第6章
When the footage ended, I sat in silence for a long time.
All of it settled into one low, cold scoff.
Clive Sanchez, while you were burning through every scheme to play me for a fool, did it ever cross your mind that you were someone else's toy in someone else's palm?
Right then, his message came in.
*Come over like a good girl and I'll drop the charges immediately.*
*People online have already started digging into your family. You wouldn't want your mother to have no peace even in death, would you?*
My eyes went cold, and I killed the screen.
Clive Sanchez, at your proposal, I'll make sure you understand that the one who gets no peace is you.
When I reached the proposal venue, the place was packed shoulder to shoulder, cameras propped up everywhere.
The moment I appeared, every stunned and contemptuous gaze swung onto me at once.
"Why is she even here? Shameless."
"What shame does a slut have? She's probably up to something."
"She's not here to wreck the proposal, is she? Should we stop her?"
The crowd stirred, restless. I quickened my steps, and someone shoved me hard.
My injured hand slammed into the ground, pain shooting straight through me. I lifted my head and found Mrs. Sanchez, always so gentle before, glaring down at me with a face like thunder.
"Millicent Maddox, you ruined Jade — then you twisted everything so I'd turn on her, and dumped all your spite on her!"
"And I treated you like my own daughter, you ungrateful, cold-blooded thing! To do that to Clive's older brother—"
"I did not!" My head snapped up and the words tore out of me.
At once someone shouted, "This vicious woman means to hurt Mrs. Sanchez! Stop her!"
The crowd surged in like a tide. Someone seized my hair and dragged me back, and a searing pain ripped across my scalp.
"Everyone, please, calm down!"
Clive Sanchez had watched enough of the show. He came strolling over.
The whole farce had gone out live, and the crowd's righteous fury only stamped the villain's role onto me more firmly.
Satisfaction flickered in his eyes as he raised his voice. "Millicent came here specifically to apologize to Jade. She knows she was wrong. Please, everyone, give her another chance."
Then he steadied Mrs. Sanchez. "Mom, don't be like this. Maybe there's been some misunderstanding about my brother. I don't believe Millicent would do that."
Having neatly built himself into the picture of generosity and kindness, Clive Sanchez pulled me aside, the smugness impossible to hide.
"If you'd been this obedient from the start, you wouldn't have had to apologize on a livestream."
"Here. Your good-luck pendant, to make up for it." He opened his palm. "About the same as yours, isn't it? It's not like it was worth anything. All that fuss over nothing."
I didn't take it.
His face darkened. "Not happy with this one either? Fine, I'll get you a more expensive one later, all right?"
He unfolded a sheet of paper. "Jade was worried you'd get nervous, so she wrote out a script for you. Just read off it in a bit."
The statement had me admitting, in my own words, that to win Clive Sanchez I'd put thugs up to violating Jade Jennings, and then, to keep it from coming out, that I'd threatened her and spread lies about her.
After that I'd kneel in front of her and beg for forgiveness.
And she would gently raise me to my feet and pardon my crimes.
Like that, I'd be disgraced, stripped of everything.
While they reaped everyone's praise, both fame and fortune.
What a perfect plan.
But I'd come for exactly one reason. To see that plan fall apart.
I took the script and the agreement, and under Clive Sanchez's triumphant gaze, I rolled them into a tube and whipped them hard across his face.
The venue went dead silent.
I strode straight to the main camera.
The instant I planted myself there, the romantic proposal backdrop vanished from the screen.
In its place came the surveillance footage I'd copied from the police station.
"Clive Sanchez sent me here to apologize to Jade Jennings."
"But I came to tell all of you exactly who the real culprit is, the one who violated and slandered Jade Jennings!"