When We Meet Again As Strangers novel Chapter 6

And I had long stopped being deserving of it.

I laughed through my tears, turning to look out the window. It turned out the fireworks lighting up the night were celebrating them.

As I looked away, my phone began to buzz incessantly with news alerts.

The headlines read: “Suspected Tyler Leaked Private Photos and Recordings of His Wife Before His Death, Disturbing Details Suggest Troubling Secrets in Their Marriage.”

I could hardly breathe, my mind blank.

I didn’t know what made me tremble as I opened the article, only to be plunged into a whirlpool of terror.

The pixelated photos were the painful hell I had once lived through.

And now, they were exposed to the light of day, open for everyone to gawk at and discuss.

The most prominent image was of me, naked, bound with ropes so tightly that I looked almost unrecognizable.

The exposed recording echoed Tyler’s sinister laugh in my ears.

“Ha ha ha, Jasmine, you wanted to act all high and mighty, but look at you now, don’t you look like a crab tied up and struggling?”

“You deserve it! You couldn’t even focus when you thought of that Mr. Chase! Too bad he’ll never know what you’ve sacrificed for him, he’ll just think you’re filthy!”

Comments flooded in by the hundreds, thousands even. They discussed my body, my skin color, even my hair.

And the screen was filled with words like “cheap” and “disgusting.”

Here and there, a few more observant people were wondering who the “Mr. Chase” in the recording could be.

My head was spinning, my legs unsteady as if walking on cotton.

But was it really him? It must’ve been a hallucination.

Victor... wasn’t he supposed to be celebrating with his fiancée and watching fireworks?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t open my eyes.

In my daze, I felt someone pick me up, securely carrying me over their shoulder, running as fast as they could.

It was like when I’d hurt my foot on broken glass as a child, and Victor had frantically carried me.

His voice was in my ears, calling out to me.

“Don’t sleep, Jasmine, please don’t sleep, stay with me, I’m taking you to the hospital right now!”

“I was wrong, I’m so sorry, I heard the recording, I deserve to die. Please wake up, punish me if you can, just please don’t leave me!”