Only Leaving You My Charred Bones

The ninth time I caught Corey Dwight in bed with another woman, he played the exact same card. He fell to his knees, slapping his own face until his cheeks were raw, begging for my forgiveness with bloodshot eyes. Just as I was about to soften—again—a dry, raspy voice echoed in my head. It was a voice that sounded old, withered, and entirely too much like my own. “Why?” the voice asked. “You already have a grandson with him. Why won’t you just leave?” I froze. A grandson? Whose grandson? Then came the avalanche of regrets, whispered in my mind like a dying breath: “Corey, when we were twenty-six, I got pregnant. You told me you hated kids, and that very night, you dragged me to the clinic to get rid of it.” “At thirty, Melanie cried to you about some imaginary slight, and you wrapped your hands around my throat, telling me to just go die.” “At forty, I nearly died giving birth to our daughter. But she was only born so her bone marrow could save Melanie’s son. After the biopsy, you took everyone and left, leaving our baby girl to die of an infection in an empty hospital room.” “You even locked me inside the house during your grandson’s hundred-day banquet, making me miss my own mother’s final breath.” The voice grew thicker with a forty-year-old hatred while the young Corey knelt before me, swearing his undying love. “I don’t owe you anything anymore,” the voice wept. “If I could do it all over again, I would rather have died at twenty. I would have let myself rot in that abandoned construction site before I ever agreed to marry you.” A cold shiver ran down my spine. Every single word the voice spoke felt like a prophecy of my own future. The abandoned construction site at twenty? That was exactly where Corey and I had started. … Corey had blood at the corner of his mouth. He knelt, his eyes desperate, his voice raw. “Grace, I’m so sorry. I was drunk. I swear to God, I was drunk.” Drunk? But every single time he slipped up, it was with Melanie. Melanie sat on the edge of the mattress, the strap of her silk slip hanging loosely off her shoulder. She shrugged, entirely unbothered. “Your husband’s pretty good, honey. You’re welcome.” She walked over to me, her eyes dripping with condescension. “But honestly, why do you even care? You’re damaged goods anyway. You can’t expect a guy like him to keep his hands off fresh meat.” A soft, heavy sigh echoed in my mind again. “Corey, let’s just let the fire burn us both to ash. If I could start over, I’d never let you touch me. If I hadn’t held onto hope this ninth time… if I had just let you have Melanie, would we both have ended up differently?” The ninth time? That was right now. The sound of crackling flames roared in my ears, and for a split second, a searing, suffocating heat washed over me, as if bridging a forty-year gap. My hand moved before I could think. I slapped Melanie across the face. Usually, no matter how angry I got, I only took it out on Corey. I had never touched Melanie. We had both survived that hellish basement years ago, and that shared trauma had always held me back. She stared at me, shocked, her hand rising to strike back, but I caught her wrist mid-air. “Do you love Corey?” I asked. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Do you think everyone is as pathetic as you, Grace? Love? We’re adults. We just use each other.” My voice trembled, but a cold smile touched my lips. “Good. Because he loves you.” I turned to Corey, slipped the diamond ring off my finger, and dropped it into his palm. “Corey, we’re done. I want a divorce.” The room fell deathly quiet. Corey went stiff, staring at the ring in his hand as if it were a live grenade. Then, he scrambled toward me on his knees, desperately trying to force the ring back onto my finger. I pushed him away. He began to unravel, his eyes darting frantically around the room. “Grace, I don’t love her! I don’t care about her at all!” His eyes landed on the paring knife sitting on the fruit platter on the coffee table. “You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. I’ll prove you’re the only one.” Before I could react, he grabbed the handle and drove the silver blade straight into his own chest. He collapsed to his knees, blood coughing up from his throat, but he still crawled toward me, inch by inch. “Grace… is this… enough?” he gasped, his voice a wet, painful rattle. It was his favorite trick. From the moment we escaped that half-built building when I was twenty, to now at twenty-four, he had accumulated dozens of scars. Every time he went too far, he would hurt himself to make me pity him, to force me to forgive him. But today, the spell was broken. I had no desire to die in a house fire with him forty years from now. He stared into my eyes, searching for even a flicker of panic, of the desperate love I usually showed. But there was nothing. Just a flat, empty gaze. He cracked. A look of sheer, agonizing defeat crossed his face. He grabbed the hilt, twisted the blade inside his flesh, and ripped it out. When I still didn’t flinch, he raised the knife to plunge it in again. At the last second, Melanie grabbed the bare blade with her hand. “Are you out of your mind, Corey?” she screamed, blood dripping from her palm. “She’s just a used-up piece of trash! You said so yourself!” I stepped around them, walking toward the door without looking back. “I’ll have my lawyer draw up the papers. See you tomorrow.” “If you leave me,” his roar echoed from behind, “you leave in a body bag!” I paused, turned back, and walked over to him. I knelt down. He smirked, thinking he had won again, that I was about to bend. But instead, I snatched the knife from his hand and aimed it directly at my own heart. The blow never landed. His hand clamped around the blade, his knuckles white, his veins bulging on his neck. He roared at me: “Get the hell out!” The next morning, I rolled my suitcase out of the bedroom. The living room downstairs was loud. Corey was there, his face pale as death, surrounded by a group of his sleazy friends. He pointed a finger at me and sneered. “Your parents have been dead for three years, Grace. For three years, you’ve lived off my dime, eaten my food, and used my money. Now that you’ve bled me dry, you think you can just pack up and walk away? Is that how the Callahan family raises their daughters? No shame at all?” I gripped the handle of my suitcase tighter. “What do you want, Corey?” He looked at the blond guy next to him and let out a cruel laugh. “Make my boys happy. Once they’re satisfied, we’ll call it even. You can go wherever the hell you want.” Last night he wanted me dead, and I hadn’t shed a tear. But now, a bitter, choking sorrow clawed its way up my throat. Seeing me hesitate, he leaned in, his voice dripping with venom. “Oh, what, are we acting pure now? Those videos of you with those guys are still all over the internet. Everyone’s seen them. You’ve got ‘whore’ written all over you, Grace. Who are you trying to play the virgin for?” My entire body went rigid. The air left my lungs. He really knew how to hurt me. He was the love of my youth, the man I had given everything to, and he knew exactly where to twist the knife. The blond guy stepped forward, whistling as he looked me up and down. He smirked at Corey. “You serious, man? You’re really letting us have a turn?” Before the guy could finish, Corey’s fist flew out, cracking against the guy’s jaw. “Shut your mouth!” Corey snarled, his eyes wild. “She’s a piece of trash that’s been ridden by a dozen guys. I get sick just looking at her.” The blond guy clutched his bleeding face, nodding quickly. “Right, right. Sorry, man.” Corey turned back to me, his sneer returning. “When those videos leaked, your dad had a heart attack and died on the spot. You had no problem putting on a show back then. Have you forgotten how to do it after a few years of luxury?” Something inside me snapped. I let go of my suitcase and walked straight toward him. “I just wanted to survive, Corey. Was that my crime? If you wanted me dead so badly, why did you even bother saving me from that basement?” His face flushed a violent red. He grabbed my jaw, squeezing so hard I felt my bones creak. His eyes looked like they wanted to tear me apart. “To survive? Melanie was locked up in that basement for two weeks too. Did she sleep with those bastards? No! Grace, do you think I’m blind? Melanie heard everything. She heard you begging them. You practically stripped for them yourself!” Slap. The sound echoed through the room. My hand stung before I even realized I had swung it. “That was because I thought…” I choked on the words, swallowing the truth down. Back then, those monsters had pointed at Melanie, who was shivering in the dark corner, and threatened to kill her. I thought she was Corey’s younger sister, Rosalie. So, even though I knew it would ruin my life, even though I knew the world would spit on me, I swallowed my disgust and did whatever those beasts wanted to keep her safe. But two weeks later, when Corey broke through the doors, covered in blood, I found out the truth. Rosalie had tried to draw the kidnappers away from us, got pushed off a cliff, and was lying in a coma. The girl in the corner wasn’t Rosalie at all. It was Melanie, who just happened to have the same frame and hair. Corey claimed he didn’t care about the videos, but he punished me every single day. He slept with Melanie, compared me to her, and convinced himself that I was just a cheap, loose woman. Suddenly, the fight drained out of me. It was all so incredibly pointless. I let out a soft, hollow laugh. “You’re right. I’m just a cheap whore.” I turned, pushing the blond guy down onto the sofa. My loose shirt slid down my shoulder, exposing my collarbone, my hair falling over my face. The guy’s eyes lit up with lust, but he kept glancing nervously at Corey, his hands twitching, unsure if he should touch me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned in to kiss him. Crash! A heavy glass vase shattered against the wall behind us. Water and shards of glass exploded across the room. A sharp, burning pain sliced through my forearm. Blood began to drip down my skin. Corey lunged forward, grabbing my wrist with brutal force and ripping me off the man. “You want to die, Grace?!” he roared. He slammed me backward, his chest colliding with my injured arm. I couldn’t help the small, painful whimper that escaped my lips. Corey froze for a fraction of a second, staring at the smear of red on his shirt. But the warmth vanished instantly, replaced by that familiar, icy mask of hatred. “Is that it? Any guy with a pulse will do?” My heart squeezed, then went completely numb. Maybe he had loved me once. Maybe he had cared. But this twisted, suffocating version of love? I didn’t want it anymore. I pushed his hand away and climbed back onto the blond guy. Corey snapped. He dragged me off the couch by my hair and threw me onto the floor, then turned to his men, screaming like a lunatic: “Break his hands! Throw him out of Chicago!” The blond guy’s desperate screams echoed down the hallway as the guards dragged him away. Corey hovered over me, his eyes bloodshot, his fingers digging into my shoulders so hard they bruised. “You’re unbelievable, Grace! If your father could see you now, he’d die all over again.” I stared back at him, empty. “Are you happy now?” He seemed to have forgotten his own words, looking at me with a sudden, confused desperation. “No. If you want them so bad, I can bring them back.” I glanced at the other guys shivering in the corner. Corey realized what I meant, his chest heaving with rage. “Get out! All of you, get the fuck out!” He kicked a glass coffee table, shattering it, throwing a wild, helpless tantrum to release his inexplicable fury. I picked up my purse, pulled out the divorce agreement, and held it out to him. “If you’re done, sign it.” In the next second, he snatched the papers and tore them to shreds, throwing the confetti into the air. His massive hand wrapped around my throat, pinning me against the wall. “My sister is still lying in a vegetative state because of you, Grace. What makes you think you get to just walk away and be happy?” Why did I get to walk away? Four years ago, Corey was the rising star of Chicago’s business world. He had plenty of admirers, but even more enemies. Someone put a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head. Everyone knew his sister, Rosalie, was his Achilles’ heel. When I realized we were being followed that day, I made Rosalie swap jackets with me. Just as I planned, they thought I was her and chased me. When they threw me into the back of that van, I actually felt a sick sense of relief, thinking I had saved the person he loved most. But I never could have predicted that Rosalie, trying to draw the rest of the gang away, would scream out her real identity. They chased her to the edge of a cliff, and she jumped. She had been in a coma ever since. We were both victims. But because Rosalie was his sister, she was the martyr. And I, the girlfriend who survived, had to bear the cross of his hatred for the rest of my life. I laughed, my throat tight under his grip. “Then what do you want, Corey? Do you want me to kill myself to pay her back?” He let go of me, a storm raging in his dark eyes. “No. Death is too easy. You want to leave? I won’t let you. I will keep you here for the rest of your life. Even if you rot, even if you lose your mind, you are never stepping foot out of this house.” It wasn’t until I heard the heavy thuds of hammers outside, watching the light slowly vanish from the windows, that I realized what he was doing. I threw myself at him like a wild animal, screaming, clawing at his chest. “Corey! This is kidnapping! It’s illegal!” He looked down at me, his smile cold and mocking. “I’m just a devoted husband caring for his sick, unstable wife. Who’s going to stop me?” I slid to the floor, completely drained of strength. I didn’t even hear him leave. He had the windows boarded up. Not a single ray of sunlight could penetrate the house. He fired all the staff, leaving only a cleaning lady who came for an hour every evening. But the moment she tried to whisper a sympathetic word to me, Corey fired her too. After that, my world fell into absolute, suffocating silence. Two weeks later, Corey came back. He sat on the edge of my bed, gently brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “If you promise not to leave, I’ll have the boards taken down. We can go back to how things used to be.” I closed my eyes, refusing to look at him. He slammed his fist into the drywall, leaving a crater, and stormed out. In the middle of the night, a loud crash woke me. The overhead lights flickered on, blinding me. Corey kicked the door open, dragging Melanie inside. He pinned her against the door, kissing her with a desperate, violent hunger. He ripped his shirt off, his voice thick and raspy as he sneered at me: “This is my house, Grace. If you don’t want to watch, get the hell out. Or do you want to see exactly how I make love to Melanie?” Melanie gasped for air, flashing me a brilliant, triumphant smile. “You have no idea how wild Corey gets, Grace. I’d hate for you to feel left out. After all, when he’s holding me, he doesn’t have to think about all those disgusting men who had their hands on you.” For four years, they had tortured me. Under their relentless cruelty, I had spent every single day asking myself why I hadn’t just died in that half-built building. I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms until they bled, just to keep from breaking down in front of them. As I tried to slip past them to go downstairs, Corey’s phone rang. He answered it impatiently, but the moment he heard the voice on the other end, he pushed Melanie away. “What did you say?” his voice shook. “Rosalie is awake?” My heart stopped. His sister was awake. She was finally awake. The crushing weight of guilt that had suffocated me for four years suddenly lifted. He scrambled to grab his clothes, running down the stairs with a light, frantic step—happier than I had seen him in years. Melanie ran after him, and within seconds, the villa fell back into that familiar, deadly silence. My chest heaved. I couldn’t tell if I was crying or laughing. Rosalie was awake. Whatever debts I owed, they were paid. I began tearing through the house, searching for a way out. No matter how tightly he had boarded up the windows, there had to be a weak spot. Hours passed. Without the sun, I couldn’t tell day from night. After dozens of failed attempts, the last of my sanity snapped. I grabbed whatever I could find—vases, chairs, lamps—and hurled them at the boarded-up windows. I stepped on shattered glass, but I couldn’t feel the pain. But Corey had been thorough. Behind the wooden boards were heavy steel security grates, and behind those were even more bars. I was trapped. Truly, utterly trapped. In a manic haze of despair, grief, and hatred, I grabbed a lighter and set the curtains on fire. The flames spread rapidly, climbing the walls, swallowing the room in a hungry, golden roar. Even though I had heard the warning of my older self in my head, I still couldn’t escape my fate. I was going to burn to death. My only regret was that I couldn’t drag Corey into the fire with me.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “540703”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel