Chapter 9
She struck my shoulder hard enough to send me crashing into the edge of a table.
Pain shot down my arm.
The phone in my pocket skidded but the call remained connected.
Evelyn grabbed my wrists, half sobbing, half screaming.
“You were always the one he loved most!”
I shoved her back with all the force I had.
She stumbled, hit the piano bench, and nearly fell.
“You’re insane.”
“No,” she said, chest heaving. “I was in love.”
“With Nathan?”
“With life,” she snapped. “With surviving. With not being the one everyone pitied.”
She laughed bitterly, wiping at her face.
“Do you know why I came back for Isaac? It wasn’t because I loved him. It was because I didn’t want you happy. Nathan was dead. I was living with his heart. And you still had everything.”
I stared at her.
It was all there now.
The affair.
The return.
The wedding sabotage.
The hatred.
“You came back to destroy me.”
“Yes.”
The word came out without hesitation.
“Because you got to keep living your perfect life while I carried this.” She struck her chest with her fist. “His heart. His memory. His punishment.”
Sirens wailed faintly in the distance.
Evelyn heard them too.
Her expression changed.
“You called the police.”
I said nothing.
She backed away, then gave a strange, broken smile.
“Good.”
Moments later, officers stormed the room.
Evelyn did not run.
She only stood there, pale and hollow, while I gave my statement with my entire body trembling.
I told them everything.
The affair.
The hospital records.
Isaac’s confession.
What Evelyn had just admitted.
When they led her away in handcuffs, she looked at me once and said hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”
I did not answer.
There was nothing left to say.
The investigation moved quickly after that.
Evelyn’s financial records revealed quiet payments made years earlier to the drunk driver who had killed Nathan.
The police reopened the accident case.
Isaac, under pressure, gave a formal statement.
And then the final truth emerged.
Seven years ago, Isaac had arranged for the men who cornered me in that alley.
He had engineered the danger.
He had known I would call Nathan.
He had known Nathan would come.
He had also known Evelyn was desperate enough to do anything for a matching heart.
Isaac never intended to get his own hands dirty.
He wanted the crisis.
He wanted Nathan out of the way.
He wanted to appear at exactly the right moment to save me and secure my trust forever.
And it had worked.
For years.
The police said that while Evelyn had organized the fatal hit through the driver, Isaac had manipulated every piece around it.
He was charged with conspiracy, fraud, and obstruction tied to the reopened case.
His family’s legal team fought viciously, but the scandal was too large, the evidence too ugly.
The Gerald empire crumbled by the week.
Investors fled.
Directors resigned.
Their flagship deal collapsed.
Public sympathy vanished overnight.
As for Evelyn, the charges against her ensured she would never walk free again.
When the detectives told me, I sat very still and thought only this:
Nathan finally had the truth.
It did not bring him back.
But it gave his death a name.