He Asked How to Compensate Me While I Was Dying Chapter 07

He Asked How to Compensate Me While I Was Dying Chapter 07

No one listened. Someone found a black USB 

drive among the photographs and connected it to 

the large screen cycling through images for my 

memorial. 

Video footage and unmistakable sounds made 

the affair impossible to deny. 

The final clip even showed my parents standing 

outside as lookouts. 

“Arden failed to give us a child for five years, and 

then she caused her own miscarriage,” my mother 

said on the recording. 

“Thank God we still have Mallory.” 

“Once she gives birth to a Whitaker heir, half of 

everything the Whitakers own will eventually 

belong to the Bennetts.” 

The screen moved on to a compilation of Mallory’s 

two faces: sweetness in public and deliberate 

cruelty whenever we were alone. 

It showed her sending me graphic fabricated 

videos of the supposed assault and tricking me 

into eating the stew made from Scout’s remains. 

Then came the recording made after my 

ninety–nine lashes: my mother’s familiar voice on the phone and her promise to update Grant. 

The final scene showed Mallory taunting me inside the abandoned housing complex. 

All the color drained from her face. 

She lunged for the equipment, desperate to shut it down, but a military police officer blocked her. 

Mallory collapsed to her knees. 

“Grant, it’s fake. All of it. Arden synthesized those 

recordings because she hates me.” 

“She wanted revenge because you wouldn’t love 

her, and she’s trying to destroy all of us.” 

Before she could say more, Grant closed one hand 

around her throat. 

His face twisted with a rage more violent than 

anything the crowd had ever seen, and red flooded 

his eyes. 

“You abducted Arden. You personally armed the 

explosives. Were they real?” “Tell me, Mallory. Is 

Arden dead?” 

She tried to lie, but the look in his eyes made her 

tremble. 

“They were real,” she blurted. “Arden has to be 

dead by now.” 

“I didn’t mean to deceive you. I loved you too 

much, and I couldn’t bear to lose you. That’s why I 

planted the bomb.” 

“Please forgive me just once. If you ever cared about how much I love you, let me go.” 

Grant heard nothing beyond the words real bomb 

and Arden is dead. 

He threw Mallory aside, jumped into his SUV, and 

drove back toward the fire with the accelerator 

pinned to the floor. 

“My Arden can’t be dead. She promised she would 

stay with me forever.” 

A fifty–minute drive took him twenty. He ran ten red 

lights along the way. 

Fire crews had contained the worst of the blaze, 

but the heat beyond the perimeter was still fierce 

enough to blister exposed skin. 

Grant got out and stared at the smoking complex. 

He ignored every order to stop and headed inside. 

“Sir! The structure is unstable, and another 

explosion is possible. Get back!” 

He heard nothing. He had almost reached the 

entrance when the world detonated. 

Boom. 

The blast wave lifted him from the ground and 

hurled him more than thirty feet through the air.