The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 452

Rhett’s POV 

The fluorescent lights of the emergency room hum with a sound like dying insects. They’ve just wheeled her out, pale as the sheets, a bandage stark and white around her wrist. Two hours of frantic work to pull her back from the edge she so deliberately chose. Now, she stirs. Her eyes flutter open, bleary, disoriented. Then they sharpen, darting around the sterile room—searching, desperate, hungry for one face.

My heart, stupid and loyal, clenches. I know who she’s looking for.

“Stop looking.” My voice sounds rough in the quiet. “He didn’t come.”

Her head turns slowly on the pillow. Her eyes find me, sitting in the chair by the wall. For a second, there’s confusion. Then recognition, followed by a welling of tears that seem genuine in their disappointment. “What are you doing here?”

I look at her, this woman who used to shine with a confidence that captivated me. Now she’s a fragile ghost in a hospital gown, veins tracked with betrayal and saline. I can’t reconcile the two. “What will it take for you to wake up, Reyna?” The question is a plea. “Cassian never liked you. Not before the divorce, and certainly not after.” I force the next words out, a cruel but necessary truth. “He’s already gone. He flew to Florisdale this morning. He’s chasing Gemma.”

The effect is instant and devastating. Her face, already pale, seems to drain of its last drop of blood. The fragile hope in her eyes shatters into a thousand brittle pieces. “No,” she whispers, then stronger, defiant. “That’s impossible. He can’t have no feelings for me. We’ve known each other for so many years! I met him long before Gemma did. I’ve done so much for him. How could he not…” Her voice cracks, the sentence dissolving into a shaky breath.

I watch her spiral, a familiar ache in my chest—part pity, part frustration, part a love I can’t seem to kill. “Reyna, stop deceiving yourself. Cassian has only ever seen you as a friend. And by the time you started repeatedly going after Gemma, you’d already worn out whatever goodwill he had left.”

The truth is a slap. She reacts violently. She sits bolt upright, wincing at the movement, and snatches the plastic medical chart from her bedside table. With a strength that shocks me, she hurls it at my head. I don’t flinch; it clatters harmlessly to the floor.

“You’re lying! Shut up!” she screams, her composure gone. “Cassian would never abandon me! He’s divorced her! Gemma will never forgive him! Never!” She’s clinging to her narrative like a life raft, believing that with Gemma out of the picture as the wife, she, Reyna, is the inevitable, the only one left. If she just endures, just suffers beautifully enough, he’ll finally see.

A doubt I’ve been nursing for weeks, fed by her increasingly erratic stories, chooses this moment to surface. My voice is low, dangerous. “Reyna. Back when you were young… were you really the first one to meet Cassian?”

She freezes. All the hysterical energy vanishes, replaced by a sudden, wary stillness. Her eyes narrow, suspicious, calculating. “What do you mean?”

I press on, the memory taking shape. “You said your first meeting was as kids, climbing a mountain. Right?” Everyone knows the story. Cassian fell, got lost, was found in a hut with his ankle bandaged by a girl’s silk scarf. Reyna claimed the scarf, the rescue, the whole fairy-tale beginning. Cassian never disputed it. Why would he? The details fit.

But lately… the edges have started to fray. Her telling has become too perfect, too rehearsed. “Reyna,” I say, leaning forward, my gaze locked on hers. “Tell me the truth. Was it really you on the mountain that day?”

She turns her head sharply away, refusing to look at me. “Of course it was me! I’ve told this story a thousand times. Why are you questioning me now?” Deflection. Anger. “Call Cassian! I need to speak to him. He must not know what’s happened. That’s the only reason he hasn’t come!”

She’s still building her palace of lies, brick by desperate brick.

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