The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 454

Chapter 454
Rhett’s POV

Sitting here, right in front of me, is the only woman I’ve ever truly loved. And her eyes, even now, glazed with tears and madness, are looking straight through me, focused on a ghost. On him. Even if I were a saint, this would carve out my insides. I’m not a saint. I’m just a man who’s loved her too long and too stupidly to stop.

I’m about to say no. The word is a bitter pill on my tongue. No, I won’t call him for you. No more.

Then I see the tears. They spill over, tracing paths of pure, theatrical anguish down her cheeks. “Please, Rhett,” she whimpers, the sound designed to break something in me. It works. “I can’t live without Cassian. I’ll die without him!”

For years, marrying Cassian Blackwell hasn’t been a desire; it’s been her religion, her reason for breathing. An obsession that has eaten everything else, including whatever fleeting affection she might have once had for me. Now, knowing that even opening her veins didn’t stop him from flying to another continent for Gemma… she’s unraveling. 

All she has left is the desperate need to hear his voice. She’s convinced, in whatever broken place her mind now resides, that if he just knows how close she came to death, his cold heart will thaw. He’ll come rushing back.

A deep, weary sigh escapes me, dredged from the very bottom of my soul. What else is there to do? I pull out my phone, find his number—a contact I should have deleted long ago—and dial. I don’t speak. I just hand her the phone, the act feeling like a surrender of my last shred of self-respect.

She snatches it, her fingers trembling with frantic hope. She puts it to her ear. Her face, so eager, slowly collapses. “The number you have dialed is currently switched off…” the automated message chirps, tinny and audible even to me.

“No,” she mutters. She ends the call and immediately redials. Again, and again. The same cheerful, inhuman message. Each time, her expression grows more frantic, more fractured.

I can’t watch this torture. I step forward and gently take the phone from her stiff fingers. “Give it to me. I don’t believe he’s not answering!” she insists, her voice rising.

“He’s on a plane, Reyna,” I say, the helplessness a lead weight in my gut. “Probably over the ocean right now. You could call a thousand times. He can’t answer.”

She goes utterly still. The frantic energy vanishes, replaced by a chilling, calculating blankness. “Right,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. “He’s on the plane. Going to see her.” She looks up, her eyes suddenly sharp. “What time does his flight land? I’ll call the moment he’s on the ground!”

Watching her, a cold dread begins to creep up my spine. This isn’t just heartbreak or obsession. This is something… off. The swings are too violent, the logic nonexistent.

“I’ll… I’ll go check for you,” I say, my voice carefully calm. “You wait here. Okay?”

The promise of action transforms her. She smiles, a sudden, sweet, docile nod. “Okay.” She looks like the girl I remember, for just a second. It’s chilling.

I don’t go to check flight times. I walk straight to the office of the doctor who treated her after they pumped her stomach and stitched her wrist.

“Doctor,” I say, my voice low. “Why do I feel like her mental state… isn’t right?”

The doctor looks up from Reyna’s file, his gaze assessing. “Are you family? Or…?”

I hesitate only for a second. The lie comes out with a conviction that surprises me. “I’m her boyfriend.”

He nods, accepting it. “She’s suffered a significant shock. Her emotions are extremely unstable. Our preliminary assessment suggests she may be experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear to be a severe presentation yet.”

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