Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1581

Water quickly filled Shelly’s eyes. Before the first tear broke, however, Mark groaned exasperatedly. “No, you stop that! Stop your tears! Now! It’s not going to inspire mercy from me—hell, the longer I look, the more you disgust me. Don’t bother wasting your acting chops on me! It was you who harmed Alejandro, wasn’t it? What the hell are you going to do next, huh? Murder Arianne, isn’t it, you psycho?! You don’t belong anywhere other than a goddamned asylum, where you can get your lunacy mended!”

Shelly forced the rolling tears back into her eyes. “Y-Y-You’re disappointed to see me here, aren’t you?” she said, her voice trembling. “But I can assure you, it’s not what you think! Not once has my body been defiled. I simply have nowhere to go, Mark. I have no money. This is only temporary, a quick fix. Do you…? Do you really think so little of me…?”

Mark’s mind was so utterly ablaze that it fueled the curtness in his answer. “How about ‘bloody yes?!’ I wish you’d never tainted my life with your presence. I wish I never had an aunt like you! You want to continue keeping your secrets to yourself? Sure! I will happily let you go. In fact, from now on, consider yourself expelled from being my family, and don’t fret with the hassle of talking to me ever again. And should I find you hurting a single hair on Arianne’s head, so help me, you’ll be a dead woman in no time. My life is mine to live—so you keep the f**k out of it!”

The pupils in Shelly’s eyes dilated. Mark’s words stung.

Tears marred the makeup around her eyes, making her look positively pathetic.

Then, suddenly, she chortled.

“You’re right. You’re utterly right. Who am I to meddle in the affairs of your life? I haven’t raised you all your life, have I? But I never wanted to abandon you. No, you don’t know a fraction of my bedeviled life, Mark,” she said. “Yes, I staged the accident that happened at the show venue. I pretended to be disabled by the incident because I wanted to stay… with you. I have no leg to stand on as your unimportant maternal aunt, so the only way you would willingly let me stay is if you felt indebted to me. Only through guilt would you feel obliged to care of me.

“I didn’t have the courage to divulge the secrets bottled inside me because… Because I worry that you will break at the end of it. All I care about is you, Mark. I don’t want the truth to take that away from you. Your wellbeing is the lone reason I need to swallow all of the pains in my life quietly. I don’t care if I’ll be tortured by ’em for ten years or twenty years or even the entirety of my life. But I can’t endure these without you, Mark… I need you. Desperately. Only when I’m by your side will I ever feel a glimpse of life in this corpse I’ve come to inhabit. I’ve waited for this day for so long… So, so long…”