Divorce me I'm done serving you (Ayla) novel Chapter 699

Herman had been warned ahead of time. When Ayla appeared, he didn't flinch.

He had helped Draven take her children. He had been part of the surveillance. The mother had come to collect what was hers, and Herman had no ground to stand on. He kept his mouth shut.

Draven's car pulled up behind them.

Herman moved toward it immediately, two doctors falling into step behind him.

Draven stepped out with one hand pressed against the stab wound in his thigh. His hand was soaked through. The sight of it was jarring.

Herman's expression changed immediately. He turned to the doctors. "See to him now. Is it that serious?"

Draven had hurt himself before, deliberately. Physical pain had a way of crowding out the other kind, and he had come to rely on that. The wound didn't trouble him. If anything, it steadied him.

Ayla had arrived without warning. She had seen him and Troy at their worst. She had heard about Jeremy.

Every ugly, buried thing had surfaced at once, and he'd had no time to prepare, no way to shape how any of it reached her. He didn't know how to meet her eyes.

And yet he couldn't stop looking at her. He needed to know what was on her face, whether it was anger or something worse. It was anger, almost certainly, maybe hatred by now. But it didn't matter. He couldn't look away. Not for a second.

He had spent his whole childhood in corners, watching other people from a distance.

Maybe Draven really was what Troy said he was—a man who needed to watch her, to know everything about her, at any cost.

He didn't care about the wound. He only wanted to keep her in his sight, because the moment he looked away, she might be gone.

"I'm fine." He just wanted to wash the blood off his hands.

Herman looked at the white of his face and thought that Draven had genuinely lost his mind.

The leg had been bleeding steadily the entire drive. The black fabric of his trousers had darkened all the way to the ankle. There was blood in his shoe. Another stretch of this and he'd be going into shock.

"The wound needs to be treated. Now." Herman didn't leave room for argument.

She had stayed with Troy through three years of his worst behavior, but the moment he had put her health or safety at risk, she would have walked without looking back. That was instinct. That was basic.

Herman had already said something, and Draven had acted like he hadn't heard a word.

Ayla hadn't planned to say anything to him at all. But she couldn't hold it back.

The strangeness of him—everything he had done, the children—none of it had been processed yet. The anger had nowhere to go. Then she watched him stand there treating his own body like it was disposable, and it came out before she could stop it.

The staff at the Meadowlark Heights had earned their positions through rigorous selection. Draven was that kind of employer, the kind whose authority was felt without being performed.

Outside of Herman, no one on the staff spoke to Draven beyond what their duties required. They kept their heads down, did their work carefully, and hoped not to make a mistake that would cost them a job that paid well and asked little.

They were afraid of him, even though none of them had ever seen him lose his temper.

The two guests who had arrived tonight were strangers to all of them.