The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 316

I burst through the doors of my mother’s ward to find a scene of controlled chaos: nurses, her regular doctor, and their faces etched with a panic that sends an icy spear through my heart.

Ms. Marino, you’re finally here!

The head nurse rushes toward me, her hands fluttering around herself. “When I did my rounds today, I found your mother missing. She only left this on the table.”

She thrusts a single, folded piece of paper into my hand.

My fingers tremble as I open it. The words, written in my mother’s familiar but shaky script, blur before my eyes.

She knew… she knew everything. The six hundred million from grandpa, the contractual marriage with Cassian. The cold, hard truth that he had no feelings for me, that a divorce was always the inevitable endgame.

She knew all of it…!

[Gemma, I always thought you found your happiness, unlike me back then. But I didn’t realize I had always been your burden.]

A sob catches in my throat, raw and painful.

[If it weren’t for me, you should have had a better life. You 15:29 shouldn’t be trapped by the Blackwell family, not bullied by

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The tears rush forward to hug the words on the paper, smudging the ink. I can see where her own tears had already fallen and dried, leaving ghostly stains on the page.

Her heart was in agony writing this.

[Gemma, I’m leaving. I’ve dragged you down for so many years. It’s time to give you freedom. Once mom is gone, you can do whatever you want. Gemma, it’s all my fault, I’m useless.]

A guttural cry tears from my throat. I clutch the letter to my chest, the paper crinkling in my fist. “Go, go check the surveillance!” I shout at the nurse, my voice cracking. “Take me to the control room!”

Miss. Marino, the surveillance cameras broke last night. The repair crew is still fixing it.

Broken last night? And my mother disappears today?

This isn’t a coincidence. This is a trap. A cold, calculated

conspiracy.

Without the cameras, I am blind. I run, my legs moving on sheer, panicked instinct. I don’t know where I’m going.

The hospital is like a labyrinth, and I am a mouse trapped inside, scurrying down identical hallways, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I push open bathroom doors, peer into empty waiting areas, my calls for her echoing uselessly.

Then, I collide with a solid wall. Strong hands steady me, Cassian. His face swims into view, his own expression snifting

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to alarm as he takes in my disheveled hair, my tear–streaked

face.

Gemma, what happened?

My mom! I choke out. “She found out about our deal, about the Blackwell family. She’s gone. She said she’s leaving!”

I’m crying again, helplessly. I explain about the broken cameras, the futility of my search.

Gemma, don’t worry. I’ll help you search!

His voice is a low, steady command.

He pulls out his phone, and within minutes, the hospital begins to fill with men in dark suits, fanning out across every floor.

I join them, a ghost in my own nightmare.

We search waiting rooms, chapels, cafeterias, closets and storage rooms. Nothing.

With every passing minute, a little more of my hope dies. Finally, my legs give out. I collapse in the middle of my mother’s empty ward, kneeling on the cold floor.

Mom, I whisper, my voice broken “Don’t leave me…”

She is all I have. She is my foundation, and it has been ripped out from under me.

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Mr. Blackwell, we have searched everywhere. There’s no sigh of

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to alarm as he takes in my disheveled hair, my tear–streaked

face.

Gemma, what happened?

My mom! I choke out. “She found out about our deal, about the Blackwell family. She’s gone. She said she’s leaving!”

I’m crying again, helplessly. I explain about the broken cameras, the futility of my search.

Gemma, don’t worry. I’ll help you search!

His voice is a low, steady command.

He pulls out his phone, and within minutes, the hospital begins to fill with men in dark suits, fanning out across every floor.

I join them, a ghost in my own nightmare.

We search waiting rooms, chapels, cafeterias, closets and storage rooms. Nothing.

With every passing minute, a little more of my hope dies. Finally, my legs give out. I collapse in the middle of my mother’s empty ward, kneeling on the cold floor.

Mom, I whisper, my voice broken. “Don’t leave me…”

She is all I have. She is my foundation, and it has been ripped out from under me.

Mr. Blackwell, we have searched everywhere. There’s no sigh of

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The lead bodyguard’s voice is respectful but final.

Keep searching!

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Cassian’s order is sharp, a crack of thunder in the quiet room. The nurse hovers nearby, wringing her hands. “Miss. Marino, she can’t leave without a doctor’s order. Your mother must still be in the hospital.”

She’s here. But where? My mind is a frantic, spinning top. I close my eyes, trying to force myself to think, to remember. We have looked everywhere. Everywhere except…

My eyes snap open, and a cold realisation settles in my heart.

There is only one place no one would think to look for a living person. I scramble to my feet, a sudden, terrifying energy surging through me. I shove past the people clustered behind me and run.

Gemma! Cassian’s voice calls after me, but I don’t stop.

I run, my footsteps echoing in the deserted stairwell, down, down, to the lowest level. The air grows colder. I burst out into a silent, dimly lit hallway.

At the end of it is a single, ominous door… the morgue.

The doctors and nurses catch up, hesitating at the doorway, their faces pale. “Miss. Marino, here… might not be the place?”

One of them ventures, but the conviction is like a cold, hard Alone in my gut.

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“This is the only place I haven’t looked.”

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In their respectful search, the staff would have skipped this, thinking it was ominous. I know it’s a last, desperate hope.

Finally, a staff member steps forward to unlock the door. The mechanism clicks, a sound that seems to suck all the air from the hallway.

The door swings open, and the lights inside flicker on, casting a white glow into the corridor.

A moment later, a piercing, blood–curdling scream rips through the silence from within the morgue.

My legs dissolve beneath me. All strength, all hope, drains away in an instant. I would have crumpled to the floor if Cassian weren’t there.

His arms come around me, strong and sure, and he pulls me back, away from that terrible doorway, carrying my limp, broken form.

I fight him, a hoarse scream tearing from my throat. I need to go in, I need to see.

But the medical staff forms a human barricade, their faces masks of pity and horror, holding me back.

When they finally let me in, the world has ceased to exist. There

is only the cold, and the white sheet, and the pale, still form of my mother lying on a steel bed.

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Her eyes are closed. She looks peaceful, a cruel mockery of the torment that drove her here.

I fall to my knees beside the bed, my body wracked with sobs s violent I can barely breathe. Mom!” ”

I cry out, my voice ragged.

So

It’s Gemma. Please wake up, open your eyes and look at me. I’ve cried so much, my eyes are swollen. Mom, you used to scold me so much for crying like this. Now at least please look at me!

I beg, I plead, as if my desperation can reverse time. She was the one who always comforted me.

When I cried as a child, she would hold me and buy me sweets. But now, she has left me with this cold, eternal silence.

Gemma… Cassian’s voice is a low murmur beside me.

There are no words, there is nothing to say. All he can do is be an anchor gainst the void that has just opened up inside me, holding me close so I don’t have to face the crushing darkness alone.

The details are a brutal footnote to the shattering of my world: Lisette Marino died from cutting her wrist. She used a nail clipper slowly, painstakingly open her veins.

The nurse had screamed because of the blood, so much blood, covering the floor under the morgue’s white, unforgiving lights.

She chose the morgue because she didn’t want to be a vothe15:29

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thought since everyone ends up here anyway, she would go straight there, saving the hospital the trouble of moving her.

Even in her final, tortured thoughts, she didn’t want to trouble me one last time. She wanted to slip away quietly, to make it easier for her daughter.

Her last act was one of heartbreaking, misguided love, and it has destroyed me completely.

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