Burn Me Once, Burn With Me novel Chapter 370

“What?”

Cassian Veyne’s voice shook, thick with disbelief so deep it sounded almost strangled.

Ruby Grayson had been pregnant before? With his child? Then Mira…

A thousand questions crashed together in his mind, only to dissolve into a pain that chewed through his chest, sharper with every breath.

“Why…”

His voice dropped, hoarse and raw, heavy with regret and confusion.

Cassian looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with anguish.

He stepped forward and grabbed Ruby’s wrist, gripping it tight. “Why didn’t you tell me that Mira is my daughter?”

He hadn’t been blind. When Ruby returned to Northridge Manor, he’d had Bennett look into everything that happened to her after she got out of prison. He knew, at least in part, how hard those days had been for her—how she’d struggled alone, how Mira had burned with fever in the middle of the night.

But still, deep down, he’d convinced himself that Mira was the child of Ruby’s betrayal, not his own. And so, there had been no guilt. No real remorse.

And now Ruby was telling him Mira was his?

Cassian’s world tilted. He staggered back several steps before he could steady himself.

Ruby, dragged forward by his grip, almost fell, catching herself just in time.

“Why?”

She let out a laugh, cold and hollow, her lips twisted into a smile that looked almost ghoulish in the night—a woman who had suffered everything and come out the other side, a ghost with nothing left but bitterness.

“Cassian, tell me—what good would it have done, for me or for Mira, if you’d known?”

Her laughter faded into a sneer, her eyes burning with contempt and hatred.

In that moment, she was more clearheaded than she’d ever been.

After all that had happened, she was done letting Cassian’s regret make her hesitate or go soft. She knew exactly what she had to do, and she’d walk that path alone if she had to.

“So that’s what you think? That I hid Mira’s identity out of spite?”

Cassian’s gaze was wild with disbelief.

He reached for her again, desperate, but Ruby stepped back, out of his grasp.

“A year ago, I still had hope for you. I actually believed that if I tried hard enough, you’d finally see my worth.”

Ruby’s voice drifted through the night, soft and elusive as mist.

Cassian stood frozen, panic rising in his chest.

“You…”

Ruby turned, fixing him with a hard stare.

“I spent a year in prison, suffering with Mira. And that’s all thanks to you—and your dear Gennifer Grayson. I’m already dealing with Gennifer. As for you? You should be grateful I haven’t come for you, too.”

She smiled, a small, cold thing.

Cassian’s expression twisted, a dozen emotions flickering across his face. As if clinging to some last hope, he said urgently, “You were pregnant. How could you have suffered so much?”

He remembered how furious he had been when he’d learned of Ruby’s supposed betrayal—of her stealing company secrets. But she’d still been the wife of Veyne & Co.’s CEO. Even in prison, people would have respected that. How could she have possibly suffered?