The Night Before His Wedding, My Ex Found Out How I Really Died

James’s mother had handed me a check for half a million dollars and told me to walk away from her son.

“I know your grandmother needs money for her treatment.”

“I can help.”

“But there’s a condition.”

I didn’t have to think to know what it was.

“Leave my son.”

The air went very still.

She sat across from me, calmly picking up her coffee as if none of this mattered.

“You know Thorne Capital is waiting for him to take over.”

“But all he does is fuss over those useless paintings. He’s going nowhere.”

“You want what’s best for him too. Don’t you?”

I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t say a word.

I’d always known James had been born with a silver spoon. Thorne Capital had been waiting for him since the day he was born.

But he didn’t want business. He wanted to paint.

After college, he cut every tie with the family company and threw himself into his art.

He was new, and nobody was betting on him yet. His apartment was stacked with canvases, and most of them never sold.

I’d told him I’d wait. I’d wait until the day he made it.

Then my grandmother took a turn. She needed chemo immediately.

She’d raised me. My parents were always working somewhere far away, barely home, and it was always just her and me.

I couldn’t lose her.

James couldn’t bear to see me like that, and he sold off all his favorite paintings, dirt cheap, just to scrape together her first round of treatment.

But there was a second round coming. And a third.

I couldn’t wait anymore.

He hadn’t given up on his dream, and I couldn’t be the one to make him.

But on my own, I couldn’t save her.

I sat there looking at that check, my fingertips shaking.

“I want you to take this money and leave him immediately. I want him to see that without money, love doesn’t even survive.”

“That’s the only way he’ll take Thorne Capital willingly.”

I nodded. My heart was bleeding.

“You never told James any of this?”

“Mm-hm.” I closed my eyes.

“I promised his mother. I had to keep it quiet.”

“But, well.”

I sighed and looked over at my grandmother’s photo.

“Grandma. Her treatment came too late, and she was already so old, so fragile. After a few rounds, she passed.”

My head dropped.

“I lost the last person I had in the world.”

“What about the rest of the money? Wasn’t there enough left for your treatment?”

I shook my head.

“The rest, I used to buy back every painting James had sold off. All of them. I paid above market and donated them to a museum.”

“I didn’t want to owe him too much.”

“There were maybe ten thousand left. I donated it to a children’s education charity. Those kids needed it more than I did.”

After that, Zoe started coming by every few days.

She brought food, vitamins, clean clothes.

Later, she said she’d found me a cheap little place to rent. It was out of the way, but anything was better than living in a nightclub bathroom.

I was grateful, but I said no.

I was getting weaker, and the pain was getting worse.

I knew I didn’t have long.

I didn’t want to leave too many debts behind in the time I had left.

I couldn’t pay them back anymore.

One stormy night, the bar owner found me passed out in the cleaning closet.

The hospital tracked down the only contact I had. Zoe.