Chapter17 Back in Harbor City, Weston Vale hunted for the strongest pills he could find and swallowed them dry. Then he flew in a notorious overseas director and spent three days and three nights filming himself in an explicit "adult reel." He uploaded it to the platforms. Chatter and StreamIt detonated. Insults and slurs piled up like a blizzard. Weston scrolled through the comments until his chest seized with pain. For the first time, he understood what it had felt like when Jewel's private images had been dumped online, the kind of heartbreak that crushed a person from the inside out. After three sleepless days, he staggered to a blood-donation center and gave a full liter at once. He fainted mid-withdrawal but refused to stop. Miles Carter hovered at his elbow, stricken. "Mr. Vale... why do this to yourself? If Miss Whitmore doesn't want you anymore, why keep chasing? Harbor City is full of heiresses who..." Weston shook his head. "No. I promised to spend my life with Jewel. That means my whole life. No one else." He registered as a living organ donor next. Not just a partial liver, he signed for a kidney as well. He wanted to repay, with interest, every wound Jewel had borne. During surgery, he refused anesthesia. Blade after blade carved into him; cold sweat soaked the sheets, but his jaw never unclenched. "Continue," he told the lead surgeon. "Don't stop unless I say so. >> When the red-lacquer sheen of his excised tissue glinted under the surgical lights, Weston managed a thin smile. With shaking fingers, he dictated a voice message to the contact who had already blocked him. Jewel, I'm sorry. I never imagined it would hurt like this. If this pain can earn back even one ten-thousandth of the love you once had for me... it's worth it. He blacked out. The surgeon sighed and, during closure, finally ordered a touch of anesthetic. When Weston woke and learned he had been medicated, panic overtook him. He seized a scalpel and began reopening his own sutures, ignoring every cry to stop, determined to "make it even." The next day, he demanded arrangements for a Cliffside Coffin Atonement, seven days and nights suspended against the rocks, wind and rain at his face, to suffer what Jewel had suffered. Night one, he thought of their wedding. She had smiled when she took his hand, full of hope. If you never Chapter17 leave, I will stand with you to the end, she had vowed. He had let Ivy's poison peel him away from that vow. Night two, rain set in, a steady needle against his bandaged wounds. The cuts festered; fever followed. He burned, delirious. "Only three days," he had once told her. Only now did he learn how cruel those words were. Three days could be an eternity. By the third and fourth nights he raved with heat, body hammered like metal on an anvil. Still he clung on, until at last he collapsed and remembered nothing. He woke in a hospital bed. Ivy Sloane stood just outside the door, her eyes swollen like bruised peaches. "Weston, I was wrong. Please stop. The doctor says you're septic, your wounds are infected, don't do this to yourself. If Jewel won't love you, I will. Even without a womb, I'll be what I was before, your tool..." She sobbed, snot and tears a tangle. She claimed she had dreamed of Weston in that coffin burning to death and had begged her guards to save him, had slipped out, had come to him because she "loved him truly," even if it meant begging. The moment Weston saw her, fury detonated. "Ivy Sloane, you dare show up?" His eyes went red, feral. "If not for you, Jewel and I would never have come to this." His hands closed around her throat. "This is all on you. Die." "Die!" Her body went slack; her eyes rolled. In that instant, Grayson Sloane burst into the room and tore Weston away. "Enough! This is a country of laws. You kill her, you go to prison." Grayson was panting, face ashen. He had undergone his own live-donor surgeries that morning, liver and bone marrow, no anesthesia, choosing the same path of penance. Weston's twisted smile faded into something colder. "You're right," he said softly. "Then send her to our Southeast Asia industrial compound." He called Miles in. "Tell them. do what they want with her, but don't let her die. Put her on the lowest work, one dollar a day. When she's saved enough to buy back a liver, then she can come home." Ivy collapsed. She had heard about places like that since childhood, hell-pits where bodies were traded for coin and dignity was ground into dust. Her bones shook. Tears filled with venom. "Weston, you can't, You know my heart is yours!" His stare was bored, disgusted. "Take her away." Chapter17 Silence fell after the guards dragged Ivy out. Grayson coughed twice, a dry, tearing sound. "Weston," he said, voice hoarse, "Miles just told me, an offshore company is undercutting both our groups. They're buying up our shares, poaching orders, even moving on our production lines." He paused. "If we don't push back, neither company lasts the week." He swallowed. "I looked into it. The holding company is Whitmore-owned. The CEO is Jewel's brother. Jewel... is the Whitmore daughter. She's out of our league now. Out of reach." A bitter smile touched Weston's mouth. Of all the endings he had imagined, he had never pictured this one, where he was not enough for her. Where the man striking at their empires was her own blood. He closed his eyes and saw her face again, hollow, distant, entombed. "If it's her brother who wants us bankrupt," Weston said quietly, "then we don't resist. Hand the companies over, willingly. Let everything go to Jewel in the end. It's the debt we owe." Grayson held his gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded and reached out his hand. This time, they agreed without a word. 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