Chapter 5
“Natalya.”
He lowered his head, and in his deep eyes, there was more confusion.
But soon, Natalya kissed him again, “I know you can’t stand Annabella anymore, so why don’t we be together now? We have already lost a lot of time.”
“But I… hadn’t broken up with her yet.”
In Natalya’s expression, there was an almost undisguisable urgency, “What does it matter? The
result would be the same sooner or later.”
“No,” abruptly, Bradyn’s originally cloudy eyes gradually cleared, and he pushed her away. “Natalya, I remembered that I still have some work unfinished. I’m going to Medical school first.”
“Bradyn, don’t go.”
Natalya embraced him from behind, but her fingers were pushed away by the man, leaving her to watch helplessly as he walked away swiftly.
After leaving the hospital, Bradyn looked up at the sky, and across life and death, our gazes met.
There was a moment when I almost thought he had seen me because the man’s gaze was too
sorrowful and too intimidating.
It was not like that at all.
“Annabella, if you come back obediently, I promise not to break up with you. From now on, I will let go of everything and we will live our lives well.”
“When Natalya kissed me just now, I felt like I was going crazy, with your face filling my mind.
Perhaps it’s true what Darnell said – only when standing on the edge of losing something can one truly understand what they can’t afford to lose.”
“Annabella, I think I couldn’t lose you.
I cried, not wailing loudly, nor shedding tears, but crying silently.
Similar to me as a person, it was like a stone falling into a lake, causing only a small splash.
Bradyn, why didn’t you tell me earlier?
Why wasn’t it the night I got angry and left, or even earlier?
“Annabella, it has been wild for a long time, it’s time to go home.”
When Bradyn typed these words, Darnell’s phone rang.
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On the phone, the voice of the middle–aged man was filled with unprecedented sadness, making one wonder what could have happened to make him like this.
“Bradyn, come to the Criminal Investigation Bureau, I have something very important to tell you.”
“Okay, I’m coming right away.”
The journey that originally took one hour, with Bradyn’s accelerated driving, only took forty minutes to arrive.
He knocked on the door of Darnell’s office.
“Prof. Curry, I have made up my mind. I think you are right, and I cannot lose Annabella. So I plan to wait for her to come back from her trip and propose to her.”
Annabella is very likely to have passed away.”
As the two sentences were spoken simultaneously, the overwhelming and convoluted amount of information left Bradyn stunned in his tracks.
It took a long time before he said, “What did you say?”
Darnell’s tone was filled with frustration and helplessness, but he still managed to hold on, “Annabella has been gone from Rosemist for five days, and I haven’t been able to contact her during this time. So, fearing the worst, I had the female corpse verified with her DNA.”
The result showed a ninety–nine percent overlap.”
“It was impossible!”
Bradyn roared in denial, the excessively high volume shaking my eardrums and causing them to ache.
I rubbed my ears and looked at the man on the ground, and in the end, I sighed.
Bradyn, you finally found me.
I followed their footsteps and saw Darnell leading the still shocked Bradyn into the morgue.
He lifted the white cloth, revealing my severely damaged state.
“Bradyn, go and catch up with her. Remember, the killer who murdered her has not been found yet,
so don’t be too sad.”
After Darnell left, Bradyn forcefully flipped my body over.
I felt along my back until my fingers touched something that didn’t match the condition of my skin.
The man’s pitch–black pupils suddenly dilated, and then he forcefully pulled at something resembling fake flesh, tearing it off. He also saw the hideous and terrifying scar crawling on my
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back.
It was a mission. When the criminal was about to attack him, I swiftly moved in front of him like lightning.
The dagger was inserted into the back, and although it was safely taken to the hospital in time, it left behind an ugly scar.
I often felt inferior because of this, so I frequently used things made of imitation skin to cover it up.
And Bradyn knew nothing about all of this.
Even if he occasionally caught sight of it, he would only make a dissatisfied sound and then interrogate me, “Annabella, are you deliberately behaving like this in front of me, trying to make me feel guilty?”
“It’s absolutely impossible. You owe me and Natalya for a lifetime, and it will never be repaid!”
In the spacious morgue, under the pouring of bright incandescent lights, my body appeared even more pale and stiff.
“Plop,” a tear fell onto me. I followed the line of sight and saw a tall and slender man with his head hanging low, his expression almost indiscernible in the backlight.
