Private Marriage, Secret Love-Chapter 158: Too Heartless

Raina Reddington couldn’t process his words.

Her face was buried in Ethan Lancaster’s chest, and she felt her breathing grow tighter and tighter, almost to the point of suffocation.

Raina pushed against his chest with both hands, but she couldn’t move him at all.

Ethan Lancaster was scared, too. Now that he had her back, he was terrified of losing her. Both he and Raina were wounded, but he believed their scars could slowly heal.

He wanted to tell her that he still hadn’t touched Gwen Sharp, that she didn’t have to worry about her existence at all.

Raina could barely stand. She had performed countless surgeries on others, but today, she couldn’t forget the terror of being on the operating table herself. When it came down to it, it felt as though Ethan Lancaster was the one who had bestowed all of this upon her.

Seth Sinclair stood by a car not far away, watching the two of them struggle—one trying to push away, the other holding on for dear life.

"Ethan Lancaster, you don’t have to do this."

"No, this is exactly what I’m going to do."

Raina had originally planned to take this secret to her grave, but she never expected Ethan Lancaster to find out everything.

"If you still can’t get over it, you can hit me, curse me, whatever you want. Everything in the past was my fault..."

"You’re only saying this because you want the child, aren’t you?" Raina cut him off mercilessly. "Ethan Lancaster, I aborted the baby."

The arms holding her tight obviously stiffened, but Ethan Lancaster still didn’t let Raina go.

His voice trembled, as if in disbelief, yet he had to ask to be certain. "What did you say? That’s impossible."

"I really did. I aborted the baby. Just now."

Ethan Lancaster’s hand tightened uncontrollably, his grip crushing one of Raina’s shoulders. Her entire body already ached, and now a piercing pain shot through her. Raina gave him a hard shove, and like a powerless puppet, he stumbled far back from her push.

He leaned back against the car to steady himself. "I don’t believe a word you’re saying."

Raina reached into her bag, about to pull out the report to show him.

The sight was unbearable to Ethan Lancaster. "Stop! Stop it!"

"Is this result so hard to accept?" Raina asked, her voice hoarse. ’Compared to me finding out about my illness, this should be much easier to take, right?’

"Why?"

Raina felt a laugh bubbling up. She shot back, "Then you tell me, why should I have given birth to him?"

"He was your child, too, wasn’t he?"

Raina’s next words stabbed straight into Ethan Lancaster’s heart. "I don’t want to bear your child, Ethan Lancaster. You don’t deserve it."

"But you still had no right to abort him!" Ethan Lancaster practically roared.

Seth Sinclair shuddered as he heard this, standing by the car in disbelief, not daring to approach.

"What’s done is done," Raina said, watching Ethan Lancaster’s expression twist with rage. The figure in front of her grew blurry. "You’re an expert at an eye for an eye. Do you need me to pay for your child’s life with my own?"

Ethan Lancaster’s eyes were bloodshot. It all seemed like a joke now. ’She saw the lanterns at the door, the posters all over the house. She knew I wanted this child. But she’d already made up her mind to get rid of it. When she watched me picking things out in the baby store, she must have been laughing at me, right?’

Ethan Lancaster took two steps forward, his eyes fiercer than ever before. "You think I drove Miles Hawthorne to his death, so you made our child die with him, is that it?"

"I’m not as cruel as you."

A metallic taste filled Ethan Lancaster’s throat. "No matter how cruel I am, I never thought of backing you into a corner like this."

Raina squeezed her eyes shut, a terrible stinging sensation welling up. "That’s right. You just made me watch you carouse and womanize. You just made me drink with your clients. You just brought your women home. Keeping Gwen Sharp was nothing. You had people insult Miles Hawthorne right in front of me, saying he deserved it. In your eyes, I was supposed to endure all of that and still be moved to tears with gratitude, thanking you for the grace of not killing me."

Ethan Lancaster was speechless, feeling completely hollowed out. Even if he had done wrong, he could have compensated for it. But she couldn’t just get rid of their child without even talking to him. He simply couldn’t bear it.

Everyone is afraid when they face death, and Raina was trembling. ’If Ethan Lancaster hadn’t transferred me to The Second Affiliated Hospital of Mercy Seas,’ she wondered, ’would I even have gotten this disease?’

’But so many others were transferred. Why did it have to be me?’

’Maybe... this is just fate.’

Tears streamed down Raina’s face. She held no hope of finding a matching bone marrow donor, and she was terrified of chemotherapy. All she wanted was to live; she couldn’t care about anything else anymore.

’This thing called love... it’s not for me. For me, it only ever ends one way.’

"Tell me, if Miles Hawthorne were still alive today, would my child be alive, too?"

A bitter taste filled Raina’s mouth. "There are no what-ifs in this world."

’If I hadn’t been diagnosed with this disease, would I have hesitated when I was lying on that operating table? Would I have been unable to go through with it? Would I have run away?’

’Maybe... I would have.’

Ethan Lancaster yanked her arm, forcing Raina onto her tiptoes. His roar blasted her in the face. "Raina Reddington, do you think you’re going to get off easy after this? I won’t let you!"

"Fine," Raina’s voice was faint. "This is the real you."

Ethan Lancaster flung her arm away. Raina stumbled a few steps before managing to steady herself. Clutching her bag, she hurried toward the house.

For a long moment, there were no footsteps behind her. Raina was so exhausted she had to lean on the wall for support as she climbed the stairs. Just as she reached her bedroom door, she heard sounds of movement growing closer and closer from behind.

Goosebumps broke out on Raina’s back. She reached out and pushed open the door, but before she could step inside, her path was blocked.

Ethan Lancaster’s gaze fell on the bag in Raina’s hand. "I still don’t believe it. Show me the report."

With that, he aggressively reached out to snatch it. Raina’s bag held a thick stack of medical reports. She turned her body to the side, doing her best to keep her expression calm. "You want to see it? Fine, I’ll show you. Consider it a souvenir."

Raina took a step back and opened her bag. The report was sitting by itself in a conspicuous spot. She took it out and held it directly in front of Ethan Lancaster.

The man’s fingertips twitched as he raised his hand to take it.

His eyes remained on Raina’s face, not daring to look down at the paper. He had always been decisive, never one to hesitate, but this was different. Ethan Lancaster shut his eyes, unfolded the report, and only then did he open them again.

A bleak desolation swept through the depths of his eyes. This woman did what she said she would; she wasn’t just bluffing.

He shouldn’t have held on to hope, but even that tiny, faint glimmer of light had been utterly shattered by this single piece of paper.

Overcome with fury, Ethan Lancaster viciously slapped the report across Raina’s face.

A corner of the thin paper scraped across Raina’s eyelid. The delicate skin felt as if it had been sliced open, and the pain made her eyes well up, but she fought back the tears, refusing to let them fall.