Chapter 259 The Patient Is William
The rain had been falling all day, never letting up. Upstairs and downstairs, everyone carried their own private sorrows.
They were all thinking about the same person: Isabella.
After William's plan against Donny failed, he still wasn't ready to give up.
At five in the morning, William had Dylan bring two men to escort Donny upstairs.
In that special room, only a dim yellow lamp was lit.
Isabella lay on the bed, dressed in a new white dress.
When Donny was brought in, William hadn't slept all night.
He didn't dare sleep. As soon as he closed his eyes, those uncontrollable dreams would come back.
William couldn't bear the thought of hurting Isabella again in his sleep, so he decided he would not sleep anymore.
When William turned around, his eyes were bulging, shot through with thick red veins, making him look like a zombie from a horror movie.
William only gave Donny a brief glance, then turned his head back. He crouched by the bed, holding Isabella's hand.
"Isabella, open your eyes and see who has come to visit you."
"Isn't he the one you liked being with the most?"
"You even turned against me to protect him."
William looked up. Whether it was Thomas, Ambrose, or Donny,
almost every man who got close to Isabella ended up being protected by her.
William envied the place they held in Isabella's heart.
Even though he had endless wealth and unmatched status and lacked nothing,
for someone to reach what he had achieved in a single lifetime, there should have been no regrets.
But all those things other people desperately pursued meant less to him than a single strand of Isabella's hair.
He had reached heights Donny could never reach and held Donny's life and death in his hands.
Yet he still felt his own life had lost its color and warmth.
If he could trade places, he wished he could be Donny instead of William.
Donny's gaze fixed on the body that had lost its warmth.
The thoughts he had forced himself to calm over the night instantly fell apart the moment he saw Isabella's body.
His fists clenched tight, the veins on the backs of his hands standing out.
He told himself over and over in his heart not to act rashly.
After a long while, his emotions finally settled.
"I remember you cared a lot about Isabella. She must have held a very special place in your heart."
William's voice showed no emotion.
It was as if he were just making polite conversation with Donny.
"If I were you, I would have Isabella cremated and bury her ashes on a hillside."
"The hillside would be full of sunflowers, so during the day she would always see warm sunshine."
"At night, she could see a sky full of stars."
Donny did not move closer. He stood where he had entered.
William clapped his hands. "I did not expect you to be so romantic."
"Too bad you are not me, and I am not you."
Donny listened to the sound of the rain outside the window and shook his head.
"I would never hurt a woman who cared for me with her whole heart the way she did."
"You are keeping her here — is it because you are afraid of losing her, or because you cannot let her go?"
"Have you ever thought that she wanted to leave a long time ago? That she wanted to leave you, find a place without you, and start over?"
William's eyes grew bloodshot again, and the hand holding Isabella's trembled.
"No, Isabella is my wife."
"She would not leave me."
"I know that no matter how I tried to drive her away, she would not go."
When William said this, it felt as if his heart were bleeding. From the moment Isabella said those words at the funeral, he had already treated her as an enemy.
No, worse than an enemy.
Back then, in his mind, Isabella was not even a person.
He got angry at her, cursed her, hit her, tried to drive her away, but Isabella remained unmoved.
She just would not leave, as if he were her entire world.
"You should know she only married you to fulfill her sister's wish."
"She did not marry you out of love."
It felt as if a stone were pressing down on William's chest. His body trembled, and a trace of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth.
But he still kept his back to Donny, not letting him see, and wiped the blood away with his hand.
He shook his head. He half believed Donny's words, yet still refused to accept them.
"Whether Isabella's body or her soul, they belong only to me."
"That is the contract between her and me."
William stood up and turned to look at the man who had entered his room.
Everything from the past flashed before his eyes.
This man, who had almost killed, really was not afraid of death.
He actually dared to come back, to try to ruin his plans and save the person he wanted to punish.
But Donny had qualities he himself did not possess.
"Donny, sometimes I really envy you."
William looked at Donny, at his face, and suddenly his expression changed.
"Why did you go back to him?"
"Come with me. Let us leave this place."
William was clearly looking at Donny, but his voice had changed as well.
Donny narrowed his eyes. He saw familiar signs in William.
Back then, Isabella had suffered from similar complications.
Severe depression and a split personality.
Could it be? Donny's eyes widened. He was not completely sure and did not dare to jump to a conclusion.
"It was me. I was the one who seduced him. Punish me. Keep me at Blackthorn Compound, and let him go."
William's voice suddenly became high and thin, like a woman's voice.
When Donny heard that voice, a chill ran down his back, as if someone were breathing against the back of his neck.
But he was a doctor. Donny did not believe in ghosts or spirits.
Even though that voice really did sound like Isabella.
"Look clearly at how the person you are desperately protecting was beaten for you!"
William's voice shifted back to his own, with a hint of cruelty.
Donny stared in shock. He realized William's condition was even more serious than Isabella's had been.
His gaze dropped, and he saw that William's left hand was wrapped in gauze.
William's left hand was missing a finger, and his sleeve was wrapped in gauze as well.
Donny wanted to step forward and confirm whether William had been hurting himself.
But as soon as he took a step, as if the sound of his footsteps had triggered something, William changed back to how he had been before.
He looked up, having forgotten his earlier behavior.
"Sometimes I really envy you. If only I could have met him as early as you did..."
As William said this, his chest suddenly tightened, pain coming in waves.
In fact, he had known her long ago, when they were very young.
A trace of sadness appeared in William's eyes. The person who had saved him back then was Isabella, not Beatrice.
Even though he had always believed his savior was Beatrice — that he loved Beatrice, that he was grateful she had saved his life on that snowy night —
He had loved Beatrice desperately, yet he had tortured and trampled on his real savior.
He had made her suffer so much, made her lose her child, made her lose her only friend, and made her mind completely collapse.
What had he done?