Chapter 66 CHAPTER 66
At that moment, Tasha did not even glance in Vincent's direction.
She simply looked away, Deliberately.
As though he had already become someone she did not need to acknowledge.
And that single act—that quiet, devastating refusal to even meet his eyes did more damage to Vincent than any slap could have.
He felt it move through him like a cold current.
His hands, which had been reaching toward her, slowly dropped.
His body, which had been leaning forward with desperate urgency, seemed to lose its structure.
He began to tremble, not dramatically.
A fine, uncontrollable trembling that started somewhere deep in his chest and spread outward until it reached his fingers, his jaw, his legs.
He had never felt anything like it before.
He had always been the one in control.
Always been the one who decided when things ended and when they continued, always been the one who walked away.
And now he was almost kneeling—metaphorically, desperately—before a woman who would not even look at him.
“Tasha.”
His voice came out smaller than he intended.
Quieter.
Stripped of the authority he usually wore so comfortably.
“You're not saying anything.”
He swallowed hard.
“The question I just asked you—is it true? Are you actually trying to divorce me?”
He searched the side of her face, the part she had not turned away, looking for any crack in her composure.
“Is this absolutely true?”
For a moment, she said nothing.
The silence stretched long enough to be its own answer.
Then Tasha exhaled slowly, carefully, as though even breathing too deeply caused her pain from the swelling on her face.
She turned to look at him then.
Not with anger, not with cruelty.
With something far worse.
Finality.
“You know I loved you,” she said.
Her voice was quiet, measured, carrying the particular flatness of someone who had already made peace with a decision before announcing it.
“I didn't want everything to go this way.”
She held his gaze steadily.
“But my uncle cannot be this angry, this serious, this adamant—and we just expect things to continue as normal.”
She shook her head slightly.
“My uncle wants a divorce. It is not me that is asking for this. It is him. And I cannot go against my uncle's wishes.”
She said it plainly.
Without drama, without tears.
“So I'm sorry. We are going to have to go for a divorce.”
The words hit Vincent like the floor had disappeared beneath him.
For a second, he genuinely could not respond.
His mind scrambled, reaching for something anything—to hold onto.
And then something broke open in him.
Something raw and unguarded that he would never have allowed anyone to see under normal circumstances.
He reached out and grabbed her hand.
“Tasha, please.”
His voice cracked.
“I'm very, very sorry. I know what happened with Megan—I know how it looked, I know what it caused, and I know it should never have gone that far.”
He shook his head rapidly.
“But setbacks like this happen. They happen to everyone. Businesses go through difficult moments. Situations get out of hand. But I am promising you. I am promising you right now—that nothing like this will ever happen again.”
His grip on her hand tightened slightly.
“Just give me this one last opportunity,” he said, his voice dropping to something almost pleading. “One chance to correct my wrongs. One chance to make amends. That is all I am asking for.”
He looked at her with everything he had.
“I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you. I will make this right. I will make everything right. Just don't do this. Not now. Please.”
Tasha looked down at his hand holding hers.
She looked at it for a long moment.
Then she pulled it away, Gently but completely.
“From everything I have seen today,” she said quietly, “and from the way my uncle reacted—the way a man I have never seen lose control in my entire life completely lost control today—I can tell that there may not be a way back from this.”
She stood carefully, wincing slightly as the pain in her face reminded her of everything that had happened.
“When the divorce papers are ready,” she said, straightening slowly, “I will file them.”
She looked at him one last time.
“When they are ready, come and do the necessary signing.”
And then she turned.
She walked away from him without looking back, moving carefully but deliberately toward her uncle, one hand raised slightly to her swollen face, nursing the pain quietly as she crossed the distance between them.
Vincent remained where he was.
On the ground.
Staring at the space she had just vacated.
His father stood a short distance behind him, equally broken, equally silent, the earlier collapse having taken something out of him that had not yet returned.
Deborah had her hand pressed to her mouth.
Jessica stared at the floor.
Nobody in the Bushman family had a single word left.
They had arrived here today with so much noise.
So much confidence, so much certainty that they held every advantage.
And now they were standing in the wreckage of everything they had built, watching it come apart piece by piece, person by person, in front of a crowd that had witnessed every moment of it.
Then General Zachariah turned.
He looked at Vincent.
He looked at the family behind him.
His expression carried no sympathy.
No residual warmth from whatever connection had once existed between their families.
When he spoke, his voice was calm in the way that only truly dangerous men can be calm—not because the anger had left, but because it had settled into something permanent and decided.
“When the divorce papers are ready,” he said, “you will come and sign them.”
He let that sit for exactly one second.
“But if you think you have a choice in the matter if you think you can delay, avoid, or ignore what is coming—then let me be very clear with you.”
His eyes moved slowly across Vincent, then his father, then the rest of them.
“I will come to wherever you are. I will bundle you and every single member of your worthless family out of your home with my own hands if I have to, and I will bring you in to do what needs to be done.”
He straightened.
“This is the last time I want to see any of you anywhere near anything that has to do with my family.”
He turned slightly, dismissing them entirely with the movement.
“Be expecting the divorce papers.”