Chapter 106
"I know," Juliana said softly.
Joshua nodded. "Alright, get some rest. Call me if you need anything."
"I will."
Juliana watched Joshua's car pull out of the neighborhood before turning back toward the house.
Not far away, a black sedan sat parked under the trees. The window rolled down slowly, a camera lens aimed at the scene of Juliana and Joshua saying goodbye. The soft click of the shutter was barely audible.
The photos were sent to Logan almost immediately.
Logan stared at his phone screen. In the photos, Juliana and Joshua stood under the streetlight, his hand gently touching her head. The scene looked intimate.
He quickly pulled up David's contact and sent the photos over with a message: [Look at this. The Sharp family seems to be doing just fine without you.]
……
In his hospital room, David was leaning against the headboard, his thoughts in chaos.
Ashley's words echoed in his mind—her order to "take care of" Juliana. He closed his eyes. Juliana's face, cool yet soft, flashed through his mind along with Matty and Dami's innocent smiles, like a carousel he couldn't stop.
He'd agreed to it. But inside, everything was churning.
His phone buzzed. He opened his eyes and picked it up.
A message from Logan.
The photo filled the screen. David's heart sank.
He stared at Juliana's smiling face in the picture, at Joshua's affectionate gesture. Anger flared up from somewhere deep inside him.
He gripped the phone tighter. Juliana had never wronged him. But that was exactly why he couldn't go through with it—and that only made it worse.
The photo on the screen felt like a blade stabbing straight into his chest.
……
David's surgery didn't go well.
Afterward, something felt wrong—a strange sensation coming from deep beneath his skin.
He tried to touch it. Beneath the gauze, instead of smooth, healing skin, there were irregular indentations.
"Nurse!" David called out.
The on-duty nurse rushed over. After checking, her expression turned uneasy.
"Mr. White, your wound might be... slightly infected. We've notified the attending physician. He'll be here soon."
Half an hour later, the doctor arrived with several assistants, his face grim as he entered the room.
"Mr. White, your recovery is... more complicated than expected." The doctor avoided David's probing gaze.
David's instincts screamed that something was wrong.
He tore off the gauze. In the cold reflection of the mirror, a twisted, unfamiliar face stared back at him.
What had been a simple injury from being hit now looked deliberately ruined. The wound wasn't just healing poorly—it was uneven, bumpy, as if it had been roughly stitched up and then intentionally damaged.
This wasn't a medical accident. It was deliberate.
"What the hell happened?" David's voice was laced with suppressed fury.
Sweat beaded on the doctor's forehead.
"It could be... a rejection reaction, or perhaps... something unexpected occurred during surgery that we couldn't anticipate."
David didn't let him keep making excuses. He pulled out his phone and took a photo of himself in the mirror, then several close-ups of the wound. The doctor's face went white.
"Mr. White, what are you—"
"I want a new doctor," David said coldly, his voice like it was coming from an ice cellar. "Now. And pull all my medical records and surgical notes. I want to see everything."
The doctors exchanged panicked glances. They tried to placate him, tried to stall, but David's eyes held an almost obsessive clarity.
"If you don't want to make headlines tomorrow, do what I'm telling you."
But while David waited for a new doctor to arrive, the original surgeon and his team packed up their things and left the hospital as fast as they could.
David was left alone in the room with that failed, disfigured face.
He stared at himself in the mirror, at that ruined face. A crushing sense of abandonment and humiliation washed over him like a wave.
This was the doctor Lucas had personally arranged for him? He'd given everything to the Sharp family, and this was how they repaid him?
"Ahh—!" He let out a low roar and slammed his fist into the bedside table. The sharp pain couldn't extinguish the rage burning inside him.
Just then, his phone screen lit up. A multimedia message popped up. He opened it, and what he saw made his blood run cold.
The photo showed two bodies, barely recognizable, lying on a muddy rural road. Though blurry, David recognized them immediately—his biological parents.
For a moment, the world spun.
A metallic taste rose in David's throat.
He stumbled toward Ashley's hospital room, about to push the door open, when he saw Juliana standing outside. She'd either just come out or was about to go in.
Juliana wore a beige cashmere coat, her long hair draped smoothly over her shoulders. She was turned slightly away from him, seemingly talking to someone inside the room.
David's hair was disheveled, the gauze on his face torn, exposing the red, swollen, blackened wound beneath. He looked like a ghost crawling out of hell.
He rushed forward, about to scream, when several bodyguards suddenly appeared from down the hall and blocked his path.
"Who are you?!" The guards looked at him warily, thinking he was some unstable patient.
David ignored them. He just stared at Juliana, then at the blurry figure inside the room.
He needed answers from Lucas!
He tried to break free, but the bodyguards were well-trained and showed no mercy as they slammed him to the ground.
His face hit the cold marble floor hard. The pain forced out a muffled groan.
"Let go of me! I'm David!" he roared.
Hearing the commotion, Juliana turned around. She frowned and asked the guards, "What's going on?"
"Ms. Wells, this guy seems mentally unstable. He was trying to force his way into the room." The bodyguards didn't take David's words seriously at all. Everyone knew David White was smooth and charming.
Some random lunatic showing up out of nowhere claiming to be him? Yeah, right.
Juliana glanced over. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, but she didn't look closely. "Take him out of here."
She didn't recognize him.
David lay on the cold floor as the guards dragged him away. When he resisted, they beat him down again.
He heard Juliana's gentle voice, heard Ashley's weak responses. They were talking about something—Matty's condition, maybe, or just Sharp family matters.
It was all like some absurd play.
Him—the "godson" who'd walked through fire for the Sharp family—now trampled underfoot like a stray dog, disfigured, his biological parents dead. And her—the woman he'd been ordered to "take care of"—chatting pleasantly with Ashley, enjoying everything that should have been his.
Rage, humiliation, pain, despair—every emotion twisted together inside him.
He was dragged away from that door, away from those two women. But his eyes never left that closed hospital room door.
He knew he'd lost everything.
The old David—the one who'd lived for the Sharp family, for Ashley's so-called "kindness"—was dead.