The Billionaire Groom Replaced Me With His Tomboy After I Was Paralyzed Chapter 10
Two months later.
I was sitting at a sunlit sidewalk cafe in a completely different city, watching the condensation drip
down my glass of iced cold brew, when a text from Maddie buzzed on my screen.
“Babe, it’s over. The final curtain just dropped.”
She attached a series of high-resolution screenshots.
The first was a public federal court enforcement registry. Garrett Miller, having failed to resolve his outstanding payday loans and civil judgments from the wedding vendors, had been formally processed into the national bankruptcy and delinquent debtor registry.
A total deadbeat.
His credit score was utterly ruined, his luxury purchasing rights were legally revoked, and every single bank account tied to his name had been frozen by federal liquidation orders. Even his corporate gig was gone; the company, auditing the public registry, terminated his contract the exact same afternoon to protect their corporate image.
The second screenshot was a social media update posted by Garrett’s mother.
It was a grim photo of an IV drip in a sterile hospital ward, with a bitter caption: [You spend your entire life sacrificing everything to raise a son, only to watch a single malicious woman destroy
your entire family name.]
The engagement metrics below the post were a clean zero-not a single like, not a single comment. Every respectable contact in her circle had already blocked her number.
The third photo was a recent candid shot of Roxy, taken by a mutual acquaintance.
She was standing under the greasy awning of a low-end diner downtown, wearing a stained apron, the jagged surgical scar across her jawline completely visible under the harsh fluorescent lights. After being kicked out of Garrett’s place, left with zero savings and no professional prospects, she
had run completely out of options.
The illegal underground gyms wouldn’t take her back; a jaw lined with titanium screws couldn’t
absorb a single punch without shattering into splinters.
She was stuck cleaning tables and washing dishes for twelve bucks an hour. Half of her meager
paycheck was seized automatically every month to pay down her personal credit defaults.
Maddie followed up with a brief voice note, her tone bursting with amusement.
“Oh, and you won’t believe the last bit. Garrett actually tracked her down at the diner last week, blocking the kitchen doors and demanding she pay him back the original retail value of that Cartier piece. Roxy ended up calling the cops on him. The two of them spent three hours at the precinct screaming and exposing each other’s dirty laundry right in front of the desk sergeant. The duty officer told the press he hasn’t seen a more pathetic case of dogs tearing each other apart in twenty years of service.”
I set my phone face down on the wooden table and took a slow sip of my coffee. Outside the glass, the brilliant afternoon sun was spilling across the pavement, warm and peaceful.
The phone buzzed again. An unlisted number.
I hesitated for a second, then pressed accept.
The line remained dead silent for three long seconds before Garrett’s voice scraped through the speaker. It sounded hollow, broken, and dripping with a pathetic humility I had never heard from
him before.
“Sienna…”
I didn’t answer.
“Sienna, I know I messed up. I truly, deeply understand what I did wrong now. Is there… is there any way you could wire me some cash? Just fifty grand, please, just enough to clear the immediate
collections liens so I can breathe…”
“I’ll pay you back every single cent, I swear on my life.”
I cradled my warm coffee cup, my eyes tracking the casual flow of pedestrians out on the clean city
streets.
In my past life, when I was rolling off the roof of that apartment building in a broken wheelchair, he was downstairs clinking champagne glasses with Roxy.
“Garrett.”
“Yeah? Sienna, I’m here, I’m listening!”
“Do you remember what you were doing the exact moment I fell off that roof?”
The line went completely dead. The silence stretched until the static began to hum.
“What… what roof? I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about…”
“Never mind,” I murmured, a faint, clean smile touching my lips.
“Good luck, Garrett.”
i terminated the call, permanently blacklisted the number, and powered down the device.
Looking up, I saw a lone figure walking toward the cafe entrance. Maddie had texted me earlier reminding me that the autumn breeze in this city was brief and that I should pack a coat, but today the sun was simply too beautiful to care.
It was the kind of perfect afternoon that made every single second of crawling back from hell worth the price.
I grabbed my bag, rose from the table, and walked toward the exit.
As I pushed through the heavy glass doors of the cafe, a clean, brisk wind caught my face, opening up to a bright, endless horizon.
Behind me, the entire nightmare-the octagon cage, the white gown, the bleached chicken bones, the predatory collections calls, and the ruined titanium jaw-had been left permanently at the
previous stop.
Moving forward, my life belonged entirely to me.