When He Stopped Loving Me Chapter 6

The housekeeper frantically called Ethan repeatedly. No one answered.

Claire struggled to open her heavy eyelids, voice hoarse and weak. "Don't bother... he won't answer."

She managed a smile uglier than crying. "He's... celebrating Rachel's birthday right now."

The housekeeper sighed, fetching fever medicine and carefully helping Claire take it.

After swallowing the pills, Claire drifted into restless sleep, not waking until evening when rough door-slamming startled her awake.

Ethan entered reeking of alcohol and bringing in the outside cold, face dark as a storm.

"Claire!" He reached the bed and grabbed her wrist, nearly crushing her bones. "Why didn't you come? Rachel waited all evening! She cried her eyes swollen! I can't bear seeing her shed a single tear, yet you dare upset her like this!"

Claire felt dizzy from his shaking, the barely healed wound in her heart ripped open again, sharp pain flooding through.

He'd once been unable to bear HER crying either.

She lifted heavy eyelids, looking at this face she'd loved to her core but now found terrifyingly strange, suddenly struck by the absurdity.

"So?" Her voice was hoarse from fever but carried deathly calm. "Will you kill me now?"

Ethan sneered coldly. "No. Since you made her cry, you'll cry thoroughly too."

He pulled out his phone and made a call. "Bring everyone connected to Claire Morrison—her best friend, colleagues, cousin, everyone. Whoever makes Claire cry gets a hundred million dollars."

Half an hour later, the villa filled with people.

First to approach was Claire's closest friend, Emma Lin. They'd shopped together, shared secrets, comforted each other through tough times.

"Claire, just cry." Emma's voice shook. "A hundred million—that's generations of money."

Seeing no reaction, Emma suddenly slapped her. "Stop acting superior! Think you're still the high-and-mighty Mrs. Pierce?"

Claire's cheek burned, but she didn't cry.

Next came colleagues, distant relatives, even the nanny who'd raised her since childhood.

"Mr. Pierce doesn't want you anymore—why are you clinging here shamelessly?"

"That Rachel is way gentler than you. No wonder Mr. Pierce changed his mind."

"Heard your baby's gone? Probably karma for being so awful."

Claire endured it all like a broken doll—insults, shoving, even physical blows from those surrounding her.

She bit her lip until blood filled her mouth, stubbornly refusing to let a single tear fall.

Her heart was already dead. What use were tears?

Ethan sat on the sofa, coldly watching everything, watching Claire's hollow yet stubborn eyes, growing increasingly irritated.

Why wouldn't she cry? What right did she have not to cry?

Just as his patience nearly ran out, Claire's cousin spotted an elegant photo frame on the display shelf.

It held Claire's only family photo with her deceased parents.

The cousin grabbed it, pulling out a lighter. "Claire! If you don't cry, I'll burn it!"

Finally, cracks appeared in Claire's numb expression!

She looked up sharply, voice breaking. "No! Jenny! That's my only photo with Mom and Dad! Please! Don't!"

"Then cry! Cry and I'll give it back!" Jenny taunted as the lighter's flame licked the frame's edge.

"I'm begging you... don't... we're family, please don't be so cruel..." Claire collapsed in desperate pleas, tears welling in her eyes yet stubbornly refusing to fall.

Watching her so humbly beg over that photo, Ethan felt something wrench painfully in his chest.

He remembered how she treasured that photo.

"Burn it." He heard his own icy voice, carrying ruthlessness even he didn't recognize.

Jenny obeyed immediately, throwing the burning frame to the floor!

"NO—!!!"

Claire released a piercing scream, collapsing to the ground, bare hands beating at flames to save the disintegrating image.

But it was too late.

The photo curled and blackened in the fire, her parents' gentle smiles disappearing bit by bit before her eyes, leaving only a small pile of ash.

Her outstretched hand caught only hot ash and burning pain.

The tears she'd held back finally broke free like a dam bursting.

She cried.

Cried with heart-wrenching agony, as if to drain a lifetime's worth of tears.

Ethan watched her curled on the floor, shaking with sobs, but felt no satisfaction—only a suffocating tightness in his chest.

Looking at her fingers blistered and red from the flames, he instinctively stepped forward before his feet seemed nailed in place.

Finally, Claire passed out from overwhelming grief and physical trauma.