When Love Turns to Ashes Chapter 6

Ethan struggled to open his heavy eyelids, his voice hoarse and weak: "Stop calling... she won't answer."

He managed a smile that looked worse than crying. "She's... celebrating Luke's birthday right now."

The housekeeper sighed, ultimately saying nothing. She just quietly fetched fever medication and carefully helped Ethan take it.

After the medicine, Ethan drifted into fitful sleep, not waking until evening when violent sounds jarred him awake.

Victoria stormed in reeking of alcohol and cold night air, her face dark.

"Ethan!" She grabbed his wrist. "Why didn't you come? Luke waited for you all evening! He thought you hated him and cried. I can't bear to see him shed a single tear, but you made him this upset!"

The shaking made Ethan dizzy, his head spinning. The numbness in his chest cracked open, sharp pain flooding through.

Once upon a time, she couldn't bear to see him cry either.

He lifted his heavy eyelids, looking at this face he'd once loved to his core but now found terrifyingly strange. It all felt absurdly laughable.

"So what?" His voice was raspy from fever but carried a deathly calm. "Are you going to kill me?"

Victoria sneered. "No. Since you made him cry, you'll cry too."

She pulled out her phone and made a call. "Bring everyone connected to Ethan—his friends, colleagues, his cousin—all of them. Whoever makes Ethan cry gets a hundred million dollars."

Half an hour later, the mansion was packed with people.

The first to approach was Ethan's best friend, Ryan. They'd shared everything growing up—studies, secrets, comfort during hard times.

"Ethan, just cry. Please." Ryan's voice shook. "A hundred million could last me several lifetimes."

Seeing Ethan's lack of response, Ryan suddenly slapped him across the face. "Stop acting high and mighty! You think you're still the golden boy? Who do you think you are?"

Ethan's cheek burned, but still, he didn't cry.

Then came colleagues, distant relatives, even the nanny who'd raised him since childhood.

"Victoria doesn't want you anymore—why are you still clinging around here?"

"That Luke guy is way better to her than you ever were. No wonder she changed her mind."

"I heard even your baby died? Must be karma for all your sins."

Ethan stood like a battered doll, surrounded and abused—insults, shoving, even punches and kicks.

He bit his lip until he tasted blood, but stubbornly refused to let a single tear fall.

His heart was already dead. What good were tears?

Victoria sat on the couch, coldly watching it all, watching Ethan's hollow but stubborn eyes. Her irritation grew.

Why wouldn't he cry? Why wasn't he suffering?

Just as she was losing patience, Ethan's cousin spotted the delicate frame on the bookshelf.

It held Ethan's only family photo with his late parents.

She rushed over, grabbed it, and pulled out a lighter. "Ethan! If you don't cry, I'm burning this!"

For the first time, cracks appeared in Ethan's numb expression!

He looked up sharply, his voice breaking: "No! Lindsay! That's the only photo of me and my parents! Please! Don't!"

"Cry! Cry and I'll give it back!" Lindsay shouted, the lighter's flame already licking the frame's edge.

"I'm begging you... don't... we're family, don't be so heartless..." Ethan's voice cracked with desperation. Tears gathered in his eyes but stubbornly refused to fall.

Victoria watched him beg so pathetically for that photograph, her heart constricting as if gripped by an invisible hand.

She remembered that photo. He treasured it above all else.

"Burn it," she heard herself say coldly, with a ruthlessness even she didn't fully recognize.

With that permission, Lindsay didn't hesitate. She threw the burning frame to the floor!

"No——!!"

Ethan let out a piercing, agonized scream, throwing himself to the ground, using his bare hands to beat out the flames, desperate to save those disappearing images.

But it was too late.

The photograph curled and blackened in the fire, his parents' gentle smiles vanishing before his eyes until only a small pile of ash remained.

His outstretched hand grasped nothing but scorching ash and burning pain.

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

He cried.

He wept with soul-shattering anguish, as if releasing every tear he had left to shed.

Victoria watched him trembling on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. But instead of satisfaction, she felt something lodged in her chest, making it hard to breathe.

Looking at his fingers, red and blistered from trying to save the photo, she unconsciously moved to help—but her feet seemed rooted to the spot.

Eventually, Ethan passed out from the combined assault of grief and physical exhaustion.