The Day Our Promise Breaks (Charles and Evelyn) novel Chapter 527

Dahlia looked at Sandy, her tone icy and distant.

“Do you want to?” she asked.

Sandy nodded vigorously.

She couldn’t stand living in this cramped, run-down apartment, and she didn’t dare imagine what life would be like without her dad—her mom probably wouldn’t even bother to smile at her anymore.

“Mom, can you teach me? What should I do so Daddy will come back to us?” Sandy knelt at Dahlia’s feet, looking up at her with wide, hopeful eyes.

“What do you think?” Dahlia shot back, her voice sharp.

Sandy hesitated, understanding what her mother meant.

But…

“Mom, Dr. Carter said I can’t get sick…” Sandy’s voice trembled with fear.

She remembered overhearing Dr. Carter warning her parents: she couldn’t afford to get sick now, any infection could be dangerous—no one, not even the best doctors, could save her then.

She didn’t want to die.

*Slap—*

Dahlia’s hand flew up, striking Sandy’s face.

“If dying was that easy, would you still be alive now?”

“Sandy, you need to understand—without Charles, you’re nothing.”

“You’ve already been expelled from St. Catherine’s Academy. From now on, you’ll have to live in this shabby apartment and call Wesley, that useless man, your father.”

“Everything you had before is gone.”

Sandy shook her head desperately.

This wasn’t what she wanted.

She couldn’t get expelled from St. Catherine’s.

Wesley—a poor, good-for-nothing man—could never be her dad. Only Charles was worthy of being her father.

“Mom, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to make Daddy come back, I’ll do it.”

Sandy’s worries faded, replaced by her fear of returning to poverty.

She was used to being adored, to living a life where everyone looked up to her. She couldn’t bear even a single day of this misery.

What was there to be afraid of? Mom was right—how could she die so easily? She’d survived kidney failure twice, hadn’t she?

And besides, when she was five, Mom had made her soak in ice water before. She’d ended up in the hospital—sure, it was awful, but in the end, nothing really happened.

Sandy remembered that time clearly: she’d just come out of surgery, still weak, and Mom deliberately made her sick. When she woke up, the look of worry on Daddy’s face was burned into her memory.

Daddy loved her.

If she got really sick again, really bad, Daddy would be heartbroken. And if he was heartbroken for her, he’d forgive her.

And if Charles felt sorry for her, they’d win him back.

So all Dahlia cared about was her goal—Sandy’s suffering didn’t matter.

Only when Sandy was nearly unconscious, her body practically frozen and her face ashen, did Dahlia wheel over and turn off the tap.

Under such extreme conditions, it didn’t take half an hour before Sandy developed a fever.

Even then, Dahlia sat in the corner, cold and unmoved, waiting.

It wasn’t until Sandy’s temperature climbed close to 104°F that Dahlia finally gathered her up, settled her in her lap, and wheeled her out of the apartment to go find Charles.

She knew Charles had been staying at Oakwood Manor lately. The security cameras she’d installed back then were still there.

Tonight, Charles was there again.

Dahlia hailed a cab to Oakwood Manor.

The driver helped lift the feverish, limp Sandy into the car and, noticing her condition, asked if they should make a stop at the hospital. Dahlia snapped at him, so he minded his own business, dropped them off at Oakwood Manor, and drove away.

Dahlia had arranged for Sandy’s face to be recognized at the gate “to make it easier for her to visit Charlie,” she’d once said.

Inside the complex, Dahlia wheeled straight to Charles’s building.

She rang the doorbell.

Moments later, Charles’s handsome face appeared in the doorway.