Chapter 129
I turned and found Linda, crumpled against the wall, her face streaked with tears. She looked lost and fragile, clutching at her face as if she couldn’t bear to feel the rawness of her injury.
I approached slowly, feeling an odd satisfaction beneath my calm expression. She looked up at me, eyes bloodshot and wet, searching for sympathy. Her hand trembled over her cheek, the slight burn there stark against her pale skin.
“Why… why did this have to happen to me?” Linda whispered, voice breaking. “I was going to be a star. How am I supposed to face the cameras now?”
Her gaze was a mixture of anger and self pity, not even a hint of concern for Arman or gratitude that
her injuries were relatively minor.
Pretending to show empathy, I placed a hand on her shoulder, leaning in as if to comfort her. “Linda, it’s going to be okay,” I began softly, though the words held an edge of irony.
The nurse, in order to comfort Linda, rushed to say, “The scars on your face may be able to be
removed by surgery in the future, so don’t think about it anymore.”
The nurse’s words seemed to bring up a trace of Linda’s zest for life.
“Your burns… they’re not so bad. But Arman…” I sighed, watching her expression carefully. “He has
burns over most of his body. The doctors… they said he may not even be able to keep his legs.”
At my words, the light in Linda’s eyes seemed to flicker and die. She stilled, absorbing the full weight of what I had said, her face growing more rigid by the second. She barely blinked, her expression: going blank, before a slight sneer tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“A wheelchair?” she muttered softly, almost to herself, a look of disdain flashing across her face.
“Well… that’s unfortunate.”
I caught the change in her tone immediately, the subtle curl of her lip betraying what she truly thought. For all her show of tears and desperation moments ago, the thought of being linked to a man who would no longer command power, wealth, and charm repulsed her.
And in that Instant, I saw clearly how shallow her attachment to him truly was. To Linda, Arman had been a stepping stone, a ticket to her dreams of stardom, but now? Now, he was nothing more than a liability.
man’s family might be wealthy,” I murmured, unable to hide the glint in my eyes, “but how would
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someone of your ambition stay tied to a… cripple?”
Lemphasized the last word, watching her flinch and then quickly look away, the truth of her selfishness stamped plainly across her face.
She didn’t respond, but her silence said everything. She gave me a half–hearted, dismissive shrug. her gaze slipping away as she muttered,
“It’s… it’s a shame, really.” Her voice was cold, almost callous.
The drama, the tears, all of it was an act to mask her true feelings. I couldn’t help but let a slight smirk tug at my lips, satisfied to see the real Linda finally unveiled.
A few hours after Arman’s surgery, the doctors brought his parents into a small consultation room. They had just arrived in The Hospital. The news was bittersweet: while they had managed to save his legs, he would never regain full mobility.
His parents‘ faces paled, and his mother swayed, reaching for a chair before she collapsed onto it, stunned. Arman, their proud son who had always walked with such confidence and poise, was now permanently limited.
The doctor continued explaining his prognosis, but the words hardly registered. They felt as though
their whole world had been shattered.
When they entered Arman’s room, his parents looked as though they’d aged years in just a few
hours.
His mother clasped his hand tightly, fighting tears, and said,
“Arman, you’ll get through this. We’ll be here for you.” Arman managed a weak smile, though his eyes showed the shadow of realization. As his mother stepped back, she whispered to his father, “We need to find Linda. He’s been asking about her.”
They soon found Linda in a nearby hallway, deep in conversation with a nurse about options for scar removal and implant surgeries.
Linda’s voice was a mix of determination and eagerness, entirely absorbed in her plans for
restoration and her future.
When Arman’s parents approached, their expressions were a mixture of anger and disbelief. His mother’s voice was low but filled with frustration.
“Linda,” she said, barely containing her emotion, “our son is lying in that room a changed man because of you. He did all this to protect you because you are his girlfriend.. He risked his life, he-”
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her voice cracked, “he may never walk the same again, and here you are, chatting about surgery.”
Linda turned, slightly taken aback but regaining her composure quickly.
“Ma’am, you’re misunderstanding the situation. Arman’s feelings are his own; he’s just someone who admires me, but he chose to risk himself on his own. I never asked him to save me. May be he tried all this because he was my suitor not a boyfriend She added dismissively,
“I owe him gratitude, not my life.”
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