Love Beyond the Mask

Chatper 238

As Whitney’s head collided with the rock, leaving her immobile, her desperate attempt to flee

momentarily gave her assailant pause. His voice carried a chilling threat through the air as he said,

“Your child’s barely two pounds. It won’t survive this! You and yours have to die. Just accept your fate,

and I might leave you a whole corpse.”

With lips quivering, Whitney mustered a cold, trembling laugh. Summoning her last ounce of strength,

she struggled to her feet and glanced behind her, only to see the raging sea, its waves ready to

swallow everything whole.

Despair and surrender gripped her faster than she would have believed possible.

A twisted smile broke through her terror as she clutched her newborn, too tiny and still to comprehend

the peril. Her eyes shimmered with a mosaic of light, tinged with the crimson of heartbreak. Then, all

turned dark.

“I won’t let Elaine harm us, not even the slightest bit. I’m so sorry, my love… so sorry,” she whispered

to her child.

“Ludwik, Ludwik, Ludwik! I hate you! In this life and the next, I’ll never forgive you!”

With those final words, she leaped backward, her frail body unfurling like a ribbon in the wind. Clinging

to her precious baby, she closed her eyes in utter despair as her tears joined the boundless depths of

the ocean below.

Elaine’s voice echoed the sentiment, “He never wanted this child. He could not bring himself to do it, so

he let me do the dirty work.”

“He knew sending you to the sanitarium would mean the child would not last long under the strain,” she

sneered.

Whitney had not believed her at first, but she could not dismiss the last call for help that went ignored

by him. Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Elaine had gloated, “He’s fleeing Banyan City tonight just to avoid you, to let me take care of the

unwanted ‘trouble‘.”

“Oh, baby, I was so wrong! My greatest mistake was hoping that man would have a shred of decency.

His cruelty is beyond words.

I’ll always be with you, never letting you fall into the hands of evil, suffering their torment. I love

you.

But I am filled with such hatred, such loathing. Even in death, I won’t rest until I’ve haunted that

treacherous pair!” These words were the last in her mind as the sea devoured her.

The henchmen, stunned, rushed to the edge of the rocky precipice, peering down at the turbulent

white–capped waves below.

Except for the howling wind, not even the sound of a body hitting the water reached their ears.

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“Where is that bitch?” Elaine approached through the darkness, her face alight with vicious joy at the

thought of Whitney’s inescapable fate.

“Elaine!” one of the men called out, his voice tinged with panic. “She gave birth… But she jumped with

the baby to keep us from taking it!”

“What?” Elaine froze for a moment.

Snapping back to reality, she ran to the cliff’s edge, her flashlight beam probing the depths. As she saw

the height of the cliff, her lips curled into an involuntary smirk.

Before her sneer could fully form, one of the men stepped on something soft and out of place among

the rocks.

“What now?” the leader barked at the alarmed underling.

“It’s… another baby! Alive or dead, I can’t tell!”

“How can that be?” Elaine’s eyes widened in disbelief, rushing to where a small, bloodied bundle lay

half–hidden beneath the rocks. The infant, still covered in blood, was so tiny and silent that it had gone

unnoticed.

“What’s happening? You said she jumped with the child!” Elaine’s voice trembled with unease.

“It’s true, she jumped with the baby in her arms. We all saw it. But how could there be another?” A cold

realization dawned on Elaine. Could Whitney have been carrying twins without knowing

it?

Did Ludwik know?

Whether he knew or not, this child had to be disposed of. There could be no loose ends to

threaten her future with Ludwik.

“Pick it up and throw it over,” she commanded with chilling finality.

As the henchman hesitated, Elaine’s phone rang. It was Jaxon. “Elaine, something’s wrong. Mr.

Lippert’s private plane has returned! It just landed on the sanitarium’s roof. He’s searching for Whitney.”

“What?” Elaine’s face turned pale, her mind racing. She looked up to see a helicopter’s red light

blinking in the distance.

“Wait!” She felt a rush of panic. What if Ludwik had binoculars on that planè? They could not risk being

seen now.

She quickly instructed her men to lay the baby back down, then took a knife, sliced the infant’s fragile

veins, and flung the blood toward the cliff’s edge, tossing the knife into the sea.

“Smear some of the fresh blood along the roadside. Quickly! Then erase any signs of a struggle and

disappear!”

After giving her orders Flaine called Ashton her voice hoarse with urgency. “Ashton. Jaxon

saved me. No need to come to the B&B anymore. I was worried about Whitney. I’m by the seaside, and

I’ve found some unusual bloodstains. Notify Ludwik, fast!”

“Director, you can send the surveillance footage of Tiana rescuing Whitney to Mr. Lippert now!”

Hanging up, Elaine squinted at the sea below, then at the helicopter drawing ever closer.

Slowly, she raised her flashlight.

“Mr. Lippert, there’s a light on the coastal road. Could it be Ms. Valentine signaling for help?” Felix

shouted, peering out of the helicopter.

Ludwik’s face was ashen. From the moment his heart had clenched with an ominous pain, he found it

hard to breathe.

A vein throbbed at his temple, a grim premonition telling him something terrible had happened.

His fingers gripped tightly together, slick with sweat, as if he was losing his grasp on something

precious, something irrevocably slipping away, causing panic to fill his chest.

He rose from his seat, his voice a thunderous roar. “Land now!”

That damned woman, whatever she had done, she had to be safe, both she and their children.

The helicopter touched down just as the delayed surveillance footage appeared on a laptop. Felix

opened it, and Ludwik’s gaze turned icy at the sight.

The surveillance footage was crystal clear, capturing Tiana’s deceptive disguise as a nurse, her brazen

entrance into the hospital ward, and the entire process of spiriting away Whitney.

Just moments ago, the hospital director had hemmed and hawed, insisting that Whitney had somehow

fled on her own, blaming the spotty signal in the hills and the perpetual ‘fixing‘ of the surveillance

system.”

Ludwik did not buy it for a second until he saw this footage.

He clenched his jaw tightly, his fists coiling into balls of restrained fury.

The helicopter touched down at the roadside, yet from the woods nestled at the foot of the slope,

Elaine’s cries for help pierced the air, “Who’s there? Is that you, Ludwik? Ludwik, please, you’ve got to

save me, save the child.”

What child?

The tall man leaped from the chopper, his body tensing instinctively.

His eyes flickered with a tremble of urgency, propelling him toward the cliff’s edge at breakneck speed.

“Elaine… whose child is it?”