Charles dropped a folder onto my lap, the papers sliding across my hospital gown. “Sign the divorce papers. You leave quietly, and this doesn’t become unpleasant.”
Veronica laughed softly, her phone capturing everything. “This is going to go viral,” she murmured.
They told me lies with confidence, and confidence is persuasive when you’re exhausted, medicated, and terrified of losing your child. They told me Julian’s marriage to me had been a reckless mistake, that his relationship with Selene was legitimate, that I had trapped him with a pregnancy that wasn’t even his. They said things designed to fracture my sense of reality, and when Margot leaned close and whispered that they would fight for custody if I resisted, something inside me broke cleanly in two.
I signed.
The pen shook so badly the nurse later asked if I was being forced, but by then the damage was done.
Selene laughed, the sound sharp and triumphant. “Did you really think you belonged in this family?” she said. “Julian married you because of a bet. A joke. You were entertainment.”
They escorted me from the hospital before sunset, Noah bundled against my chest, my body screaming in protest as stitches pulled and burned. I was not allowed to rest. I was not allowed to heal.
They took me to the Hale estate under the guise of collecting my belongings.
What they really wanted was to erase me.
My clothes were already piled outside, dampened by falling snow, while the interior of the house remained warm and untouched, glowing with chandeliers and indifference. My mother’s old watch, the only thing I had inherited from her, was missing. Veronica smirked when I asked about it.
