When I woke, I was lying in a hospital bed. The doctor held my chart, his expression grave. ： “Miss Henson, your body went through severe trauma. Help didn't get to you in time — you lost the baby.”
I sat there blank for a long moment, then reached up and gripped the chart so hard the paper bent.
From the second Isaac stopped trusting me, this child was never going to have a happy life. A clean break hurt less than a slow one.
While I was unconscious, I had felt something small and mine slipping away, silent, until it was gone. Thrown out with the medical waste.
Isaac was so sure I could never leave him. Then let him carry this for the rest of his life: his own child, killed by his own hand.
After I picked up my last paycheck, I went back to the apartment and started packing.
The door was kicked open. Isaac stormed toward me, his hand closing around my throat. ： “Willow never did anything to you. What the hell was that news story you planted?”
I froze, opened the app, and saw the number-one trending story ： RODRIGUEZ HEIRESS THE OTHER WOMAN? Old flame with Sanchez heir rekindled
The reposts and engagement had already shot to the top. That kind of reach — I was nobody. I couldn't buy that kind of traffic if I tried.
I stared at him, the words forced through my teeth ： “I don't have that kind of money to push a story, and I have no reason to smear her.”
Isaac let out a cold, derisive laugh. ： “Of course you do. You're jealous that I love her more than I ever loved you.”
His grip tightened. Air stopped reaching my lungs and the blood rushed to my face.
“Willow's locked herself in her room. She won't eat. Her stomach can't take this kind of stress.”
And my body could? My body could take being destroyed like this?
I clawed at his chest like something feral, drowning in the suffocation that swallowed me whole.
Isaac let go without warning. I hit the floor hard.
Then he dragged me upstairs, kicked the study door open, held up his phone with the camera facing me, and spoke in a voice like the devil whispering ： “Go live. Confess that you have a disability fetish and a mental illness, and that's why you tried to steal Willow Rodriguez's boyfriend.”
“Then get on your knees and bow your head to the floor and apologize.”
I clenched my jaw and refused to lower my head.
“Your mother's still in the hospital. What do you think happens if someone accidentally pulls out her oxygen tube?”
He held up a surveillance feed. On screen, a man in black stood beside my mother's bed, his fingers pinched around her oxygen line.
I screamed every filthy thing I could think of at him. In the end, I had no choice. “I'll do whatever you say. Just don't hurt my mom.”
In front of the camera I became a puppet on strings, reading lines in a dead voice, confessing that I had interfered in their relationship, that I had even threatened to kill myself to keep him.
It turns out that when you break completely, you can't cry. By then, everything I felt for him had gone numb.
Isaac stared at me, his gaze snagging on the bloodstains on my pants.
His face twisted with disgust. ： “You got period blood on yourself? When did you become this disgusting?”
It wasn't menstrual blood. I had coughed it up that morning and it had gotten on my clothes. The doctor told me my blood wasn't clotting right anymore. The pregnancy had been fragile from the start — any shock at all could end it.
Right then, Isaac's phone rang — the ringtone he kept just for Willow. He picked up ：
“Isaac, how come you're not home? I don't see you anywhere.”
He grabbed his jacket and was already heading for the door. ： “I'm on my way back now.”
I shouted at his retreating back ： “Isaac Sanchez, are you her dog? She says jump and you jump.”
He whipped around like I'd stepped on a nerve, swung his hand, and slapped me so hard my vision blurred. ： “Watch your mouth.”
I pressed my palm to my swollen, burning cheek and watched him walk away until he was gone.
I stuffed everything in the apartment worth anything into a suitcase. The only thing I left behind was the matching couple's rings by the front door.
The moment I got into the car, I looked up at the place I had called home for five years. The blueberry plant on the balcony had finally fruited, but fruit that was never meant to be yours always tasted bitter.
I rolled up the window, leaned back, and closed my eyes.
At the same time, an email containing a forged death report landed in Isaac Sanchez's inbox.
