One night, a blizzard shut down the whole city. Murray was stranded out of town. Karl's fever wouldn't break, so I strapped him to my back and trudged through the snow to the hospital, sinking knee-deep with every other step.
The emergency room was packed, the line stretching down the hall. Karl had already gone limp in my arms, burning up and unconscious. I dropped to my knees in front of the people ahead of us and begged them, forehead to the floor, to let my child through.
Karl was delirious with fever, crying in my arms when he whispered：“Mommy, Karl loves Mommy the most in the whole world.”
“My mom is Iris, obviously.” He lifted his chin, looking at me with smug pride plastered across his face.
The tiny flicker of hope that had just risen inside me shattered in an instant, ground to dust, scattered to nothing.
My lips trembled. I couldn't get a single word out. Tears burned at the edges of my eyes, spinning there, but I refused to let them fall.
The jeering around me grew louder：
“I must've lost my mind for a second there, almost believing that lunatic!”
“She couldn't seduce someone else's husband, so now she's playing victim? How did we never see what trash she really is?”
“Bet she slept her way into that team leader position too, huh?”
By this point, their venom didn't touch me anymore.
Other people's knives were nothing compared to the blade that had grown from my own flesh and blood, twisting where it hurt most.
Iris walked toward me with a thin smile curling her lips, and without warning, her palm cracked across my face.
The taste of rust spread through my mouth.
Murray took one step toward me, then stopped dead. Karl's eyes flicked to my face, his pupils contracting, and he jerked his head away.
“That's to teach you a lesson. So you remember what you're allowed to touch and what you're not.” Iris looked down at me, eyebrows raised, savoring every second.
“Oh, and you're fired. Misconduct and insubordination. Get out.
I didn't even have the strength left to be angry.
I moved like a puppet on strings, packing my things with a blank face.
I clutched the box to my chest and walked toward the door, hollow, barely there.
On my way out, I collided with a solid chest. Everything in the box spilled across the floor. I murmured an apology.
I bent down to pick up the scattered belongings, but before my fingers touched anything, someone caught my wrist.
A voice, tight with concern, came from above me：
“Sis?”
“Eva?!”
I looked up and met a pair of phoenix eyes identical to my own. Every ounce of pain I'd been holding back found its way out at once, and my voice broke：
“Frank Cox……”
He patted my back gently, soothing me, then narrowed his eyes at Murray, who stood frozen across the room：“Manager Hughes. What happened here?”
“Explain.”
