### Chapter 7
His voice was cold, like a blade dipped in poison.
"Where I go is none of your business."
I had no intention of arguing with him, but Cyril yanked my car door open and dragged me into his Cayenne.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Let me out!"
He didn't react. He floored the gas and drove straight for Weiss Hospital.
"Just because you can't have children, you want to destroy Melanie and her baby? How can you be this vicious?"
"If I hadn't gotten there in time, her whole life would have been ruined!"
He dragged me into the hospital room.
Melanie lay in the bed, her face white as paper. The moment she saw me she scrambled off the bed, dropped to her knees in front of me, and pressed her forehead to the floor, again and again.
"It was my fault, sister. Punish me however you want, just please let my baby live. Please?"
Listening to her, the numbness started in my fingertips and spread through my whole body.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Cyril seemed to have expected the denial. His voice came out hard and cold. "The kidnappers confessed everything. You hired them to take Melanie, you told them to do whatever they wanted with her, to get rid of the baby. And you've got the nerve to deny it?"
He pulled Melanie up off the floor and into his arms, kissing the tears from her face with great tenderness.
"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'll make this right for you."
From inside his embrace, Melanie stole a glance at me, her eyes full of malice and triumph.
Another play, written and performed by her.
I didn't waste another word. I grabbed Melanie by the wrist.
"You say you were kidnapped? Then let's go to the police and report it. The truth will come out on its own."
Melanie shrank back into Cyril's arms in terror, the tears coming harder, her whole body trembling. "Cyril, I'm scared..."
His face dark, Cyril knocked my hand away.
"Melanie was nearly violated, and you want to put her through it all over again in front of everyone?!"
"Julie Henson, apologize. And swear you'll never hurt Melanie again."
I screamed at the two of them. "Apologize to her? She isn't worth it!"
Crack.
Cyril slapped me with everything he had.
He looked at Melanie's swollen, red-rimmed eyes, then turned to me, and his gaze had never been so vicious.
"So you feel no remorse at all. Someone take Mrs. Weiss to the morgue. Let her reflect down there."
The bodyguards hauled me off at once and threw me into the hospital morgue.
The door slammed shut. A wave of freezing air hit me, cold enough to set my whole body shaking.
There was a time when I scraped a little skin and he came apart with worry.
Now I'd just lost a child, the wound he'd given me still on my belly, my leg festering, and he locked me in a place full of the dead.
I curled up on the icy floor and thought of seven years ago, my adoptive mother holding my hand as she warned me:
"Sweetheart, always love yourself first. Never pin your hopes on a man."
I hadn't understood her then.
Now, frozen nearly stiff, my mind blurring, the words came back clearer than they ever had.
On the third morning, the bodyguards finally opened the door.
I dragged my body, heavy as iron, out of the hospital and went back to that house to get my things.
The master bedroom door stood ajar. From inside came the violent creak of the bed, and a woman's high, rising moans. The sound drove through my eardrums and rang around inside my skull, and I almost threw up.
