"My brave Prue."
The words hit me, and something inside me almost laughed.
Brave. Of course I was brave. I'd swallowed the agony of losing my child while listening to my own husband ignore his kidnapped wife, too busy losing his mind over another woman to spare me a single thought.
My gaze locked onto those eyes, the ones I'd fallen for a thousand times over, searching desperately for even a flicker of guilt in their depths.
There was nothing. He didn't even glance my way.
A bitter smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it.
Right. A man who didn't care about his wife or his children could hardly be expected to remember a phone call that had never been hung up.
I didn't know how much time passed before the sharp sting of disinfectant pulled me back.
I opened my eyes. Alexis's face filled my vision.
The moment she saw I was awake, her eyes lit up.
She set the apple and paring knife in her hand aside, dug into her bag, and tossed a stack of paper onto my bed.
"You're awake! Quick, tell me if this love letter turned out okay."
The sheets were a collage, pieced together from strips of paper covered in handwriting I knew by heart.
Beside the meticulously assembled creation sat a notebook, its pages ripped apart without a shred of care.
I recognized everything on that bed in an instant. My breath stopped.
Those were my love journals. Ten years of them.
The pieced-together letter began: To my beloved, Alexis.
She must have caught the color draining from my face, because Alexis tilted her chin up, her expression still perfectly innocent.
"Bertram told me yesterday he wanted to use these to buy one of my smiles."
Pain lanced behind my eyes. Every word out of her mouth was a blade, and it was suffocating.
So that was why he hadn't answered his phone. He'd been with Alexis.
He'd shredded everything I'd written without a second thought, just to piece together a love letter for her. Just to make her happy.
The taste of blood seeped between my teeth. My voice shook when I finally spoke. "Are you done with the act?"
Alexis blinked, then shrugged like it meant nothing. "He told me he'd always have my back. No matter what."
My eyes flickered.
She wasn't wrong. Bertram had always shielded her.
The first time, she'd "accidentally" fed me abortion pills disguised as vitamins. His punishment? Making her post a public apology on social media.
The second time, she'd faked a stomachache right as I was going into labor, delaying delivery until my baby suffocated. His punishment? Grounding her for three days to "reflect."
I'd sobbed to Bertram about how unfair it all was. He'd looked at me with flat, distant eyes and said:
"She already knows she was wrong. Be the bigger person."
And now, once again, it was because of her.
Before I could respond, Alexis leaned close to my ear, her lips curling into a smile.
"You know what, sis? Instead of wasting your energy being mad at me, maybe you should go check on that useless father of yours. Someone dug up your mother's grave, and the shock gave him a heart attack. He's still on the operating table."
My mind went blank. Her words echoed in my skull, over and over.
By the time I came back to myself, I was already standing outside the operating room.
"Why are you in such a rush? The doctor said that waste of space can't have children anymore. If it weren't for the fact that her womb could save Alexis, I never would've let her play Mrs. Delgado for ten years."
"Relax, Mom. No more babies? Then we take her heart instead. She owes Alexis that much."
I stared at the two familiar figures around the corner, and my heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it would crack.
So my babies hadn't died. Bertram had taken them under the guise of miscarriages and given their hearts to his precious other woman. The "culprit" he'd sworn to hunt down was himself all along.
His words after each "miscarriage" flooded back to me in a sickening rush.
"Half a dose of abortion pills and the kid couldn't hold on? Would've been too fragile anyway. Not fit to lead the Delgado family."
"So the baby didn't want to come out on time. If this one doesn't love our Prue, we'll just try again for one who wants to love Mommy with Daddy."
I sank to the cold floor, an icy chill crawling up my spine.
I'd thought Bertram was simply cold-natured, that beneath it all, he genuinely wanted to raise our children. The truth was, he'd only ever wanted to find Alexis a perfect heart.
The realization crashed over me, and I pressed my hands against my face, drowning in it. I'd been so stupid. So impossibly, pathetically stupid to think I could ever wring a drop of sincerity from Bertram Delgado.
My phone screen flashed. Then flashed again.
I lowered my gaze to the message, and something dark and sharp moved behind my eyes.
One week. In one week, every single person who had laid a hand on my children would pay.
