“Ridiculous! Maris! Someone like you isn’t fit to be a mother! A lunatic like you belongs in a mental hospital!”
Alaric gritted his teeth.
I laughed.
A smug, unrestrained laugh that echoed through the hall.
“Is that so? Then let’s go to hell together.”
After all, neither of us had ever been innocent.
On the way here, memories flashed through my haze.
I remembered the first time Alaric cheated—when I was pregnant.
Tahlia had come to my house, her body marked with ambiguous red traces, her smile dripping with provocation. She told me Alaric was hers now. She told me to step aside.
I had flown into a rage, rushing at her. But the stairs betrayed me. I fell. Premature labor followed.
From that moment, Alaric no longer hid his second relationship. He paraded Tahlia openly, taking her to every event, flaunting her in my face.
I argued. I confronted. I screamed.
He looked at me like I was insane. “Maris, look in the mirror,” he had sneered. “Ever since you got pregnant, you haven’t looked like a woman. Any man wouldn’t want a lunatic like you.”
He spent nights away, allowed Tahlia to send me photos to provoke me, while the child’s wails pierced my ears relentlessly.
Driven by that double torment, I lost myself.
Later, when I sought Alaric, I punished the child in every way I could—because only then would the tiniest spark of fatherly love in him flare.
And now, watching his face turn pale and blue, a twisted joy surged in me as a waltz-like march swelled in the banquet hall. It was a symphony for madness.
“Soren, watch closely! Your first lesson as a mother: how to drag the villain who betrayed you straight into hell!”
I laughed, wild and free, grabbing a chair and hurling it across the table. Glass and crystal shattered into a storm of fragments. Screams mingled with the high-pitched march.
I destroyed everything—every cake, every glittering decoration, every symbol of celebration—until the gorgeous, heartwarming birthday party lay in ruins.
“Enough! You’ve gone completely mad! Since you’re so reckless… I’m divorcing you!”
Alaric’s voice rang with a detached authority, his confidence laughable in the face of chaos.
I laughed harder. “Divorce me? Alaric… do you dare?”
I remembered the first time we met. A poor, timid student, sponsored by my parents, dressed in ill-fitting clothes, trembling at the slightest sound. He had called me Miss then, meek and deferential.
But that man was long gone. He no longer needed my family’s mercy.
Tahlia, smearing the frosting from her face, touched her still-unborn belly with a triumphant chuckle. “Besides… not only do you have a child, I have one too. Alaric and I will build a new home.”
The pride in her eyes was venomous, mocking me.
A thrill surged in my chest. It was time to teach her properly.
I grabbed her hair, yanking her back sharply, and plunged the knife into her womb.
“Son, pay attention!” I whispered, my voice cold and deliberate. “Your second lesson: how to handle unexpected hazards.”
