CASSANDRA’S POV
“You’re free to go,” the guard muttered, eyes filled with contempt. “Go out and don’t come back. With a child’s blood on your hands, you should count yourself lucky you’re even leaving this prison.”
I stood still for a moment. The sunlight was almost blinding after the months I’d spent in a dark cell.
Now that I was free, the memories were washing over me again. A year ago, I was Cassandra Bennett, a wealthy and respected woman. I was married to the love of my life, and we had a beautiful daughter. But now, I was known as the heartless murderer who let my own child die.
My life was perfect until my best friend, Naomi, suddenly called me one day, crying for help. She had gotten involved with a scammer who stole everything from her and she had nowhere to go.
I brought her into my home, thinking I was just being a good friend, but that was the beginning of my problems.
At first, it felt good to have Naomi close again. We’d grown up together and she was more like a sister than a friend. She cried in my arms, swore she had nowhere else to go, and I believed her. I always believed her.
My husband, Isaac, welcomed her politely but kept his distance. He didn’t like her staying so long, but I brushed it off. “She needs me right now,” I told him. How could I have known that pitying her would cost me everything?
Naomi was sweet to my face, always offering to help with the baby, always smiling at Isaac, and always calling my brother, Julian,the only man who ever truly cared about her. But behind that kindness was a shadow I refused to see.
Before I knew it, Isaac and Julian had changed. Naomi had them wrapped around her little finger. She stopped being grateful and helpful, and started acting like the owner of the house. And even worse, my husband and brother always took her side.
I felt lonely, and my daughter, Solana, was my only friend, and Isaac never helped me take care of her. He was always busy doing something irrelevant with Naomi. I was so alone that I developed depression, but still, I was a good mother.
The day that I went to prison, Solana and I had come back from early Christmas shopping, she had gone up to her room and I was putting the decorations away when Naomi walked in.
“You look tired, I made you some tea.”
I was reluctant to accept it, but I did. And that was the last thing I remembered.
I woke up an hour later, drenched in alcohol, to the sound of screaming and chaos. And my daughter was gone.
Isaac stormed in front of me before I could even get up from the couch. “How could you do this!? How could you kill our daughter!?”
That was the moment my life ended. My daughter was dead.
“What- what do you mean? Solana is in her bedroom. What do you mean dead!?” I ran up the stairs to her room, calling her name. But she was nowhere to be found.
When I came back down, Isaac was shaking with rage. Naomi was there, trying to comfort him. “You need to calm down, Isaac. You know it’s the alcohol. I told you she had started drinking in secret.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where is my child?“
Naomi shook her head. “Look at her. Even now, she’s still intoxicated.”
Isaac grabbed my shirt. “How could you! How could you do this!?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! Where is my daughter?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he shoved his phone in my face. There was a picture of me on the screen, surrounded by bottles of alcohol and cigarettes. It looked like I was passed out.
Naomi wiped the tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry Isaac, I came home and I found Cassandra passed out like that. And I took a picture just to show you, but when I tried to take something from the balcony twenty minutes later,” she sniffed. “I found… I found Solana frozen from the snow and passed out there. Cassandra must have locked her out because she was drunk!”
My eyes widened as tears fell freely, and right on cue, I heard ambulance sirens outside as they drove away. “Is that Solana? Where are they taking her? Isaac you have to let me see her!”
He stepped in front of me before I could get to the door. “She’s dead, Cassandra! You did this to her.”
“I knew you were heartless,” My brother, Julian said, shaking his head. “But how could you hurt your own child?”
I tried to explain, but to no avail. And at the end, Isaac and Julian walked out of the room.
I was still crying on the floor when Naomi knelt beside me. She had a smirk on her face. “Poor Cassandra… now you know what true heartbreak really is.”
I turned to her in horror. “It was you! That tea you gave me. You drugged me. You did this!”
In a fit of rage, I ran over and pulled her hair. “Murderer!! You did this! You did this to my child!”
She screamed out in pain and both Isaac and Julian appeared in seconds. They pulled me off of her while she shed crocodile tears. I didn’t stop trying to let them see what she had done, but no one listened to me.
Instead, the police appeared at the door within five minutes. My brother and my husband accused me of killing Solana, and while I was dragged away in handcuffs, Naomi smiled victoriously behind Isaac.
I was thrown in jail that day. I didn’t even get to see my precious daughter be buried.
Now that I was thinking about it, I wanted to break down over again. I wiped my eyes and saw a small crowd of reporters running toward me.
Shit.
“Mrs Bennett. How does it feel to be finally free?”
“Do you feel like the law was lenient to you?”
“Mrs Bennett, do you admit your negligence killed your daughter?”
“Mrs Bennett, will you go back to drinking alcohol now that you’re free?”
They crowded me like flies, and just when I thought I would pass out, someone pulled my arm away from them.
Isaac. My husband.
“Get in the car,” he said.
It felt strange seeing him again after all these months. The man who had once kissed my tears away was now the one who had abandoned me to rot.
His eyes were cold.
I hesitated only a second before sliding into the car.
The car stopped in front of the estate. It was home. But it no longer felt like mine.
Isaac stepped out, then glanced back with the same warning he had given me in the car:
“Behave yourself. Don’t embarrass me.”
I followed him inside, my heart pounding. The familiar marble floors stretched beneath me, but the warmth of home was gone.
She was waiting there.
Naomi. My best friend. My betrayer. She was dressed in white like some saintly widow. She rushed forward with fake tears brimming in her eyes.
