"Leonora, God sees everything you do. Yvonne has it hard enough already. She has nothing. All she wants is a little bit of love. Can't you even let her have that?"
"I gave you the title of Mrs. Henson. You've lived in luxury. You have no idea how difficult her life has been."
I bit back the searing pain and let out a bitter laugh. Tears blurred my vision as I stared at the man across from me, the man I'd been married to for nearly ten years.
The man who once looked at me like I was the only person in the world now regarded me with nothing but disgust and impatience.
"All she wants is a little bit of love?" I echoed. "Another woman's husband's love?"
"Warren, the internet got it right. She is the other woman. She is your kept mistress."
Warren erupted. He lunged forward, shoved me against the wall. My lower back slammed into the edge of the cabinet, and his hand closed around my throat. "So you admit it, Leonora. You're the one behind all of this."
"Yvonne is not the other woman. Whoever I love is my rightful partner."
"Isn't there a saying online? 'The one who isn't loved is the real third wheel.'"
Blood from the gash on my brow trickled down onto his hand. He released me, flicking the blood off his fingers with a look of revulsion. His voice went cold. "You have one night. I don't care how you do it. Tell them you made it all up. Tell them you were jealous. I don't care. By tomorrow morning, I don't want Yvonne seeing a single one of those stories."
He grabbed his phone and left. His voice drifted back from the elevator lobby, soft and tender in a way I hadn't heard in years. "Yvonne, don't cry. I'm on my way. I told you I'd take care of it. Don't worry."
I crumpled to the floor. The room tilted and spun. My brow was split open, the pain blinding, and a deeper, more terrifying ache was spreading through my abdomen. My heart stuttered. I pressed my hand to my stomach, dialed 911, and blacked out.
When I came to, I was lying in a hospital bed. Bridget Calloway was beside me, her eyes swollen and red from crying. "Thank God you hit my emergency contact before you passed out. Otherwise the paramedics couldn't have even gotten through your front door."
I tried to sit up. Pain lanced through my brow and my stomach at the same time.
I reached down to touch my belly, but Bridget caught my hand and held it still. "Don't. Your brow bone was cracked open. They could see bone. It took several stitches."
She paused.
"And the baby. They couldn't save it."
I froze. My hand hovered over my stomach. "What did you say? What baby?"
Bridget stared at me. "You didn't know you were two months pregnant? By the time the ambulance arrived, the impact to your back had caused severe bleeding. The baby didn't make it."
A sharp pain tore through my chest. Warren and I had been married for years. I'd wanted a child so badly, tried for so long, and it had never happened. And now one had come to me quietly, without my knowing, and left just as quietly. Sent away by its own father's hands.
Tears slid down my face. "A baby. God, I should be ashamed of myself. I didn't even know I'd been a mother."
Bridget steadied me. "Do you want to call Warren?"
"I already tried last night from your phone. He never picked up."
She handed me my phone. The screen was flooded with unread messages. My stomach dropped. I tapped one open, scanned it quickly, then pulled up a browser.
The internet had exploded. Someone had leaked allegations that the gold-medal winner of this year's Starlight Cup jewelry design competition, Leonora Pruitt, had plagiarized another designer's work.
The post laid out detailed evidence: original drafts, a complete timeline, everything presented with surgical precision.
It went further. It claimed that during the judging period, I had been seen dining with one of the judges and escorting him back to his hotel late at night. The implication was unmistakable: that I had traded my body for the top prize.
Attached were photos of me helping the elderly judge back to his hotel after he'd fallen ill. I'd been supporting his arm. But the angle of the shots was deliberately chosen to make it look intimate.
The comments section was a wall of venom: "Get this trash out of our industry."
