The moment the message sent, Mavis powered off her phone.
She told herself, over and over, to hold on a little longer. Once she was gone, she'd never have to swallow anyone's temper again.
All night, Mavis slept poorly, sharp pains stabbing through her lower abdomen.
Only at daybreak did she drift into a shallow sleep, but she'd barely closed her eyes before a thunderous slam of the door jolted her awake.
Bartholomew, gone all night, had finally come home. His face was twisted with rage.
He clamped down on Mavis's wrist, gripping so hard he nearly crushed the bone.
“Mavis, why can't you stand the sight of Sonia? You sent her threatening messages, scared her so badly she ran away from home. Are you satisfied now?”
“Years ago you stole the place that should have been hers, the rightful Swanson heiress. Now you pull every trick in the book to drive her out. Do you think that's going to win you more of our love?”
“Keep dreaming! All you've done is make us hate you, make us sick to our stomachs over you!”
Mavis's head buzzed. She'd ached the whole night through, the sweat on her pillow still damp. But Bartholomew couldn't see that. There was room for no one in his eyes but Sonia.
Her nose stung, and her eyes brimmed with wounded grief.
“Bartholomew, are you blind? Can't you see Sonia provoked me first? All I did was tell her the truth. Which part of it, which single word, did I get wrong?”
Seeing Mavis on the verge of breaking, Bartholomew's brow knit faintly, yet his voice stayed hard:
“Sonia's younger than you. She's got a grudge against you in her heart. Would it kill you to give in to her a little?”
“Mavis, I'm the one who loves her, I'm the one who wants to be with her. If you've got a problem, take it up with me. Picking on a young girl, what does that make you?”
The man's iron-edged words struck the very bottom of her heart, blow after blow.
She remembered the first time Sonia had bullied her. Back then, Bartholomew had stood by her without question. He'd said:
“Sonia, so what if you're the real Swanson heiress? Mavis is my wife. Whatever grudge you've got against her, bring it to me. Don't you dare pick on her.”
How long ago had that been? And now the man's attitude had flipped to the opposite extreme.
Inch by inch, Mavis's heart iced over. Stubbornly, she lifted her gaze and locked it on him:
“I've already said what I said. What's the point of you coming to me now?”
Bartholomew: “To take you to find Sonia, so you can apologize to her face to face!”
The scorn on Mavis's face deepened.
She wasn't the one who'd done wrong, yet she was the one being ordered to apologize to Sonia.
But the old Bartholomew, he used to ache just hearing her speak a single soft word to anyone else.
Mavis's nails dug into her palm, blood seeping out drop by drop. She spoke each word slow and deliberate:
“I did nothing wrong, and I will not apologize!”
In an instant, Bartholomew's face went dark, and he hauled Mavis downstairs.
She hadn't even put on shoes. The skin of her feet scraped raw against the floor, and she winced, brows pinched tight with pain.
“Bartholomew, let go of me. I want a divorce. You have no right to treat me like this!”
But Bartholomew shot back: “Divorce you, and let you crawl back to the Swansons so you can bully Sonia even more freely? Mavis, I will never give you that chance!”
Mavis's feet hurt, but what hurt more was her heart.
So he'd refused the divorce not because he loved her, but because he couldn't bear to see Sonia suffer the slightest wrong.
No sooner had she been dragged downstairs, dizzy and still unable to find her feet, than a slap cracked hard across her face.
Mavis's vision went black, her ears ringing, her skull splitting with pain. It took a long while before she could make out the face in front of her.
Davina Swanson looked at her the way one looks at a mortal enemy.
“Mavis, if I'd known you'd hurt our flesh-and-blood daughter like this, we never should have taken you in. We should have strangled you the moment you came back!”
Mavis's heart felt like it was being twisted by a merciless blade, the pain stealing the breath from her lungs.
The day Sonia had been brought home, the Swansons had promised her with their own lips:
“Mavis, no matter what happens, you'll always be Mom and Dad's good daughter.”
The Davina of those days had been afraid of hurting her if she so much as snagged a hair while brushing it. Now she drove the knife in, again and again.
Then Davina pulled a document from her bag and flung it in Mavis's face.
“This is the disownment agreement between you and the Swansons. From this day on, you are no longer our daughter!”
“Mavis, we will never give you another chance to hurt Sonia!”
The color drained from Mavis's face inch by inch. She looked at her arm, at the burn scars on it, and her eyes turned red.
She was the one who'd been hurt all along, yet her husband, her parents, every last one of them stood on Sonia's side.
Fine. If they cared about Sonia that much, then let them all be together for the rest of their lives.
She would never, ever give them another chance to hurt her.
