Five hours of emergency surgery. When I finally came to, my hand drifted to my stomach—flat, hollow, empty. Oliver was nowhere to be found. He'd been with Mamie the entire time, giving her his so-called desensitization therapy.
The video she'd sent still burned behind my eyelids. The two of them tangled together, skin against skin, no space between them.
And beneath it, a message:
"Since you lost the baby, how about I give Oliver one instead? Think of it as my way of thanking him for working so hard to cure me."
The memory alone sent white-hot fury surging through my veins. I swung my leg and drove my foot straight into Oliver's crotch with every ounce of strength I had.
"Oliver, I just had a dream." My voice was ice. "In it, Mamie's allergy was fake. The two of you conspired to kill my baby. Tell me—do you think that was heaven sending me a warning? Exposing what a pair of lying, backstabbing monsters you really are?"
Oliver doubled over instantly, clutching himself, his knees hitting the floor. Panic flickered across his face before he could mask it.
"Bernice, that's insane. It was just a dream. You're clearly having some kind of mental breakdown to even come up with something like that."
Mamie jumped in, her voice trembling with practiced indignation.
"You're slandering us just because you want Oliver all to yourself. He's not your property. The tighter you cling, the faster he'll run."
Then, right on cue, she swayed on her feet, eyelids fluttering, the picture of a woman on the verge of collapse.
"Oliver... I think I'm having another episode..."
He caught her immediately, pulling her into his arms, then turned on me with a snarl.
"Bernice, you've gone too far! Look what you've done to her! She's fragile—if something happens, can you live with that?"
"Mamie's right. You just want to own me. Let me make something clear: I'm your husband, not your possession. Stop trying to guilt-trip me with your little games."
I watched them—the perfect picture of two souls united against a common enemy. My fingertips were cold as stone. Everything inside me had frozen into a single, crystalline emotion.
Hatred.
I locked my gaze on him, and my voice came out flat and lethal.
"Oliver, whether it's real or a dream, you know the truth better than anyone. And everything you owe me? I'm going to collect. Every last cent. With interest."
I turned, pulled the door shut behind me with a sharp crack, sealing Mamie's crocodile tears and Oliver's self-righteous complaints on the other side.
Starting today, I was done. Done being the lovesick fool who forgave everything. Done being the Bernice Barnes who swallowed her pride and called it devotion.
I was taking back everything that belonged to me.
I would make the world see Mamie Winfield for the shameless, scheming fraud she was. And I would make Oliver Delgado realize exactly who the real fool had been all along.
I went downstairs. For the first time in years, I didn't make breakfast. Didn't tidy the living room. Instead, I moved fast—packed my essentials, then pulled the memory cards from the surveillance cameras.
I'd installed hidden cameras in the living room and entryway ages ago, a security precaution. I'd never thought twice about them. Now they were the most critical evidence I had.
I walked out the front door and drove straight to a law firm. I hired an attorney to draft divorce papers, tucked my prenatal exam records safely away, then headed to the hospital to consult a specialist about contact allergies.
The doctor couldn't have been more definitive. Allergic reactions triggered by contact with the opposite sex were extraordinarily rare. Even in documented cases, the patient would never be immune to just one specific man. And the idea of "desensitizing" through intimate physical contact? Medically absurd. The entire premise violated basic science.
Armed with the doctor's professional opinion, I let out a cold, bitter laugh.
Mamie's lie wouldn't survive five minutes of scrutiny. And Oliver—an operations director at a Fortune 500 company, a man who prided himself on his intellect—he hadn't been fooled. He'd known all along. He simply enjoyed the arrangement too much to question it.
I found a computer repair shop and had them pull the footage from the memory cards. Even though I'd braced myself for what I'd see, the tears still came, streaming down my face in hot, relentless lines.
No wonder I'd been sick all the time in my past life. No wonder the dizziness and exhaustion had worsened after I got pregnant—so much so that Mamie barely had to push before I tumbled down those stairs.
No wonder, even after the miscarriage, I'd been bedridden for months, wasting away until I coughed up blood and died.
And through all of it, Oliver had told me it was my own fault. That my mental state was the problem. That I was acting like a lunatic.
I grabbed my bag and headed straight for First General Hospital. An hour later, the test results were in my hands.
