I hadn't done anything wrong. Faith was the murderer who killed my child. Why should I apologize to her?
John didn't care about the truth. He knew about my severe claustrophobia, yet he dragged me to the basement and shoved me inside. The heavy door slammed shut, sealing me in absolute darkness.
Panic clawed at my throat. I ignored the searing pain in my vocal cords and screamed, my voice cracking into a jagged rasp. I pounded on the door until my palms were raw and my strength failed me.
No matter how hard I begged, the silence remained unbroken. The darkness pressed against my chest, suffocating, heavy as lead.
John never opened the door.
In that suffocating void, the image of the man I had loved for eleven years didn't fade—it disintegrated, piece by piece, until nothing remained.
Then the world went black.
When I opened my eyes, blinding light flooded my vision. John had finally released me.
"Michelle, you are impossibly stubborn," he sneered, looming over me. "Still refusing to repent? Then take a look at this."
He shoved a tablet in my face. On the screen, a news headline flashed: Chapman Group Facing Imminent Collapse.
I frowned, confusion cutting through the haze. My father's company had been stable for years. I forced words through my damaged throat, the sound grating and ugly.
"John... you did this?"
His expression was terrifyingly calm. "This is the price of defiance."
I looked at the screen again. My father's face was deathly pale in the footage. A chill ran down my spine. I scrambled up and clutched John's sleeve, my pride shattering instantly.
"I was wrong. I'll go apologize to her right now. Just let my dad go, please." Tears stung my eyes. "This is my fault. It has nothing to do with him..."
I didn't wait for his answer. I sprinted toward Faith's hospital room.
But I was too late.
The moment I burst through the door, Faith was gripping a fruit knife. Her eyes met mine—cold, calculating—before she plunged the blade into her own abdomen.
"No!" I screamed.
John rushed in behind me as blood bloomed across the white sheets, staining them crimson.
Faith wept, collapsing into John's arms. She looked up at him, her expression the picture of selfless innocence.
"John, I truly love you. I felt so guilty that you've been married seven years without an heir... I just wanted to give you a child." Her voice trembled. "As a woman, I understand Michelle. She only treats me this way because she loves you too much."
She clutched his shirt, knuckles white. "The baby... even if I die, it doesn't matter. As long as you and she are happy. Promise me... don't punish her because of me..."
Having delivered her lines perfectly, she fainted on cue.
I stood there, trembling. "John, can you believe me just once?" My voice broke. "We've known each other for eleven years. You know who I am. You know I wouldn't—"
He didn't let me finish. He kicked me, hard.
I hit the floor, gasping.
"That is exactly the problem!" John roared, his eyes filled with disgust. "We've known each other for eleven years, yet the woman before me is a stranger! Michelle Chapman, I will make you pay for every drop of her blood."
Not long after, the Chapman Group declared bankruptcy.
My father's heart condition relapsed from the stress. Because of John's influence, every major hospital in Harbor City refused to admit him.
My mother called, hysterical. She begged me to find a way, to save him.
I knelt before John, slamming my forehead against the floor again and again, begging him to stop.
He looked down at me coldly. "When Faith wakes up and the doctors confirm she and the child are safe, I will stop."
But Faith took her time waking up.
And before she opened her eyes, my father stopped breathing.
I staggered out of the hospital like a hollow shell. No pain, no regret—just vast, empty numbness.
I had a courier deliver the divorce agreement to John's office. Then I boarded a plane back to Riverdale.
John Weiss, I thought as the city shrank beneath the clouds. If there is any mercy in this universe, I pray we never meet again—in life or in death.
