Chapter 4
“It was Mom!” Lily cried through a trembling voice. “She knew we were allergic and still made us eat it!”
Lucas nodded hard, eyes wet with tears. “She’s a bad mom!”
Emily’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the doorframe. “Lucas. Lily. Do you even know what you’re saying right now?” Her voice shook with disbelief. “You’d better start telling the truth–right now.”
“Enough!” Ethan exploded, rising from his seat. In the next breath, his hand clamped around her wrist with brutal force. “This is what you call parenting?” His voice dropped low and dangerous. “Not only did you hurt them, now you’re trying to force them to lie for you?”
“I didn’t…” Emily’s voice cracked.
“Oh, so they’re framing you now?” he sneered. “They’re just kids. They don’t even know how to lie that well. And you think you’re fit to be their
mother?”
The kids started sobbing.
Ethan instantly let go of her and turned back to comfort them, crouching down beside Lily’s bed.
“Daddy…” Lily whimpered. “It hurts..”
“What can I do to make it better, sweetheart?” Ethan asked, brushing a tear from her cheek.
Lucas looked straight at Emily, red–eyed and fuming. “Mom’s allergic to mango too, right? Make her drink it. Let her feel what we felt!”
Emily went ice–cold. Her eyes met Ethan’s–and what she saw in them wasn’t rage. It was ice. Cold, merciless indifference.
“Fine,” he said calmly.
Then he stood up and snapped his fingers.
Two bodyguards stepped into the room like shadows.
“Hold her.”
“What–wait, what are you doing-” Emily didn’t even finish before they grabbed her and forced her down into the chair.
One of them pried her jaw open.
A bottle of mango juice was shoved between her lips.
The sticky sweetness choked her instantly, flooding her throat, searing like fire. She coughed violently, eyes watering, throat on fire.
The rash came fast.
It raced up her neck, across her cheeks. Her face began to swell. Her chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe.
Her fingers clawed desperately at her throat. Vision blurred.
Through it all, Ethan just stood there, watching her.
Expressionless. Unmoved.
The kids were no longer crying.
They clapped and laughed.
“That’s what you get!” Lily shrieked. “Now you know how we felt!”
Darkness swept over her like a wave, and the last thing Emily saw before losing consciousness… was Ethan’s cold, emotionless eyes.
When she came to, the first thing she felt was fire in her throat. The next was the sting of a rash still fading from her face.
She was lying in a hospital bed.
Qutside, voices drifted in through the cracked door.
“I didn’t know they were allergic, Ethan,” Sophia said, her voice soaked in guilt. “I just wanted to make them some fresh juice…”
“It’s not your fault.” Ethan’s tone was so gentle it barely sounded like him. “You didn’t know.”
“If I had just come clean sooner, maybe you wouldn’t have misunderstood Emily…” Sophia sighed, voice so light and helpless it practically floated.
Chapter 4
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“Lucas. Lily. What you did back there… blaming your mom like that–it was my fault. You were just trying to protect me.”
Then came the kids‘ voices, soft and full of guilt:
“Sorry, Auntie Sophia… We shouldn’t lie.” Lily sniffled. “We just… we don’t like Mommy.”
“Yeah,” Lucas chimed in. “She never lets us have candy. She always makes us go to bed on time… We just wanted her gone.”
Emily’s hands balled into fists, gripping the sheets so hard her knuckles went bone–white.
Those were her children. The same children she had nearly died giving birth to.
She remembered the day she had Lucas. The labor was long and brutal. She’d been alone–no one waiting outside.
The nurse told her Ethan was in a “critical business meeting.”
She almost passed out from the pain, but still, she held on. Alone.
When Lily was born, things got worse. She’d hemorrhaged during delivery–bled so badly the doctor issued a code red.
They nearly lost her.
And Ethan? He was halfway across the world closing a merger.
Now, those very same children–who once lived because she fought through death itself—
They were the ones breaking her.
