The Unseen Scars of Her Lies

My passport was in my hand, my bag zipped, when my girlfriend, Sophia, walked in, fresh from a trip with another man. "What are you doing, Ethan?" she asked, her voice airy as she flaunted a high-end jewelry bag. She still thought I was just throwing a tantrum. But when I told her I was leaving her, the playful mask slipped, revealing the cold, calculating woman beneath. Then she laughed, sharp and condescending, suggesting an insincere wedding to make my "sick sister" feel important. My blood turned to ice. She didn't know. How could she? Lily was already dead. The memory of her last breath, just after Sophia's engagement party with Mark Peterson, burned in my chest. Her organ rejection, the doctors said, was triggered by emotional shock from seeing Sophia with another man. When I begged Sophia for the money I'd saved with her for Lily's treatment, she coldly refused, hanging up on me, even having her bodyguards throw me out of their mansion. Lily died on New Year's Eve, holding my hand as fireworks lit the sky. And now, Sophia offered a wedding, a shallow gesture, an insult to Lily's grave. My art, my life's passion, she called "nothing" as she destroyed my supplies, sending a wooden box crashing into my forehead, leaving me bleeding. "I need the money back," I told her, referring to the fortune I had entrusted to her over seven years, money she had instead spent on Mark and their extravagant future. She laughed, calling it "pocket change." What words could capture the horror, the utter betrayal, of realizing the woman you loved had systematically stripped you of everything-even the memory of your dead sister? What deeper depths of cruelty could she sink to? Later, as I fled, she drained my bank accounts, every last cent of my life' s savings. But a new life called to me-the prestigious international art gallery' s offer-a chance that felt like a flicker of hope after so much despair. Now, finally free, I was ready to live for myself.