Chapter 4

"She's lost the baby, Mr. Cox. And... given the extent of the internal trauma, it's highly unlikely she'll be able to conceive again." The doctor's words hung in the sterile air, heavy and final.

Chandler' s world shattered. His face, already pale with shock, turned ashen. He staggered back, a silent choked cry escaping his lips.

Brenda, lying in the hospital bed, her face a mask of grief, sobbed uncontrollably. Her cries, raw and guttural, ripped through the silence, each one a dagger to Chandler's heart.

He sank onto the chair beside her bed, his head in his hands. "The baby..." he whispered, his voice hoarse with pain. "Whose... whose baby was it, Brenda?" His head shot up, his eyes, dark and haunted, fixed on hers.

Brenda' s sobs intensified. She reached out a trembling hand, clutching his arm, and buried her face in his shoulder. "Yours, Chandler. It was yours. Our baby." Her voice was muffled, thick with feigned sorrow.

Chandler' s eyes widened, a flicker of panic, then a desperate protectiveness, warring within him. He tightened his embrace, pulling her closer. "No," he murmured, stroking her hair. "No, Brenda, it wasn't your fault. It was... it was Charlotte. She did this."

Brenda' s sobs softened, replaced by whimpers. "I can't be a mother now, Chandler," she wailed. "She took everything from me. Everything!"

I stood by the door, a prisoner under the watchful eyes of two hulking security guards. My gaze drifted to Brenda' s flat abdomen. A bitter, hollow laugh escaped my lips. So, she was pregnant. And this was his child.

A sudden, sharp memory pierced through me. Chandler' s evasions, his excuses, his constant rejection of my touch, my desire. "I' m too busy, Charlotte." "I need to focus on work." "Don' t you think we should wait?" It wasn' t about being busy. It was about me. He simply didn't want me.

The realization was a punch to the gut. All this time, I had blamed myself, wondered what I had done wrong. But it wasn't me. It was him. He just didn't love me. He never had.

The bitter irony of it all. He had always claimed to love me, to want me. But he had been sleeping with Brenda, building a family with her, while I was locked away, suffering in silence.

My self-deprecating laugh caught Chandler's attention. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his face contorted with rage. He lunged, a wild animal, his fist connecting with my jaw. The force of the blow sent me sprawling against the wall, my head hitting the cold plaster with a sickening thud. The taste of blood filled my mouth.

"She deserved it," I choked out, a defiant sneer on my face. "She deserved everything she got."

Chandler' s eyes, already burning with fury, widened in disbelief. "What did you say?!"

"I said," I spat, my voice hoarse, "that maybe it wasn't your baby, was it, Chandler?"

His face went slack with shock, then contorted into a monstrous mask of rage. He backhanded me across the face, sending me flying across the room. My head hit the corner of the bed frame, a sharp, searing pain. Warm blood trickled down my forehead, blurring my vision.

He grabbed me by my hair, dragging me towards the open window. The cold night air rushed in, chilling me to the bone. He held me halfway out, my body dangling precariously, the pavement a dizzying blur far below.

"You're insane, Charlotte!" he roared, his voice raw with fury. "You're a psychopath! A murderer!"

"I spent three years trying to get you out of that hellhole!" he screamed, tears streaming down his face, blurring his vision. "Three years agonizing over what they were doing to you, how you were suffering! Why did you disappear? Why didn't you come home?!" His voice cracked, a raw, desperate plea. "Do you have any idea what it did to me, seeing you in that ring, fighting like a wild animal?! Risking your life for scraps?!"

He shook me, his grip bruising. "You don't know anything, Charlotte! You only know how to destroy! How to hurt Brenda!"

His eyes were bloodshot, his face streaked with tears, a grotesque parody of grief. But I saw through it. I saw the self-pity, the desperate attempt to justify his own cruelty. He wasn't crying for me. He was crying for himself.

My heart, already a frozen lump in my chest, turned colder still. Suspended halfway out the window, the wind whipping through my hair, I felt nothing but a profound emptiness. He would never understand. He would never see.

"Fine," I whispered, the word barely audible above the wind. "I'm done. We' re done. Let me go."

He released me, and I fell to the floor with a sickening thud. "You think it's that easy?!" he roared, pacing the room like a caged beast. "You think you can just walk away from what you' ve done?! You need to be punished, Charlotte. You need to pay."

I slowly pushed myself up, my body screaming in protest. My head throbbed, and the blood on my forehead was beginning to dry. "What kind of punishment, Chandler?" My voice was calm, devoid of emotion. "What more can you possibly take from me?"

He stopped, his eyes gleaming with a chillingly familiar calculation. "I'll give you back the brownstone," he said, his voice low and deliberate. "On one condition. You will publicly admit your guilt. You will confess to everything. And you will formally renounce all claims to the Graves family name, to its legacy, to everything. Then, and only then, will the brownstone be yours."

My ears buzzed. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. He wanted me to become a ghost, to erase myself, to vanish without a trace. He wanted to break me, utterly and completely.

"Think carefully, Charlotte," he said, his voice a cold whisper. "This is your last chance. Your only chance."

My hand instinctively went to my pocket, touching the cool, smooth surface of the locket my father had given me. A picture of us, smiling, happy. "My little fighter," he used to say. "Always stand up for what' s right." I remembered his warm embrace, his comforting words, his unwavering love. A sob tore through me. I bit down hard on my arm, tasting blood, trying to suppress the grief, the rage, the profound sense of loss.

"I accept," I finally croaked, the words tearing through my throat. "I'll do it."

The next day, under the harsh glare of a thousand camera flashes, I knelt on the cold pavement in front of my brownstone. My voice, numb and hollow, read the pre-written confession. I admitted to everything: to framing Brenda, to attempting to murder her, to causing her miscarriage, to being a manipulator, a liar, a monster.

The crowd roared with outrage. A hail of rubbish-rotten fruit, plastic bottles, crumpled newspapers-rained down on me. I curled into a ball, my arms wrapped around my head, as the blows rained down.

Through the gaps in the screaming crowd, I saw them. Chandler and Brenda. Standing together, triumphant. She was smiling, a radiant, victorious smile. He held her close, his eyes, once filled with rage, now gleaming with a cold satisfaction.

Then, his voice, amplified by a megaphone, cut through the din. "And now, I am pleased to announce that in three days, Brenda Richardson and I will be married. A new chapter begins for the Graves family."

The words echoed in my ears, mocking and cruel. Married. To Brenda. My world, already shattered, crumbled into dust.

Rough hands grabbed me, hauling me to my feet. I was thrown into the back of a sanitation truck, the stench of garbage overwhelming. The doors clanged shut, plunging me into suffocating darkness. The truck rumbled away, carrying me, a discarded piece of trash, away from my home, my past, my broken dreams.

My phone rang. The sound was a jarring intrusion in the suffocating darkness. I fumbled for it, my fingers numb.

"Charlotte?" A familiar voice, steady and calm, filled my ear. "Are you alright? I saw the news. I'm coming to get you. And don't worry, Charlotte. I promise you, they will pay for this."