Introduction

The charity gala was suffocating, a gilded cage where I, Jocelyn Duncan, watched my husband, Andrew, openly parade his mistress Maria, making my irrelevance a public spectacle.

Our five-year-old twin sons, Caleb and Jayden, in an innocent accident, spilled chocolate mousse on Maria, provoking Andrew to condemn them to a brutal desert "behavioral correction camp."

I begged, humiliated myself, but he was unmoved; my babies were ripped from my arms, their screams echoing as Andrew watched with chilling indifference.

Hours later, driving through the arid landscape to rescue them with my sister-in-law Molly, my phone buzzed with an Instagram notification: Andrew' s sonogram announcement with Maria, "A new chapter begins."

At that exact moment, police officers emerged from the camp gates and delivered a horrifying truth: my sons, Caleb and Jayden, had died from dehydration and heatstroke.

My world shattered, but Andrew, when I called, laughed and accused me of melodramatic lies, dismissing their deaths as a tactic for attention.

How could he deny them, our own children, who had just died from his callous cruelty, while he celebrated a new life that would never know theirs?

I had nothing left but an unbearable, burning agony, and a single, unyielding resolve: I would leave the shattered remains of my life with him, taking my sons' memory and only my unbreakable will to survive.