Chapter 3

I survived.

Miraculously, the doctors said. The antivenom worked just in time to stop the necrotic venom from causing permanent, disfiguring damage. The crash had caused a severe concussion and three broken ribs, but no major internal bleeding.

And the MRI confirmed the first diagnosis. Glioblastoma. Stage four. Dr. Reed sat by my bedside to deliver the news, her expression a mixture of professional calm and genuine compassion.

"The tumor is in a difficult location, Ethan," she explained, her voice gentle. "It' s aggressive. But there are treatment options. Aggressive ones. Chemo, radiation, experimental trials. It' s not a death sentence. It' s a fight."

A fight. After everything that had happened, I wasn' t sure how much fight I had left. I spent a week in the hospital, recovering from the crash and the bite. Dr. Reed was a constant, reassuring presence. She ensured Mark' s influence was kept at bay, personally overseeing my security.

But the hospital wasn' t a fortress.

One afternoon, while the nurse was on a break, the door to my room creaked open. It was Chloe. And Liam.

"They told me I couldn' t see you," she said with a triumphant smirk. "But I have my ways."

I tried to sit up, but the pain in my ribs was a sharp reminder of my weakness. "What do you want, Chloe?"

She didn' t answer. She just looked at Liam. "Go on, baby. Apologize to... to him."

Liam walked slowly toward my bed. He wasn' t holding a drawing this time. He was holding a glass of water.

"I' m sorry," he mumbled, not looking me in the eye.

For a foolish, hopeful moment, my heart ached. Maybe he was still in there. My son.

Then he "tripped."

The glass of ice-cold water flew from his hands, drenching my face and chest, soaking the fresh bandages on my ribs. The shock of the cold was brutal, and I gasped in pain.

Liam scrambled back to his mother, a wide grin on his face. "Oops!"

Chloe laughed, a genuine, delighted laugh. "Oh, my clumsy boy," she said, hugging him tightly. "You see, Ethan? He' s just a child. A child who knows you' re a liar."

My mind flashed back to a different time. Liam, at three years old, had fallen and scraped his knee. He had cried and cried, refusing to let anyone but me clean the wound. I remembered holding him, whispering that he was the bravest boy in the world, his small arms wrapped tightly around my neck. The memory was so clear, so warm, it made the present reality feel like a frozen hell.

"Why are you doing this, Chloe?" I asked, my voice hoarse. "I know you hate me. But why turn him against me like this?"

Her face darkened, the manufactured sweetness vanishing in an instant. The old, deep-seated resentment surfaced, twisting her features.

"Why?" she hissed, stepping closer to the bed. "You ask me why? You ruined my life, Ethan! You took everything from me!"

"What are you talking about? I gave you everything! This house, this life... I did it all for you! For our family!"

"Our family?" she spat. "This was never about us! It was always about controlling me! You drove Ben away! He loved me! We were going to be together, and you poisoned him against me! You locked me away in that house, pretending to take care of me, but you were just making me your prisoner!"

Her version of the past was so warped, so completely alien to my own memory, that for a second, I wondered if the tumor was making me hallucinate.

Ben Carter. He was her college boyfriend, a charismatic but unreliable artist. They had a turbulent, passionate romance that ended when he took a scholarship to study in Paris and never looked back. He broke up with her in a cruel, dismissive email.

Chloe had shattered. She fell into a deep depression, refusing to eat, to leave her bed. I was just her friend then, the quiet, dependable architecture student who had always been in the background.

I put my own life on hold. I was a finalist for a prestigious international scholarship, the one that could have launched my career. I let the deadline pass. I stayed. I cooked for her, talked to her for hours, held her while she cried. I slowly, painstakingly, helped her piece her life back together.

It was during that time that our friendship deepened into something more. I thought she had healed. I thought she had chosen me.

"Chloe, that' s not what happened," I said, my voice pleading. "Ben left you. He broke your heart. I stayed. I gave up my scholarship to Paris to help you recover."

She stared at me, her eyes wide with a genuine-seeming disbelief. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. She truly believed her own lie.

"Liar!" she screamed, her voice echoing in the small room. "You' re a pathological liar! Ben would never have left me! You intercepted his letters! You told him I didn' t want to see him! You stole my life, Ethan Miller!"

She was heaving, her face red with rage. She believed it. She had reframed my sacrifice as a cage, my love as a prison. And she had taken that twisted story and fed it, piece by piece, to our son.

That was the root of it all. My greatest act of love had been refashioned into my greatest crime. And I was now paying the price for a sin I never committed. The car crash, the spider, the cruelty of my own son-it all stemmed from this one, fundamental, soul-crushing lie.