Chapter 2

Chloe leaned into Liam' s embrace, her eyes fluttering as if she were about to faint.

"I' m alright, Liam," she murmured, her voice soft and weak. "I just heard shouting. I was worried about Ava. She looked so angry."

She glanced at me, a flicker of something triumphant in her eyes before it was replaced by a look of pure concern. It was a masterful performance.

"Ava' s just having one of her fits," Liam said, stroking Chloe' s hair. His tone was dismissive, as if I were a child throwing a tantrum. He looked back at me, his face hard again. "You see what you' ve done? You' re upsetting Chloe. She' s pregnant. Her health is the most important thing right now."

The injustice of it was suffocating. I was the one who had been lied to, choked, and thrown against a wall. But here I was, being painted as the villain.

"Liam, don' t be so harsh with her," Chloe said, her voice laced with false sympathy. She gently touched his arm. "I know Ava has always been... a little obsessed with you. Even when we were kids. It must be hard for her, seeing us together now."

The words were poison, wrapped in a sweet coating. She was twisting my past, our childhood, into something ugly. She was suggesting I had always coveted what was hers, that I had schemed to take her place.

And Liam drank it all in.

"Obsessed?" Liam' s eyes narrowed at me with fresh contempt. "Is that what this is? Ten years of you playing the dutiful wife, all while you were just waiting for a chance to have what you couldn't get honestly?"

His anger seemed to feed on itself, growing with every word. "I should have known. Your whole family is the same. Your mother, raising you two on her own after your father left. Always looking for a way to climb up. She probably pushed you to marry me after she thought Chloe was gone."

The mention of my mother, of our difficult past, was a low blow. My father had left us with nothing. My mother had worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads. She had done everything for us.

To hear Liam twist our struggle into a story of greed and social climbing left me speechless with pain.

"That' s not true," I whispered, my voice hoarse.

"Stop lying!" Liam roared. "I' m done with your lies. Chloe is here now. The woman I was always supposed to be with. You will accept it."

He guided Chloe further into the room, settling her on the edge of our bed. Our bed.

"This is my room," I said, finding a sliver of defiance.

Liam laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Not anymore. This is the master bedroom. It belongs to the master and mistress of the house. That' s me and Chloe now. You can take the small room at the end of the hall."

He looked down at Chloe, his expression softening into one of adoration. Then he looked back at me, his face like stone.

"And from now on, you' ll be taking care of Chloe. You' ll cook her meals, you' ll do her laundry. You will do whatever she needs. Consider it your penance for the last ten years."

The humiliation was absolute. He was demoting me from wife to servant in my own home. I was to wait on the woman who had stolen my life, who was carrying my husband' s child while I hid the secret of my own.

I couldn' t do it. I wouldn' t.

That night, after they had fallen asleep in my-in their-bed, I crept out of the tiny guest room. The house felt alien, a place of torment. I sat in the dark living room, the silence pressing in on me.

I saw them through the slightly ajar bedroom door. Liam had his arm wrapped protectively around Chloe, his hand resting on her stomach. The sight was a physical pain, a fresh wound on top of a decade of scars.

My carefully constructed composure shattered. A sob escaped my lips, raw and broken. I clamped my hand over my mouth, suffocating the sound.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers shaking as I scrolled to the one number that had always been my safe harbor.

Mom.

I pressed call, desperate to hear her voice.

She picked up on the second ring. "Ava? Honey, what' s wrong? It' s the middle of the night."

"Mom," I choked out, the tears flowing freely now. "Can I... can I come home?"

There was a pause on the other end, then her voice, firm and full of love. "Of course, baby. Of course you can. I' m coming to get you. Where are you?"

I hadn' t known until that moment how much I needed to hear those words. A wave of relief washed over me, so potent it almost brought me to my knees.

I gave her the address, my voice thick with tears.

"I' ll be there as soon as I can, Ava. Just hold on. I' m coming."

The line went dead. I sank to the floor, clutching the phone to my chest. My mother was coming. She would save me.

What I didn' t know then was that my mother wasn' t just coming from across town. After my father left, she had secretly moved to Europe. She had used her skills and incredible determination to build a new life, a successful business from the ground up, all while pretending to be struggling back home so Liam' s family wouldn't look down on us even more. She was coming back for me, finally ready to bring me into the life she had built.

A couple of hours later, I was peering out the living room window, waiting. The street was dark and empty.

Then, I saw headlights. A taxi pulled up to the curb. My mother got out. She looked tired from her long flight, but her face was set with determination. She looked up at the house, her eyes searching for me.

My heart leaped. I was about to run to the door.

At that exact moment, a flash of red burst into the frame.

A red sports car, the same one I' d seen in our garage, the one Liam had bought for Chloe, came screaming down the street. It didn't slow down. It didn' t swerve.

It plowed directly into my mother.

The sound was sickening, a crunch of metal and bone. My mother' s body was thrown through the air like a rag doll, landing in a heap on the pavement.

I screamed.

The red car paused for a second, its engine roaring, before it sped off into the night.

I ran out of the house, my own name a raw scream on my lips. "Mom! Mom!"

She was lying in a pool of blood, her eyes open but unseeing. The taxi driver was on his phone, shouting frantically.

I fell to my knees beside her, my world ending for the second time in a week.

Hours later, I was sitting in a cold, sterile hospital waiting room. A doctor came out, his face grim. He didn't have to say the words. I already knew. She was gone.

The world went gray. I just sat there, numb, until a familiar voice cut through the fog.

"Ava."

It was Liam. He walked toward me, his face unreadable. Chloe was not with him.

He didn't offer a word of comfort. He didn't ask if I was okay. He just pulled a folded document and a pen from his jacket pocket.

"The police are calling this a hit-and-run," he said, his voice cold and businesslike. "It' s a tragedy. But Chloe is very distraught. The shock could be bad for the baby. To avoid any unnecessary stress or police involvement for her, I need you to sign this."

He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a waiver. A legal document absolving the owner of the red sports car of any and all responsibility.

He wanted me to sign away any justice for my mother' s death to protect the woman who had killed her.