Chapter 3

I drove home on autopilot, my mind a blank, hollow space. The world outside the car windows seemed distant and unreal, like a movie playing on a screen.

When I opened the front door, the house was silent. My father had put Leo to bed. I walked into Leo's room and saw him lying there, his breathing shallow. The moonlight coming through the window cast a pale glow on his face. He looked so small, so fragile.

I sat on the edge of his bed, and his eyes flickered open. He gave me a weak smile.

"Mommy," he whispered, his voice barely audible.

"I'm here, baby. I'm right here."

He tried to lift his hand, and I took it in mine. It was cold.

"Is Daddy coming home soon?" he asked. His eyes were so full of hope it felt like a physical blow.

I couldn't speak. I just squeezed his hand and tried to smile, but my face felt frozen.

"It's okay," he whispered, as if he were the one comforting me. "Tell him... tell him I love his stories."

He closed his eyes, and his breathing grew even fainter. I sat with him for hours, holding his hand, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. I watched as it rose and fell, and rose... and then did not fall again.

The silence that followed was absolute. It was the end of the world.

A scream built in my chest, a primal sound of agony, but it wouldn't come out. I just sat there, frozen, holding my son's lifeless hand as the sun began to light up the sky.

My father found me like that hours later. He didn't say anything. He just gently pried my fingers from Leo's, wrapped me in his arms, and led me out of the room. He made the calls. He handled the first terrible steps.

I moved through the next few days in a fog. My father was my rock, making arrangements, fielding calls, protecting me from a world that had suddenly become unbearable. We planned the funeral. I picked out a small white casket. I chose the clothes Leo would wear: his favorite dinosaur pajamas. It felt surreal, like I was planning a party for someone else.

The day after the funeral, I was cleaning Leo's room, a task I had been both dreading and needing to do. I folded his clothes, smelling the faint scent of him that still lingered on the fabric. I put his books back on the shelf. Tucked away in his desk drawer, beneath a pile of crayon drawings of rockets and aliens, I found a single piece of paper.

It was a drawing he must have made weeks ago. It was a picture of our family. There was me, with a big smile. There was him, holding my hand. And there was a tall figure next to him, labeled "Daddy." But the figure of his father wasn't a person. It was just an outline, a hollow shape with a question mark in the middle.

He had tried to draw his father, but he didn't know what he looked like anymore. He was just a void, a missing piece in our family picture.

Seeing that drawing, that simple, heartbreaking testament to my son's longing, shattered the fog of my grief. The sorrow didn't disappear, but it crystallized. It hardened into something else. Rage.

I sank to the floor, clutching the drawing to my chest, and the sobs I had been holding back finally came. They weren't just sobs of grief for my son. They were sobs of pure, unadulterated fury.

I remembered all the years I had made excuses for Ethan. "He's working hard for us," I would tell myself. "His research is important." I remembered how I had supported him through his Ph.D., working two jobs so he could focus on his studies. I remembered giving up my own promising career path to take a more stable, less demanding job so I could be the primary parent, allowing him the freedom to chase his ambitions.

I had built the foundation of his life, and he had used it as a launchpad to leave us behind.

My mind flashed to Olivia. To her smug, triumphant face as the scanner shattered on the ground. She hadn't just been protecting Ethan's project. She had been actively, maliciously sabotaging my son's only chance at life. She saw Leo not as a sick child, but as a rival for Ethan's time and resources, a threat to her position at his side. She had used her own daughter's minor sniffles as a weapon against us.

They did this. They killed him.

Ethan, with his cold, deliberate neglect and his misplaced priorities.

Olivia, with her subtle, venomous manipulation.

They were a team. They had worked together to achieve their goal, and my son was the collateral damage.

The rage burning in my chest was a cold fire now. It burned away the tears, the despair, the weakness. It left behind a purpose. A vow.

They took my son. They took my world.

I would take everything from them.

I would dismantle Ethan's career, brick by brick. I would expose his lies, his unethical behavior, his monstrous "ethics." I would make the world see the monster behind the brilliant façade.

And Olivia. I would orchestrate her downfall so completely that she would become a pariah, a ghost in her own life, just as Ethan had been in ours.

The drawing in my hand was crumpled and tear-stained. I smoothed it out carefully. This was my evidence. This was my motive.

They thought I was a hysterical, emotional woman. They were about to find out what a mother who has lost everything is capable of.

My son's death would not be a quiet tragedy. It would be an explosion. And I would be the one lighting the fuse.