Chapter 3

The last of Sarah' s control shattered. A sound, a guttural, wounded cry, tore from her throat.

"He is DEAD!" she screamed, the words ripping through the quiet, paint-scented air. Her whole body trembled, her gaze locked on an unseeing David. "Ethan is dead! Don' t you understand? He' s not at a school, he' s not on a trip! He is gone forever because you threw him in that lake!"

She wanted to shake him, to force him to see the horror he had created, the reality he so casually dismissed.

David' s face darkened, but it wasn' t with grief or understanding. It was with anger.

Lisa, seeing his expression shift, immediately seized the opportunity. She let out a small, frightened gasp and clutched her stomach, her eyes welling with tears.

"Oh, David," she whimpered, leaning heavily against him. "She' s scaring me. What if the stress... what if it hurts the baby?"

It was a masterful performance. Instantly, David' s focus shifted from Sarah' s grief to Lisa' s feigned fragility. He wrapped his arm more tightly around his mistress, pulling her behind him as if protecting her from a wild animal.

"Look what you' re doing, Sarah," he hissed, his voice low and menacing. "You' re upsetting Lisa. She is in a delicate condition."

"She' s upsetting me?" Sarah asked, her voice incredulous. "My son is dead, and you' re worried about her feelings?"

"Stop saying that!" David snapped, taking a step toward her. "Stop lying. You' re just trying to get attention, to ruin this for us."

Lisa peeked out from behind David' s shoulder, her face a mask of teary-eyed innocence. "I' m sorry, Sarah," she said, her voice trembling. "I know this must be hard... I can' t imagine losing a child. I just... I don' t want my baby to be born into so much anger."

Her words were carefully chosen, designed to paint her as the victim and Sarah as the hysterical, vengeful ex-wife. She was positioning herself, and her unborn child, as the priority, the future that David needed to protect from the messy, inconvenient past that was Sarah.

And David bought it completely.

"You hear that?" he said, gesturing back at Lisa. "She is trying to be understanding, and you are acting like a lunatic. You owe her an apology."

An apology. The demand was so absurd, so twisted, that for a moment Sarah could only stare at him in stunned silence.

"Apologize to her?" she finally whispered. "You murdered our son, and you want me to apologize to your mistress?"

"I did not murder him!" David' s voice boomed through the room, making the two workers in the corner flinch. "He was weak! And you will not speak to Lisa that way. She is the mother of my future child. She deserves respect."

He stepped forward, his body radiating menace. He was using his physical size and his powerful presence to intimidate her, to dominate the space and force her into submission, just as he always had.

"Now, you will calm down," he commanded, "or I will make you."

Sarah stood her ground, fueled by a grief so pure it burned away all her old fear of him. "No," she said, her voice shaking but firm. "No more. I won' t be silent."

That was the final trigger.

His hand shot out and he slapped her, hard, across the face.

The crack of the impact echoed in the empty room. Sarah' s head snapped to the side, her cheek stinging, the taste of blood filling her mouth.

She looked back at him, her eyes wide with shock and a new, chilling clarity.

"You' re just trying to make a scene," David snarled, his face contorted with rage. "Always playing your little games to get what you want. Well, it' s over, Sarah. Your games are over."

She saw it then. He wasn' t just indifferent; he was a monster. A man so consumed by his own ego and a manipulative woman that he could kill his own child and then strike his grieving wife for daring to speak the truth. In that moment, the last shred of the man she had once loved died, and all that was left was the enemy.