Chapter 3

Hazel POV

My mother.

Eleanor's face swam in my vision. Her frail smile, the oxygen tubes snaking across her cheeks, the way her hand felt in mine—thin and cool, like a bird's wing. The heart condition that had been slowly stealing her for years, one hospital stay at a time. The transplant list she had been on for eighteen months. The hope I had been clinging to with both hands.

Chace's words were a vise around my mother's fragile heart. He had promised, all those years ago, standing in this very hospital after her first cardiac event. I'll take care of her like she's my own mother. You never have to worry about that.

Now that promise was a gun to my head. His finger on the trigger. His smile completely, utterly cold.

"What do you want me to do?" My voice was hollow. A dead thing in the sterile hallway.

A slow, triumphant smile spread across Chace's face. He had won. He had found my breaking point, and he had pressed until I shattered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small audio recorder, pressing a button with theatrical deliberation.

Ivory's voice, thick with fake tears, filled the air. "...make her admit she was jealous… clarify that this 'ex-fiancée' thing was all in her head… I don't want our child to be born with this drama hanging over us… The stress isn't good for the baby, Chace. You know what the doctor said…"

It was a script. For my public execution.

Chace clicked the recorder off. "You heard her. Record a video. Post it on all your social media accounts." He tossed my shattered phone back at me. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks, the glass rough against my fingers. "I'll have someone bring you a new phone."

"I need a new phone," I said, my voice flat. A statement, not a request.

He gave a curt nod. A few minutes later, a young assistant appeared—a woman with an apologetic expression who wouldn't meet my eyes. She handed me a new phone, still in its box, and a thick manila envelope before retreating as quickly as she had come.

Inside the envelope was an NDA and a property transfer deed. For the small beach house in Malibu we had bought together. The one with the wraparound porch and the view of the sunset over the Pacific. The one where I had planted roses along the fence, roses that were probably dead now.

"Sign it," Chace commanded. "It's compensation for Ivory's medical bills and emotional distress."

He was taking my past, too. Erasing every trace of me from his life, one document at a time.

Leaning against the cold hospital wall, I unboxed the new phone. My hands were steady now—shock, probably, or something beyond shock. I opened the camera, switched it to selfie mode, and pressed record.

The woman on the screen was a stranger. Pale, with haunted eyes and a white bandage stark against her neck. Blood had dried in a thin line down my collarbone. I looked like a ghost. I looked like someone who had already died and was just waiting for her body to catch up.

I recited the lines Ivory had written. My voice was monotone, flat as a dead sea. I admitted to "harassing" the Woodwards. I apologized for my "unstable behavior." I said that I had fabricated the relationship in my head. I wished them and their "growing family" all the best.

With every word, a tear threatened to fall. I would not give them that. I swallowed them down, one by one, until they sat like stones in my stomach.

I hit "post."

The video went out to my 847 followers. Within an hour, it would have ten thousand views. Within a day, a million.

I handed the phone to Chace. He reviewed the video with a satisfied nod, like a professor grading a particularly pleasing paper. Then he presented the documents and a pen—the same pen I had given him for our first anniversary. Engraved with his initials. He was making me sign away my life with a gift from my dead past.

I signed my name on the NDA. I signed my name on the property deed. My signature was a shaky, unfamiliar scrawl, the signature of a woman who no longer existed.

I signed away my voice. My property. My truth.

Chace took the papers and my old, shattered phone. He walked away without another word. His shoes made a crisp, confident sound on the hospital linoleum.

The transaction was complete.

The next morning, my boss called. My voice was tight, apologetic but firm. The "scandal" was bad for the company's image. Clients were asking questions. I was sorry, but they had to let me go. I would receive two weeks' severance. They wished me the best.

I hung up and stared at the wall for an hour.

My social media had exploded overnight.

Gold digger. Psycho ex. Get a life, lady. You're embarrassing yourself. Someone get this woman a therapist.

Thousands of comments. Thousands of strangers who had watched my humiliation and decided I deserved it. Thousands of people who believed the lie because the lie was easier to believe than the truth.

I had no job. No reputation. No property. No voice.

I was nothing.

As I sat numbly on my sofa, still wearing the blood-stained dress from the night before, the new phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number.

It was a photo.

Ivory, lying in a luxurious bed, nestled in Chace's arms. Silk sheets. Morning light streaming through windows I recognized—the windows of our beach house. My beach house. The cut on her cheek was barely a scratch, a thin pink line that would fade in a week.

She was looking directly at the camera, a silent, victorious smile on her face. The smile of a woman who had won.

Below the photo was a single line of text.

Thanks for the beach house. We'll make great memories there, just like you two never did.

A final, cruel twist of the knife. She couldn't even let me bleed in peace.

A wave of helpless rage washed over me, so powerful it left me shaking. I deleted the message, curled into a ball on the sofa, and tried to disappear into the cushions. Maybe if I stayed still enough, small enough, the world would forget I existed.

I thought I had hit rock bottom.

I was wrong.

The phone rang again. The caller ID read "Cedars-Sinai Medical Center."

My hand trembled as I answered. "Hello?"

"Ms. Mcdonald?" A nurse's voice, tight with urgency. I recognized it—Sarah Hayes, one of Eleanor's favorites, the one who always brought her extra pudding cups. "It's your mother. She's had a massive heart attack. You need to come to the ICU immediately."