Part 2Twenty Six Calls He Never Answered

By nightfall, the wound on my shoulder had grown angry and infected. My temperature skyrocketed to a hundred and three.

Shivering violently, I dragged myself out of bed and navigated the sterile corridors alone to find a doctor and pay the pharmacy fees.

As I leaned against the nurse's station, I heard the whispers behind my back.

"That girl in Bay 4 just had a few scratches, but her boyfriend bought out a whole VIP suite for her. Meanwhile, this poor woman looks like she’s dying and she’s completely alone."

I offered a self-deprecating smile to the linoleum floor and turned around.

Only to find Corey storming toward me. Before I could even register his presence, his hand cracked hard across my cheek.

The sound echoed down the quiet hallway.

"You have crossed a line, Caroline!" he seethed, grabbing my uninjured arm. "Who told you to use my black card at the front desk? Do you want Brielle to see the name on the account? Do you want her to find out who you are?"

My fever-ravaged body swayed, the edges of my vision blackening.

The burning imprint of his hand on my face made the tears pooling in my eyes spill over.

Seeing me break, Corey’s manic energy shifted. The anger deflated, replaced by a sick, suffocating kind of tenderness. He pulled me into his chest, wrapping his arms around my trembling shoulders.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just—nobody loves you more than I do, Caroline. You have to know that," he murmured into my hair, playing the role of the devoted savior once again. "I’ve made it perfectly clear to her. I am going to end it. I just need a little more time. I’ve bent over backwards to keep this family together, what more do you want from me?"

Years ago, when Corey Pierce dropped to one knee and offered a diamond to the foster kid everyone else had overlooked, I thought I was the luckiest girl on earth.

The old-money wives in our circle had gasped, whispering behind their manicured hands: What kind of karma did that nobody rack up in a past life to land a man as devoted as Corey?

I had drowned in that illusion. I let it consume me.

Right up until Brielle threw a temper tantrum. To appease her, Corey casually leaked a traumatic video of me being bullied in high school to the country club group chats, ensuring I was ostracized by the very women I tried to befriend.

Once, because Brielle called him complaining of a panic attack, he abandoned me on the side of a deserted highway in the dead of winter. I had to walk six miles in the snow, terrified and freezing.

And then, it escalated. He allowed Brielle to call my phone at three in the morning, letting me listen to the breathless, wet sounds of them in bed together. The stress, the sheer suffocating heartbreak of it, caused me to miscarry the baby I had just discovered I was carrying.

His response? He blamed my "jealousy" and "narrow-mindedness" for making my body too weak to hold onto his child.

My cheek was ice-cold against his designer jacket. Sweat beaded on my forehead as the pain radiated through my bones.

Corey pulled back and pressed his car keys into my palm.

"You being here is making Brielle anxious. She can’t rest. Check yourself out and go home."

My skin was on fire. The hallway was spinning.

But I managed a single, hollow nod. "Okay."

A flicker of something—guilt, maybe, or just confusion at my lack of a fight—crossed his face.

Right then, my phone buzzed. It was a nurse from the assisted living facility where Mrs. Gable lived.

Mrs. Gable. The woman who had run St. Jude’s Children's Home. The only mother I had ever known. She had collapsed. Heart failure.

Panic obliterating my fever, I stumbled toward the elevators and forced my way up to the cardiac wing.

When I burst through the doors, Mrs. Gable was turning a terrifying shade of blue, gasping desperately for air as doctors swarmed her bed.

"What happened?" I screamed, grabbing a nurse.

"A young woman came in here looking for her," the nurse said rapidly, prepping a syringe. "They got into a massive argument. The girl was screaming at her, saying some really vicious things, and the patient went into cardiac arrest!"

My pupils dilated. The world snapped into terrifying focus.

For a girl who had nothing, Mrs. Gable was my anchor to humanity.

I spun around and bolted out of the ICU, my legs carrying me blindly down the hall until I found them. Brielle was pressed against Corey’s chest, crying her fake, delicate tears.

"That awful old woman called me a homewrecker!" Brielle sobbed, burying her face in his shirt. "I just tried to explain myself, and she threw herself onto the floor to frame me, I swear!"

"You're lying!" I screamed, lunging forward.

Brielle peeked out from Corey’s embrace, shooting me a triumphant smirk before revealing some pathetic, faint red marks on her wrists. Her wails grew louder.

But I had seen Mrs. Gable. I had seen the deep, bloody crescent-moon gouges on the old woman's arms. Defensive wounds.

Seeing the smug satisfaction dancing in Brielle’s eyes, something inside me snapped. I closed the distance and slapped the mistress across the face with everything I had.

A fraction of a second later, a hand struck my face with twice the force, sending me crashing to the floor.