Chapter 1
1
For five years of marriage, Andrew Hayes had slept his way through half of Hollywood. I pretended not to see, commuting daily between the hospital and the film set. My mother’s leukemia demanded astronomical treatment costs, and Andrew held the reins of Hayes Enterprises‘ medical resources.
Until that day, when the new starlet he was promoting “accidentally” severed my safety wire on set. I plummeted from a ten–foot platform. The three-month–old life within me stilled. My hand trembling, I dialed his number.
“Andrew, please, save our baby.”
From the other end, a woman’s soft moans reached me, followed by Andrew’s voice, a languid drawl of satisfaction.
“Evie, I’m utterly sick of your pathetic ploys for attention. If you truly want to die, do it far away from me.”
By the time the crew rushed me to the hospital, the heartbeat had stopped.
My mother, upon hearing the news, pulled out her oxygen tube in the hospital room.
“My sweet Evie, Mom won’t be a burden to you anymore.”
Those were her last words.
Three lives for one. My debt to him, I thought, was finally repaid. From now on, the world was vast, and we would never cross paths again.
Andrew arrived as I was signing the death certificate. He snatched the paper from my hands, tearing it to shreds.
“Are you done with your theatrics? All you want is money, isn’t it? Name your price! Who are you putting on this pathetic dying act for? When your mother was on her deathbed, she practically groveled at my feet, begging for medical funds!”
I stared at the shredded paper on the floor and offered him a docile smile.
“What if I told you I don’t beg anymore?”
Three seconds later, the slamming door rattled
my very bones.
Andrew had barely left when his assistant appeared in the doorway.
“Mrs. Hayes, Mr. Hayes instructed me
Will you: if
you’re willing to apologize, your mother’s burial plot will be chosen in the most prime location.”
“No need. Please tell him that we are completely.even now.”
By the time I returned from the cemetery, night had fallen. Pushing open the villa’s heavy front door, grating laughter echoed from the direction of the pool. Andrew was lounging by the poolside, an arm slung around a scantily clad model. Another face I didn’t recognize.
Yes, he had never truly cared about me. Not even on the day I personally laid my mother to rest, he still brought a woman home. For three years, I had watched him replace one woman after another, my heart slowly hardening from agony to numb indifference. He claimed he wanted an apology from me, but in reality, he just wanted to use my mother’s final resting place as leverage, to grind me into his palm. I wouldn’t give him that chance again.
“Stop. What was that message your assistant gave me supposed to mean?”
I paused, but didn’t turn back.
Andrew sneered, pushing the woman from his lap. “Your mother’s dead. You think that clears the debt? When your father forced my mother to her death, did he ever consider this day would come?”
I looked at him and smiled faintly. “If she lacked the ability to protect herself, who else could she blame?”
Andrew’s hand shot out, seizing my wrist. “Since you admit my mother was too weak to protect herself from your father, then the one lacking ability now is you! So I‘ m justified in tormenting you.”
S
He snapped his fingers. His assistant immediately approached, holding a polished mahogany box. My pupils constricted. It was clearly my mother’s urn, the very one I had just buried with my own hands!
“I heard you spent all your savings on that burial plot?” Andrew nudged the box with the tip of his leather shoe. “Pity, I just had someone dig it up. Guess what happ- ens if my hand ‘slips‘ now?”
That was my mother. How dared he?
For three years, I had endured his humiliation, his betrayal, even watching my own child vanish into blood. I thought I had reached the very depths of hell. But it turn-
ed out Andrew could be even more cruel.
ened
In a daze, I saw my mother’s face as she opened her eyes for the last time. Her thin fingers clutching the oxygen tube, offering me a smile of sweet release. “My sweet Evie, Mom won’t be a burden to you anymore.”
She was the one person in this world who loved me most, who even chose death for my freedom. And now, the urn containing my last hope was being toyed with so casually by Andrew’s wedding–ringed hand.
