Chapter 2

Blair's venomous whisper snapped the final thread of my sanity.

"I'm going to kill you!"

I lunged at her like a rabid animal.

A brutal slap cracked across my face, violently halting my momentum.

Clutching my stinging cheek, I stared at my own mother in absolute disbelief.

"Enough, Seraphina!" My mother stood like a shield in front of Blair, looking at me with pure disgust. "Blair grew up without parents. She finally has a real family, and you're insisting on ruining it for her?"

I looked down at my wrists—at the dense, ugly scars crawling across my skin like centipedes from my suicide attempts. And suddenly, I threw my head back and laughed.

I laughed until my chest felt like it was tearing open, until the metallic bite of blood and bitter tears flooded my mouth.

"I ruined her? You all teamed up to ruin me! Your absurd faked deaths killed my baby and stranded me in a waking hell for seven years!"

"If you hadn't thrown a tantrum about going to see some stupid meteor shower, nothing would have happened!" My mother cut me off, her voice dripping with impatience. "We merely went along with the tide. That premature baby of yours dying was just God's punishment for your selfishness!"

Right then, Callum finally spoke. "Seraphina, I know the past seven years have been hard on you. But Blair was already pregnant with Noah at the time. I couldn't let her bear the shame of being the other woman. I won't deny I loved you once, but eventually, I fell helplessly in love with Blair. She is too fragile. She couldn't survive without me. As for the baby... he's gone. You can't live in the past forever. Let me go, and let yourself go."

A sickening wave of nausea rolled through my stomach as I listened to his shameless confession of "true love."

He had the audacity to stand there and tell me that my seven-year purgatory—where I begged for death every waking moment—was nothing more than a stepping stone for his pursuit of a new life.

"Seraphina, since everything is out in the open, let's talk terms," Callum continued. "I'll have my lawyer draft a divorce agreement and give you a generous compensation. After that, we go our separate ways. Don't ever disrupt our lives with Noah again."

"Compensation?" I stared at him, my eyes practically dripping blood. "How are you going to compensate for my dead child?!"

At the word "child," Callum's eyes clearly darted away, his jaw tightening.

Playing the role of the considerate peacemaker, Blair tugged at Callum's sleeve. "Callum, Mom, Dad, why don't you take Noah to the car and wait for me? I want to talk to Seraphina alone. After all... we used to be best friends."

"Careful, Blair. Don't let her hurt you," my mother warned, throwing me a wary glare.

"It's okay, Mom. She's just a little overwhelmed. I can calm her down," Blair offered a sickly sweet, compliant smile.

The moment the three of them walked away with Noah, the frail, innocent mask on Blair's face slid off like shedding snake skin.

"Seraphina, look at yourself. You look more pathetic than a sewer rat." A vicious, triumphant smirk curled on her lips.

I glared at her. "You deliberately stole everything from me just to see me like this?"

"Stole? I didn't have to steal a thing," Blair scoffed. "All I had to do was shed a single tear, and your parents practically handed over everything that was yours on a silver platter. Same goes for Callum. He grew tired of you a long time ago."

Blair leaned in close, lowering her voice. Her eyes gleamed with an almost psychopathic thrill.

"I just wanted to clear something up for you. Didn't you just ask Callum how he intends to compensate for your dead child?"

"Actually, that premature son of yours... never died."

A deafening ring exploded in my ears.

"What did you say?!" I grabbed her shoulders.

Blair winced from the pain, but the cruelty in her smile only deepened.

"You started hemorrhaging and fell into a coma right after you delivered him. Your dad paid a fortune to buy off the doctor to pronounce him dead. They told you the baby was born too weak and passed away. But in reality, he was secretly transferred to a private hospital."

My breathing came in short, suffocating gasps. "Why... why would you do that?! Where is my baby?!"

Blair practically fed off my breakdown, her eyes brimming with sadistic enjoyment.

"Didn't you hear us in the hallway? Noah is recovering beautifully. My Noah was born with a rare blood disorder. He needed a continuous, matching supply of stem cells and blood."

"Seraphina, I really must thank your son. If he hadn't been acting as a living blood bank for the past seven years—pinned down to a hospital bed every single month to have his blood drawn and his bone marrow painfully extracted—how could my Noah be so healthy and lively?"

My world completely and utterly collapsed.

My son.

He was treated by my parents, my husband, and my so-called best friend as a mobile blood bag, solely to keep the mistress's bastard child alive!

"Blair! I'm going to kill you! I'll butcher all of you!!!"

The last string of sanity snapped. I tackled her to the floor with absolute, feral abandon.

There was only one thought screaming in my brain: kill her. I was going to tear this demon—and the rest of those monsters wearing human skin outside—to absolute pieces!

"Seraphina!"

Without a second of hesitation, Callum delivered a savage, merciless kick into my ribs.

The muffled crack of snapping bone was swallowed by a blinding agony. I was thrown backward like a broken rag doll, slamming heavily into the wall. I coughed, spitting a puddle of blood onto the floor.

"Blair, are you okay?" Callum pulled her into his arms.

Blair immediately collapsed against his chest, clutching her neck and sobbing beautifully. "Callum... cough... I was just trying to talk some sense into her, to help her move on... and she tried to strangle me..."

"Callum..." I croaked, my voice sounding like a ghoul crawling out of the abyss. "My son... where is my son? I want to see him!"

Callum's hand, which had been stroking Blair's back, suddenly froze.

He slowly turned his head to look at me.

For the first time, a heavy, suffocating wave of intense guilt and cowardice flashed in his eyes.

"Seraphina... you can't see him."

"Why..."

"Because half a month ago, Noah's condition deteriorated. We had to extract too much..." Callum screwed his eyes shut in pain, his brow furrowing, as if trying desperately to prove he was a victim too. "Seraphina, you have to believe me, I didn't want it to come to that! He was my flesh and blood too! But given the situation... I couldn't just stand by and watch Noah die."

He took a shaky breath, the rims of his eyes turning red. "He couldn't hang on. He contracted sepsis, which triggered severe organ failure and a massive rejection response. He died... Seraphina. This time... he is really dead."