Chapter 4
The car glided to a stop outside the wrought-iron gates of the hillside villa.
The second Travis and I stepped out, I spotted Renee standing there with her three-year-old daughter, Nina — as if they’d been camped there for hours.
The moment she saw us, she rushed over. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, her entire face twisted into that familiar pitiful, wronged victim act.
She clutched Nina’s hand, her voice dripping with fake sweetness as she apologized. “Helen, I’m sorry. I was immature before and made you mad. Today is Nina’s birthday, and Travis hasn’t been around all day. She’s just… she misses her dad so much. I only brought her here so she could see him, just for a second…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Nina wrenched her hand free and spat directly at me, venomous.
“Bad woman!” There was a hatred burning in that three-year-old’s eyes that had no place on a child’s face. She jabbed a tiny finger straight at my nose and shrieked, “You stole my daddy! Give him back!”
“Nina! Don’t be rude,” Renee said, patting her daughter’s shoulder in a half-hearted scold. But when she looked up at me, her eyes glittered with unmistakeable smugness and deliberate provocation.
She softened her tone again, dripping with fake sympathy. “Helen, don’t take it to heart. You wouldn’t understand — you’ve never had a child. Kids say the darndest things.”
You’ve never had a child.
She’d aimed straight for the rawest, bleeding wound she knew would never heal. She was dancing on my daughter’s grave — the baby girl who’d died minutes after being born — then standing on my property, putting on this charade like she’d already won.
But I didn’t snap like I used to. I didn’t crumble. I didn’t turn to Travis and beg him to fix it. My heart had died for good in that sunless dungeon.
I let out a cold, humorless laugh. My gaze slid past their little show and locked onto Nina’s throat.
A delicate diamond necklace rested around her throat, strung with tiny sparkling stones. It was the one I’d designed and handcrafted myself when I was pregnant, giddy with foolish, naive hope — made for my daughter.
And on Renee’s daughter’s first birthday, Travis had stolen it without a single ounce of remorse and given it to his mistress’s brat.
“Travis.” I turned to the man beside me, his face already hardening into stone. My voice was ice-cold. “Go take that necklace off her neck. Bring it to me.”
The second the words left my lips, Travis and Renee both went pale.
Renee snapped immediately, yanking Nina behind her as a human shield. She shrieked as if I’d run her through with a knife. “Helen! You’re a grown woman, and you’re stealing from a three-year-old? What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Stealing from a child is wrong?” I advanced on her slowly, one step at a time, my gaze sharp as a shard of glass. “Then why did you steal something from my child?”
I reached for the necklace around Nina’s throat.
Nina burst into terrified wails, scrambling into Renee’s arms. The sound of his daughter’s cries — his real, biological daughter — triggered something primal in Travis instantly. That paternal protectiveness flooded his face. He stepped forward without thinking, positioning himself between us, and clamped down on my wrist with a scowl.
“Helen. That’s enough.” He lowered his voice, a faint edge of pleading creeping in. “I know you’re upset, but this is between us adults. Don’t drag a kid into it. It’s just a necklace —”
“Just a necklace?”
I tilted my chin up and held his gaze. “Travis, my daughter is still lying in that unmarked grave out in the countryside. Alone.”
“She never got to turn three. She never got to wear a pretty necklace. She never even got the chance to call you ‘Dad.’”
I held his gaze as every last drop of blood drained from his face, ripping open the ugliest scar he’d spent years trying to bury. “Why does my daughter get nothing, while that brat gets to wear her necklace?”
Travis knew exactly what would happen if he refused. His entire “devoted nineteen-year-old” facade would crumble instantly.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Then, in one brutal motion, he shoved past Renee’s grasping hands and — steeling his heart — ripped the necklace roughly from Nina’s throat.
“Waaah! Daddy, you hurt me!” Nina’s sobs exploded into a full, ear-splitting scream.
Renee stared at Travis in utter disbelief, trembling from head to toe. “Travis! Are you out of your mind?!”
Travis’s eyes were bloodshot, as if he was choking back something he couldn’t say. He didn’t dare glance at Renee or Nina. He just held the necklace out to me rigidly — the chain still warm from the child’s neck.
I took it without a single flicker of emotion and curled my fist around it tightly.
That night, the darkness pressed in thick and suffocating.
I lay on the bed with my back to the door, clutching the necklace I’d finally reclaimed. The bedroom door creaked open softly. Travis slipped in on silent feet. He lifted the covers and slid in behind me, wrapping his arms around me with deliberate, over-the-top tenderness, as if he could smother the humiliation of today beneath his false intimacy.
His warm breath fanned my neck, his voice soft and coaxing. “Helen… you’re the only one I’ve ever loved. I’m still that nineteen-year-old Travis who only had eyes for you.”
Once, I would’ve cried and clung to that pretty lie.
Now, I felt absolutely nothing.
I didn’t pull away. In the darkness, I spoke calmly — far too calmly.
“Travis. The divorce papers we signed… it’s been exactly one month since we filed them.”
The body behind me froze solid, turning to stone.
I said it as casually as if I were discussing tomorrow’s weather. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to City Hall and pick up the divorce certificate.”
Travis fell completely silent. His arms around my waist tightened slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if he was searching for something — anything — to say to make me stay. But in that heavy silence, he couldn’t force out a single syllable.
The next morning, the sun blazed down, harsh and unforgiving.
The entire process went surprisingly smoothly. No delays. No complications.
I clutched the divorce certificate in my hand and walked out of the building with a weight lifted from my shoulders.
“Helen!” Travis came sprinting out of the lobby, his face a mess of conflicting emotions. “Cabs are hard to find here… I—I’ll drive you home.”
I stopped and turned, regarding him silently. This was the man who’d destroyed my life — and then, with that absurd amnesia charade, had given me the last pathetic scrap of comfort I’d ever get.
I gave him a faint smile, then lifted my hand and flagged down a taxi that had just pulled up to the curb.
I pulled open the door.
“No need.”
I slid into the backseat. Through the half-rolled-down window, my gaze rested calmly on Travis’s face — still trying, even now, to hold onto that devoted facade.
“Actually, Travis…” I paused, then spoke softly, delivering the final blow. “Nineteen-year-old you didn’t even know how to drive.”
TRAVIS’S POV
The truth crashed into Travis like a freight train: Helen had known he was faking it the entire time.
For a split second, his mind went completely blank.
Then panic exploded inside him, raw and all-consuming, threatening to swallow him whole.
If she’d seen through everything — that he’d never had amnesia, that this whole thing was just a scam he’d cooked up to trick her into signing the divorce — then why hadn’t she called him out on it?
