She Laughed At My Real Corpse

I suffered every imaginable torment in that foreign penitentiary, waiting for a justice that never came. When the embassy finally contacted Chloe to claim my body, she laughed. She told the magistrate it was a sick prank, a silicone dummy I’d commissioned just to torture her. "That piece of trash violated me," she sneered through the phone, her voice dripping with a cruelty that used to break my heart. "Even if his rotting corpse gets flushed down a storm drain, I wouldn't waste a single breath looking at him." What she didn't know was that I wasn't hiding. I was really, truly dead. Three years ago, after she was assaulted on that yacht, her trauma fractured her reality. She became hysterical, pointing a trembling finger at me, accusing me of being the monster who ruined her. Both of our families knew the truth. They knew the real culprit was inextricably tied to Brady—the golden boy, the untouchable center of her universe. Yet, they all looked away. They fed me to the wolves to satisfy her need for vengeance. They left me to rot in a sun-baked hellhole halfway across the world. And while I was bleeding on concrete floors, Chloe liquidated the tech company I had built from nothing, using my money to bury the evidence and keep her true love out of prison. I often wondered what she would do when she realized the truth. I imagined her holding my skeletal remains, laughing in manic triumph. I imagined her laughing so hard that eventually, the laughter would break, and the tears wouldn't stop falling. 1. My remains were extradited back to the States. My wife, Chloe, received the formal notice to identify the body. She walked down the stark, fluorescent-lit hallway of the county morgue. As they approached the heavy metal doors, the faint, unmistakable stench of decay leaked into the air. She hesitated. Her stunning features twisted into a mask of pure revulsion. "Does he really think this is going to work?" she muttered, her heels clicking aggressively against the linoleum. "He fakes his death to guilt-trip me into forgiving a rapist? In his dreams." In the end, she only made it through the doors because Brady had his arms wrapped securely around her waist. My soul drifted silently behind them. I watched, numb, as Chloe playfully bit Brady’s neck, right there in the morgue, as if she were trying to purge the sterile air from her lungs. Then, realizing she might have bitten too hard, she soothed the red mark with her tongue, letting out a soft, breathy giggle. A phantom pressure seized my chest. I couldn't breathe, even though I had no lungs left to fill. She was flirting with her lover mere feet from my corpse. The medical examiner shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat to enforce some semblance of respect. Chloe pulled away from Brady, rolling her eyes. She spat a curse under her breath and finally yanked back the white sheet covering the steel table. Just one look. My nonexistent breath hitched. It wasn't just that I was dead. It was that I had died with zero dignity. My remains were grotesque. "A rotting silicone dummy, Holden. Really?" Chloe's voice was sharp, bouncing off the tiled walls. "You think you've fooled everyone, don't you? You're probably hiding in some pathetic little motel right now, laughing at my family. Laughing at the woman you brutalized. You make me sick!" "You might fool the embassy, Holden, but you can't fool me!" she screamed at the mutilated flesh. "I wish you were dead. I wish you died so thoroughly that your soul wouldn't even dare cross the border back into this country!" No, Chloe! I'm not lying to you! I surged forward, desperate, reaching out to grab her shoulders. But my translucent hands passed right through the expensive wool of her coat. She turned away from the table and buried her face in Brady’s chest, pressing a lingering kiss to his collarbone. "Let him play dead," she whispered. "At least now we don't have to hide anymore." Brady carried her into the morgue, and he carried her out. The entire walk back to the administrative desk, she stroked his jaw, his neck, kissing him repeatedly as if demanding compensation for having to look at my face. At the front desk, the clerk handed them a thick manila envelope containing my autopsy reports and biometric data. Dozens of pages of irrefutable DNA matches and dental records. If she had bothered to look at even the first page, she would have known the body couldn't be faked. Instead, Chloe shoved the envelope into her designer tote like it was garbage. Brady stroked her hair, his eyes heavy with practiced sorrow. "Three years ago, Holden almost dragged me down with him. If it weren't for you fighting for me, exhausting yourself to clear my name... I would have been ruined. I owe you everything." Chloe shook her head, her gaze softening. "Don't say that. It wasn't a big deal. I just spent a little money... liquidated a few of Holden’s start-ups. It didn't cost my family a dime." The tech firm I had bled for. The company I worked hundred-hour weeks to build from a garage to a high-rise office—gone in an afternoon. Sold off by my wife to buy the freedom of another man. The dead aren't supposed to feel anything. So why did it hurt so much? Why did the sheer memory of her voice feel like glass in my veins? Forget it, I told myself. I built that company to afford the experimental treatments for her severe respiratory condition anyway. At least the money was used. "Holden owed me," Chloe gritted her teeth, her eyes darkening. "Selling off his little vanity projects was letting him off easy." Brady glanced back down the hallway toward the cold storage rooms. "Are you sure you don't want to take one last look? Once you sign the release, they'll bury him. Whatever he did, he was your husband once. He loved you in his own way." Brady sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "Man to man... I almost pity him." Chloe spat on the ground, her face contorting with disgust. "God, Brady, you're too kind for your own good. Why are you defending a monster who tried to destroy us? He forced himself on me! Marital rape is still rape!" Her voice trembled, pitching up with genuine, manufactured trauma. "You fought him off. You saved me, and you almost went to prison for assault because of it! He doesn't even deserve to have his name spoken." The heavy doors of the morgue slowly swung shut. The clerk slid a clipboard across the counter. "Ma'am, I just need your signature on the release forms." Chloe picked up the pen. Then, suddenly, her hand froze. She slammed the pen down and backed away. "I am not tying my name to that man." "Excuse me?" the clerk asked. "Even if he is dead—which he isn't—I will not put my name on a document as his wife. I have nothing to do with him!" She spun on her heel and stormed out. The clerk looked bewildered and chased after her. "Ma'am! You are legally married. By state law, the spouse must claim the remains—" Chloe paused at the automatic doors. She didn't look back. "I don't have a husband. Let his body rot in there. Let the rats eat him. It's exactly what he deserves." She threw open the door of her Porsche 911, slammed it shut, and peeled out of the parking lot, the engine roaring in defiance. In the passenger seat, Brady’s phone began to ring incessantly. The police. The morgue. Chloe glanced at the caller ID and shook her head sharply. "Ignore it. Just thinking about him makes my skin crawl. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back on the deck of that yacht, crying, begging him to stop, and he just... he didn't care. I could kill him myself." My spirit trembled. Watching the absolute, venomous hatred radiate from her eyes, listening to her rewrite history until it justified grinding my bones to dust—it was a bitter, suffocating pill to swallow. Chloe was my wife, yet she had convinced the world, and herself, that I was a rapist. But I wasn't. It happened shortly after our wedding, on a luxury cruise through a lawless stretch of international waters in the Caribbean. Armed mercenaries boarded the ship. Chloe was dragged up to the upper deck. By the time I tore through the ship like a madman and finally found her, it was over. She was catatonic, bleeding heavily onto the teakwood floor. The ship's doctor later told me the trauma had been so severe, the internal damage so catastrophic, that she would never be able to carry a child. I was consumed by a blinding, agonizing guilt. I wanted to rip my own heart out and give it to her if it would make her whole again. But when Chloe finally woke up in the hospital, her mind had snapped. She screamed the moment she saw me. She threw things. She clawed at her own face, demanding that I die to atone for what I had done to her. Her trauma had completely rewritten her memories. She truly believed I was the one who had attacked her. I closed my ghostly eyes, letting the memory wash over me. To give her peace, I let her and her influential family lock me away in a brutal offshore prison. It was a cage built for the worst of humanity. Cartel enforcers, murderers, monsters. And in a place like that, a convicted rapist is the lowest link on the food chain. For three years, I was subjected to torture that defied human comprehension. And on the very night I was finally scheduled to be released, I was given my final release. I died in unimaginable agony. My body was beaten until it was no longer recognizable as human. ... Brady drove like a maniac, eventually pulling up to the driveway of my sprawling estate in the suburbs. As Chloe stepped out into the freezing rain, he pulled her flush against his chest, kissing her deeply, hungrily. "It's okay. Shhh, it's over now. You're safe," he murmured. They held each other tightly in the downpour. I remembered my final moments on earth. I had begged a sympathetic guard to let me make one last phone call. Please... I had choked out into the receiver, blood bubbling in my lungs. Please, just pick up. I'm dying. This is my last chance, Chloe. My last chance to hear your voice... If she had answered. Even if she had picked up just to tell me how much she hated me. Even if she called me pathetic, manipulative, a coward trying to play the victim! If I had just heard her voice, I would have fought. I would have clawed my way back to life just to breathe the same air as her. But the phone just kept ringing. I died in absolute, suffocating despair. I died one day before my sentence was up. Now, I was a wandering ghost. An exile, tethered to the woman who put me in the ground. 2. My soul followed Chloe into the house. I stood in the corners of my own home, watching her and Brady live as husband and wife. They shared coffee in the mornings. They tangled their limbs together at night. Once, I watched Brady carry a heavily intoxicated Chloe through the front door. A visceral, territorial jealousy flared up inside me, and I glared at him, wishing I could tear him apart. But then I remembered Chloe's sharp slap to my face years ago, her voice ringing in my ears: "Brady and I are just childhood friends! Only someone with a filthy mind would see something dirty in that!" But... do friends sleep in the same bed? Do friends kiss each other with that kind of desperate hunger when no one else is looking? Under the warm glow of the living room lamps, Chloe meticulously ironed Brady’s suit for the next day, folding it neatly over the back of the sofa. She looked like the perfect, devoted wife. That used to be my job. Before every gala, every board meeting, I would lay out her dresses. I would curate her jewelry, making sure every diamond and pearl perfectly complemented her mood. Chloe had always dismissed my efforts with a scoff. "You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but he still acts like the help," she used to mock me to her friends. "He calls himself a Montgomery, but he has the soul of a butler." Yet here she was, doing the exact same 'servant's work' for Brady, and looking at him like he hung the moon. I guess that was the difference between being tolerated and being loved. Brady took her hands, bringing her knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss. Chloe closed her eyes, letting out a contented sigh. "Brady, I'm coming with you to the Montgomery estate tomorrow," she whispered fiercely. "You are the true son of that family. No one is going to take that from you anymore. I'll stand by you while you take back everything that belongs to you." Watching her declare her absolute loyalty, I caught a fleeting, calculating shadow cross Brady’s face. I suddenly remembered how it all started. For twenty-something years, Brady was the pampered, adored heir to the Montgomery fortune. Until the day I was found in a dusty Appalachian town and brought back to the sprawling Boston estate. I remembered the look of profound disappointment in my biological parents' eyes when they saw me in my faded flannel and scuffed boots. They couldn't believe this rough, quiet mechanic was their actual flesh and blood. That afternoon, Brady had dramatically packed his bags, standing in the foyer with tears in his eyes. "I know we don't share the same blood," he had told my parents, his voice breaking perfectly. "But I've been a Montgomery my whole life. Even if you cast me out, I will always pray for your health and happiness." We had been switched at birth. The rundown farmhouse I grew up in—the one with the leaky roof and the endless chores—was where Brady truly belonged. Tom and Mary O’Connor were his parents. But when the Montgomerys looked at me, their eyes begging me to be the bigger person, I caved. "If you want him to stay, let him stay," I had said, shifting uncomfortably in my cheap sneakers. "Having two sons to take care of you isn't a bad thing." I meant it back then. But I regretted it almost immediately. Because Brady became a ghost that haunted my life, a shadow I could never escape, especially when it came to Chloe. At every high-society event, every charity gala, the moment Brady walked into the room, Chloe's eyes would lock onto him like a magnet. Standing beside her, I—the actual heir to the Montgomery dynasty—faded into a pathetic, invisible joke. Chloe opened her eyes, her gaze practically overflowing with adoration. "It was always supposed to be you," she told Brady, her voice thick with emotion. "We grew up together. You were the one I was supposed to marry. If that redneck hadn't shown up and ruined everything, we would be married by now. We would have kids." Her face hardened. "He stole my future. But it's not too late. I'm going to divorce him, Brady. I'll drag him out of hiding and force him to sign the papers, and then we can finally be together." They stared into each other's eyes, the air between them growing thick and heavy. Soon, the quiet whispers turned into heavy breathing. Watching them tear at each other's clothes on the rug of my living room, I closed my eyes and let out a bitter, silent laugh. I always knew she didn't love me. Her marriage contract was forged with the Montgomery heir. When my identity was revealed, she was legally bound to me. She was Boston royalty—cold, brilliant, and breathtakingly beautiful. I was a grease monkey who didn't know which fork to use at dinner. How could I ever expect her to love me? I was so naive. I used to tell myself that if I just loved her hard enough, if I was patient and kind, year after year, maybe, just maybe, she would eventually look at me and smile. I was so incredibly wrong. When Chloe was assaulted, her parents had come to me. The aristocratic, untouchable Lynn family had fallen to their knees on my hardwood floor, weeping. "Please, Holden," her father had begged. "Chloe is too proud. Her mind is shattered. If she knows she was taken by random thugs, she'll kill herself. She has completely blocked out the real attackers!" "If you just confess," her mother sobbed, clutching my pant leg. "If you let her believe it was you... her anger will keep her alive. She'll have someone to hate. Please... it's the only way she survives this." Human nature is inherently selfish. If I confessed to a crime I didn't commit, my life was over. I would be a pariah, a monster in the eyes of the world. I told them no. But I underestimated the depths of my own family's betrayal. When I went to the Montgomery estate for help, my father locked himself in his study and refused to look at me. My mother threw herself on the floor, weeping hysterically, before swallowing a handful of sleeping pills right in front of me. As she was being pumped full of charcoal in the ER, she confessed the sickening truth. The attack on the yacht hadn't been random. Brady had gambling debts. He had made a deal with the mercenaries, giving them the security codes to the yacht. It was his fault the pirates boarded. "I raised Brady," my mother wept, clutching my hands with a desperate, bruising grip. "I love him more than my own life. If he goes to federal prison for this, Holden... I will kill myself. I swear to God, I will die." Cornered by the people who brought me into the world, suffocated by the tears of the family I had married into, I broke. I took the plea deal. I "confessed." And I died for it. I paid for their sins with my blood, dying alone in a country where I didn't even speak the language. If my body hadn't been deported by a bureaucratic technicality, my soul would have been lost in the dark forever. I tried to find comfort in the finality of it. I'm dead, I told myself. The truth is buried with me. Chloe will never know, and so she will never have to bear the pain of reality. But the phantom knife in my chest kept twisting. After the "incident," Chloe had developed a severe psychological block. Her doctors called it trauma-induced delusion. Her subconscious had actively rewritten the narrative, turning me into the ultimate villain so she didn't have to face the chaotic, senseless horror of what actually happened. Her parents enabled the delusion. My parents endorsed it. I did nothing wrong. I loved her perfectly. But the world decided that sacrificing Holden O’Connor was the easiest way to keep everyone else's lives immaculate. During the private hearings, Chloe hired a ruthless legal team to crucify me. But the American judges weren't blind. The evidence was circumstantial, the forensics didn't match, and her case was thrown out repeatedly. Frustrated by the law, the two families pooled their vast resources. They used offshore connections, pulled political strings, and had me illegally extradited and thrown into that South American hellhole. My parents personally flew down to see me handed over to the guards. On that final day, my mother touched my face, her eyes brimming with sorrow. "Just hold on, sweet boy. Three years. We'll bring you home, and you'll go back to being a Montgomery." My father patted my shoulder awkwardly. "Adversity builds character, son. I took my lumps building the empire. A few years roughing it won't kill you." As the heavy iron gates slammed shut, I saw Brady standing by the black SUV, waiting for them. He turned his head and looked at me. It was just one look. But it was entirely composed of arrogant, sneering triumph. He had stolen my parents. He had stolen my wife. And he left me to be devoured by the monsters in the dark. And everyone lived happily ever after. Because the right person had been sacrificed. 3. For weeks, my soul drifted aimlessly behind Chloe. I watched her move through the house I had meticulously designed for her, sleeping in the bed I had picked out, laughing with another man. Every corner of the house, right down to the ornate bronze oil diffuser in the hallway, had been placed there by me. Brady stepped out of the shower one evening, toweling his hair. As he walked past, his foot shot out, casually kicking the heavy bronze diffuser. It clattered against the wall, the glass reservoir shattering across the hardwood. "What happened?" Chloe called out, stepping out of the bedroom. Brady looked down at the mess, his expression the picture of innocent dismay. "Oh, damn. This was one of Holden's little projects, wasn't it? Supposed to be romantic or something. My bad, Chloe. Total accident." Chloe stared at the broken glass for a moment. Then, she let out a dismissive scoff. "Typical Holden. Always wasting his time on useless, flashy garbage just so he could play the martyr. He loved putting on a show to prove how much he 'suffered' for me. Never once stopped to ask if I actually wanted his help." My spectral hands curled into fists. The ache in my chest was a physical, pulsing thing. I just loved putting on a show? Chloe had severe, chronic asthma, complicated by a rare allergy. Whenever the seasons changed, or when the stress of running her company peaked, she would spend nights gasping for air, her face pale, terrifyingly close to suffocation. I hated seeing her in pain. I scoured the country for holistic specialists, finally tracking down a retired herbalist in the Pacific Northwest who formulated a customized, eucalyptus-based medicinal wax. Every night, I would set it in that diffuser, letting the slow heat fill the room with a vapor that opened her lungs. Once, after a brutal business trip, she collapsed from a severe respiratory attack, burning with a high fever. I lit the diffuser and sat by her bed, trying to keep the vapor near her face. But she was delirious, thrashing wildly, cursing my name, refusing to let me near her. Terrified she would knock the scalding oil onto her face, I took the medicinal wax, smeared it directly onto my own forearm, and held it over the open candle flame, letting the heat vaporize the medicine from my skin. I sat there like that all night, breathing with her. The hot wax and the open flame blistered my arm terribly. But I would have set myself on fire if it meant Chloe could breathe. When she woke up the next morning, her lungs were clear. My arm, however, was covered in weeping, agonized burns. I didn't complain. A husband is supposed to protect his wife. You don't hand the woman you love an invoice for your sacrifices. But when Chloe saw my bandaged arm, she simply rolled her eyes, told me I was clumsy, and walked out of the room. Now, I watched Chloe nudge a piece of the broken glass with her slipper. "Sweep it up and throw it out," she told the maid coldly. "Holden is trash, everything he touched is trash. It all belongs in the dumpster." She turned and curled into Brady’s chest, smiling up at him. "He's such a coward. He doesn't even have the guts to face me. Going through all the trouble to fake a corpse, just because he knows the second I see him, I'm shoving divorce papers down his throat." "He knows his entire status in Boston rests on his marriage to me. His parents tolerate him because he's tied to the Lynn family. If I dump him, he's back to being nobody." She laughed, a sharp, brittle sound. "But he’s an idiot if he thinks hiding in some rat-infested motel will save him. I'll drag him back by his hair if I have to." I listened to her speech with a tired, hollow smile. I gave her my soul, and in return, she saw me as a pathetic, gold-digging coward clinging to her coattails. Brady’s eyes flickered, calculating. "Have your private investigators found anything yet? Chloe... is it possible the body was real? What if he actually is..." "Impossible!" Chloe snapped, suddenly stepping away from him, her body rigid. "If it weren't for him, I never would have endured what I went through! Dying is too easy for him! He doesn't get to just die!" She paced the room, her chest heaving. "That thing in the morgue was a prop. It's a sick joke. He's probably watching from somewhere, getting off on my reaction." Suddenly, she spun around, throwing her arms around Brady’s neck and pressing her lips aggressively against his. "Distract me, Brady. Wash the thought of him out of my head. He makes me sick." Brady let out a low laugh, scooping her up into his arms and carrying her toward the bedroom. "Happy to oblige." They crashed onto the mattress, tearing at each other with a frantic, desperate energy. Chloe's screams of pleasure echoed off the vaulted ceiling. I stood by the doorway, gripping the frame. I thought I had run out of tears. I thought ghosts couldn't cry. But the agony tearing through me was so absolute, it felt like I was dying all over again. 4. Chloe’s private investigators turned up nothing. Naturally. My body was still lying in the cold storage drawer at the county morgue. The precinct captain and the medical examiner called her constantly, pleading with her to sign the paperwork so I could be laid to rest. But Chloe lived in a reality of her own making. She was fundamentally convinced the corpse was a fake, and that I was playing a cruel game of hide-and-seek. After hanging up on the police for the fourth time that week, Chloe threw a crystal vase at the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. My parents, Richard and Patricia Montgomery, visited the house shortly after. They had no idea I was dead. They assumed I had been quietly released from the offshore prison and was just laying low. They believed that because I loved Chloe so much—because I was willing to go to jail for her—I would inevitably come crawling back. But Brady handled their visit beautifully. He poured their tea, he reminisced about his childhood in their home, and he spun a masterful web of casual lies. "You know how Holden is," Brady chuckled warmly. "He probably needed to blow off steam after everything. He's out in Europe somewhere, spending money, enjoying the beaches. He'll come home when he gets bored." My mother smiled, completely reassured. "Well, he always was a bit... wild. Growing up in that rural environment, he never really learned responsibility. Let him get it out of his system. It's good that he's exploring the world." My spirit froze. For three years, I was beaten with lead pipes. I was starved. I froze in the winters and baked in the summers. I lived a reality so horrifying it stripped away my humanity. And in my mother's mind, I was just a wild kid backpacking through Saint-Tropez. "We're getting older," my mother continued, reaching out to pat Brady’s hand. "Honestly, having you here to take care of us is a blessing, Brady. You understand tradition. You understand duty. You'll be the one to look after us when we're gone." My parents left the estate in good spirits. They never mentioned my name again. But Chloe was unraveling. Every day her investigators came back empty-handed, she grew more frantic. By day, she screamed at her staff. By night, she dragged Brady into her bed, demanding a physical intensity that was bordering on violent. You could see the exhaustion settling into Brady’s bones. She even posted a bounty on her social media. Ten thousand dollars to anyone with a confirmed sighting of Holden O’Connor. 5. After a particularly aggressive session in the bedroom, Brady collapsed back against the pillows, gasping for air. He pulled Chloe to his chest. "Chloe... I don't think he's hiding from you on purpose. What if he's in trouble? Maybe he owes money to the wrong people abroad? Maybe he's too scared to come back?" "Bullshit!" Chloe shrieked, shoving him away and sitting up violently. "If he needed money, he'd crawl back here! It's not like the Montgomerys would let him starve. And if they did, he’d beg me for it!" She dug her nails into her palms. "He loves me! He's obsessed with me! The only reason he's staying away is because he knows I'll divorce him the second I see his face. He’s dragging this out!" Her eyes darted around the room, manic and bright. "Fine. If he won't come out, I'll start burning down everything he cares about. He still has those hillbilly adoptive parents, doesn't he? Go get them. Lock them in the basement. Let's see how long he stays hidden when they start starving." Brady stared at her, a flicker of genuine unease in his eyes. "Chloe, are you... are you starting to care about him? Is this about getting a divorce, or are you just desperate for him to look at you again?" I held my breath. For a split second, a pathetic, dying ember of hope flared in my chest. "Are you insane?!" Chloe roared, her face flushing with pure rage. "I just want this over! I want the divorce finalized so I never have to look at his disgusting face again! I want to be entirely clean of him!" Brady reached out, cupping her cheek, playing the wounded lover to perfection. "You've been acting so erratic lately. If... if you really still have feelings for him, Chloe, just tell me. I'll pack my things. I'll walk away and let you two fix your marriage." "I am not married to him! Who in their right mind would love a piece of white trash like that?!" She caught herself, taking a deep breath to rein in her hysteria. She leaned down and kissed Brady’s forehead. "I'll prove it to you, Brady. I'll prove exactly how much I hate him." I found out very quickly how she planned to prove it. That night, Tom and Mary O’Connor—the gentle, quiet people who had raised me—were dragged out of a black van, black hoods pulled over their heads. They were thrown onto the marble floor of Chloe’s living room like sacks of garbage. "D... daughter-in-law?" my mother stammered, her voice shaking violently as the hood was yanked off. She had lived a quiet life in rural Ohio. She was terrified. "Don't call me that!" Chloe snatched a heavy crystal tumbler off the table and hurled it. It shattered against my mother's forehead, drawing a sharp line of blood. My father let out a raw, guttural cry and threw himself over his wife, using his broad shoulders to shield her head. Chloe sneered, her eyes locking onto my father’s hands—hands that were permanently calloused and stained with engine grease and soil from working three jobs to keep me fed. "Filthy," she muttered in disgust. She crossed her arms, looking down at them like insects. "Your pathetic son is hiding from me because he refuses to sign the divorce papers. Since he clearly has no spine, I'm holding you responsible. You're not leaving this house until he shows his face." My father looked up, his weathered face tight with indignation. "Holden is a good boy! He spent his whole life breaking his back to help us put food on the table! You don't get to talk about my son that way!" Chloe’s eyes went dead. "Holden is a rapist. He violated me. It cost me millions in legal fees just to get him locked in a foreign cage where he belonged! His three years are up. He should be on his knees outside my door, begging for my mercy. But he's too much of a coward to even face me. Calling him half a man is giving him too much credit!" "No! You're lying! My boy would never do that! I don't believe you!" My father, a man who had never raised his voice in his life, suddenly surged forward, his face red with protective fury. Chloe stumbled back, startled. But her security team reacted instantly. Three massive bodyguards tackled my aging father to the ground, slamming his face into the marble. Brady hurried down the stairs, tying his robe. "Chloe, what's going on? Should we really be doing this? They're old..." Chloe’s voice was ice. "Trash breeds trash. Break his legs." "Chloe, wait—" Brady started. "If you raise a monster, you pay the price," she barked at the guards. "Do it! It's a public service!" No! Don't touch them! Leave them alone! Rage, hot and blinding, erupted in my chest. My vision went entirely red. I threw myself at the guards, swinging wildly, screaming at the top of my lungs. But my fists just passed through empty air. I was forced to stand there and watch as they took a baton to my father's knees. The crack of his bones echoed through the cavernous room. He didn't scream. He just bit down on his lip until it bled. The jagged white edge of a fractured bone pierced through the fabric of his jeans. My mother began to scream—a high, piercing wail of absolute agony—before her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed, coughing up blood. Chloe watched the entire scene with dead, bored eyes. She even gestured for her assistant to pull out a phone and start recording. The anger inside me was so absolute it felt like it was tearing my soul apart. How could I have ever loved this woman? How could I have ever thought there was a heart buried beneath that ice? Suddenly, the front door exploded inward. "Police! Nobody move!" A SWAT team flooded the foyer, assault rifles raised. "Chloe Lynn! We received a tip about a kidnapping at this residence. Drop the phone and put your hands behind your back!" Paramedics rushed in behind the cops, immediately swarming my parents. My father had passed out from the shock. My mother regained consciousness as they loa

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