Let him be free.
I thought, with James and Caroline gone, I would be free.
I had one year of peace. One year of believing that both of my children were safe. That the terror had ended. That I could finally breathe without waiting for the next threat, the next demand, the next impossible choice.
I thought I’d survived.
And then, I was diagnosed with lung cancer.
The cruelty of it was almost poetic. I’d sacrificed everything, my body, my dignity, my soul, to keep my children alive. And now my own body was killing me.
That’s who I became, Stephen. A woman so desperate to protect her children that she gave one away, let the other be used as leverage for years, and whored herself out repeatedly to keep them both alive. Keep them both safe.
A woman who survived her sister’s torture and blackmail, only to be destroyed by her own cells turning against her.
I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I’m not even asking for understanding, because I don’t understand it myself.
I’m just telling you the truth.
The truth about why I ran.
The truth about what I did.
The truth about who I really am.
A woman who gave away her son to protect her daughter, then spent years being punished for it by the one person who should have helped me. A woman who sacrificed her body over and over again because it was the only currency she had. A woman who thought she’d finally escaped, only to discover that survival itself was temporary.
I’m sorry, Stephen. I’m so, so sorry.
I’m sorry for being weak. For not being the woman you believed I was. For trusting Caroline. For letting fear control me for so long that I stole years from you and our daughter because I was too terrified to face what I’d done. For becoming someone you could never love. For all the choices that led us here.
This secret has been eating me alive for years. Every day I wake up and remember what I did, who I became, what I let happen. And now, as my own body betrays me, as the cancer spreads through my lungs, stealing my breath one day at a time, I realize the cruelest irony of all: I survived James. I survived Caroline and the blackmail, the threats, the impossible choices. I survived giving away my son and watching my daughter suffer. I survived every decision I made that I thought was right.
But I couldn’t survive myself. My cells turned against me. My own body became the final punishment for everything I’ve done.
I always knew my DNA would be my demise. I just thought it would come from the choices I made, the ones I couldn’t take back, the ones that carved pieces out of me until there was nothing left but guilt and ash. I thought the Dougal curse would kill me through my own hands, through the weight of my own decisions.
I was wrong.
There’s more. Something darker that lives inside me, something I don’t have the courage to write yet. Not today. Maybe not ever. It sits in my chest like a stone, heavier than all the rest, and I can’t... I’m not ready.
I’m not sure I ever will be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Popeye
The window table at Trudy’s bakery had become my spot over the past six months. The same table where Grace and Karlyn sat before the Death Dogs took them eight months ago. The same table where Trudy’s world had shattered.
Now it was where mine was shattering.
I stared down at Christina’s journal, at the words that had just destroyed everything I thought I knew.
My hands shook as I read the passage again, trying to make sense of it. Trying to reconcile the woman I’d loved with the woman who’d written these words.
A son.
Christina had given birth to a son that wasn’t mine.
