Chapter 138: Abandoned Wife

I came home with a heavy heart. The kind that sits in your chest like a soaked towel—heavy, cold, even almost impossible to wring out. Mom was divorcing her shitty husband because, as she said, “I want to die a free woman.” Apparently, she’d spent her marriage feeling shackled and suffocated by his every command. Did I feel pity for her? Maybe a little. Did I believe her? Not one bit. I remember her all too well. Her laughter, her sequined dresses, her red lipstick, the smell of whiskey on her breath as she hosted the monsters she called friends. She wasn’t some docile wife crushed and treated poorly by a tyrant. She was very much in love with Julius. Plus, she wanted to make up for sleeping with his equally shitty brother and birthing me. Mom was never oppressed. She was just a coward. She chose to survive by pretending everything was fine. Chose to protect her reputation and rich friends instead of her daughter. She’d sip champagne beside the men who hurt me and call it loyalty. But