“Mrs. Catherine never wanted a divorce, and your mother was the one who personally threw her onto the street,” Brian confessed, his voice steadying.
“And that letter you received? She wrote every word of it herself, not your wife.”
Victor felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him feeling cold and lightheaded.
He couldn’t comprehend the depth of the betrayal, and he had no idea that the worst was still yet to come.
Chapter 2: The Price of Silence
Victor fled the hotel with Annie in his arms, his heart feeling as though it had been carved out of his chest.
Behind him, the gala had devolved into a chaotic mess of rumors, and he knew his mother’s reputation would never survive the night.
Inside the SUV, as they drove through the neon-lit streets, Annie explained the reality of their existence.
They had been living in a cramped, mold-infested room in a run-down building on the outskirts of the industrial district.
Catherine had been working double shifts washing dishes in a greasy diner and sewing garments at home just to cover the meager rent.
There were many nights when Catherine would skip dinner entirely, claiming she wasn’t hungry, just so she could make sure Annie had a proper lunch for school.
When she fell ill, she always hid it, telling her daughter it was just exhaustion from working too hard.
“Mom always told me you were busy building a better future for us,” Annie whispered, leaning against her father’s arm.
“She never once said a bad word about you, even when we had nothing.”
Victor squeezed his eyes shut, the weight of those words cutting deeper than any insult could have.
He had foolishly believed the poison his mother fed him, never questioning why his wife would suddenly leave him without a conversation.
When they arrived at the apartment complex, a neighbor, a weary-looking woman, emerged from the hallway and glared at Victor.
“Are you the father?” she asked, her voice dripping with judgment.
“You finally decided to show your face after all this time?”
“Where is Catherine?” Victor demanded, ignoring the woman’s hostility.
“She collapsed while she was working at the restaurant and they took her to the Metropolitan General Hospital,” the neighbor replied coldly.
Annie began to cry again, her small body shaking, and Victor didn’t ask another word.
He drove like a man possessed, ignoring every traffic light as he sped toward the hospital.
When he finally burst into the sterile, fluorescent-lit ward, he found Catherine sitting in a wheelchair, looking ghostly pale and incredibly thin.
A doctor was busy adjusting a blanket over her shoulders, his expression grave.
Victor stopped dead in his tracks, feeling a suffocating mix of guilt, shame, and overwhelming love.
“Mom!” Annie shouted, sprinting toward her mother.
Catherine looked up, and for a fleeting second, a smile lit her face, but it vanished the moment she saw Victor standing behind the child.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice raspy and devoid of emotion.
“Catherine, please, I found out everything,” Victor pleaded, stepping toward her.
“I know my mother kicked you out, and I know she blocked every single attempt you made to see me.”
Catherine let out a dry, hollow laugh that sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement.
“Does knowing that now actually change anything, Victor?”
The doctor, a man named Dr. Harvey Reed, intervened with a solemn tone.
“Mr. Williams, your wife is suffering from advanced kidney failure and requires an immediate transplant to survive.”
The floor seemed to drop away beneath Victor’s feet, leaving him dizzy.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he shouted.
Catherine looked at him with tired, hollow eyes.
“Tell you where, Victor?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“The phone number you changed? The office where your security guards laughed at me? Or the mansion where your mother threatened to call the police if I ever set foot on the property again?”
Every sentence was a jagged piece of glass, tearing through his defenses.
Victor immediately demanded that compatibility tests be run, refusing to leave Catherine’s side even as she weakly protested.
“This time I am not going anywhere, and you can hate me all you want, but I am going to save you,” he promised.
That night, Victor’s assistant arrived with a mountain of legal documents, exposing the depth of the fraud.
The monthly transfers never went to Catherine; every cent had been routed directly into Maris’s personal offshore accounts.
Worse, the doctors discovered that someone had been paying for prescriptions that were actually accelerating Catherine’s illness, and the billing address for the pharmacy was traced directly back to Maris.
Catherine was in complete shock, unable to process the cruelty of the woman she had once called mother-in-law.
“No, she may have hated me, but she wouldn’t try to kill me,” she whispered, shaking her head.
At dawn, Maris arrived at the hospital, her hair disheveled and her eyes swollen from weeping.
“I didn’t want this to happen, I just thought I was protecting my son!” she cried, collapsing onto the linoleum floor.
Victor stood over her, his shadow looming large.
“Protecting me from what?” he asked, his voice deathly cold.
Maris pulled a yellowed, folded envelope from her purse.
“I had proof, Victor, that the girl wasn’t yours,” she claimed, waving the document.
Catherine struggled to stand up, her face burning with righteous anger.
“That is a complete lie, and I have never once been unfaithful to him!”
Victor looked at his wife, truly looked at her, and saw the truth he had been too arrogant to see for years.
“I believe you,” he said, and he turned to the doctor.
Dr. Harvey Reed snatched the paper and examined it for a long minute.
“This document has no medical signature or authentication, and it is an obvious forgery,” he announced, handing it back with disgust.
Maris began to shake uncontrollably.
“My brother, Leo, gave it to me,” she stammered.
“He told me that Catherine was deceiving us and that their family was cursed with misfortune.”
Victor narrowed his eyes, his mind working through the implications.
“What misfortune?” he asked.