From the very first day, there'd been a three-year-old boy wrapped around my legs, calling me Mama. A violent brute who called himself my husband, who beat me and used me whenever the mood struck. And a mother-in-law who was anything but kind, who treated me like a thorn in her side, an enemy under her own roof.
I thought I'd crossed into another world. Slipped into some parallel dimension where nothing made sense.
But before I could even begin to process it, the real nightmare began.
I screamed at them until my throat was raw.
"Let me go! I'm the Henson heiress! However much money you want, I can give it to you!"
Kathy Jennings spat at my feet.
"You've already been thrown away like garbage. And you still think you're going back?" She let out a harsh laugh. "Keep dreaming."
I tried everything I could think of to reach Jacob. Every method, every angle.
Every single message I sent disappeared into the void. Not one reply. Not ever.
"You really are spectacularly stupid, Marina."
Jacob tilted my chin up with one finger, forcing me to meet his gaze. His eyes were filled with nothing but contempt.
"Can you honestly not tell? I arranged all of this."