The words sliced through me like shards of ice. Everything they had—the life they lived now—was built on what once belonged to me. And now they wanted me to quietly disappear, as though I had never existed.
From the moment I stepped out of that prison, not one of them had truly cared about me. They didn’t ask how I survived or even if I was okay. I was the innocent one in all of this, but to them, I was just a stain on their perfect image.
Gilbert, seated at the table, glanced briefly at the document. His expression remained unreadable as he spoke. “I don’t agree to divorce.”
Mrs. Bolton and Irene froze, their shock evident.
“My position in the group is still precarious,” he explained casually. “If I divorce now, it could cause unnecessary complications.”
I let out a bitter laugh. How naive of me to think, even for a second, that he might harbor a shred of guilt, a flicker of care for me. He wasn’t fighting for me—he was protecting his own image, his future.
They didn’t care about me. Not my pain, not my survival, not my existence. All they cared about was themselves, their plans, their perfect little world.