“Because it works.”
Those words froze the room.
“Men like you… widowers… with money… with guilt…”
she said. “You’re easy. You just need a problem… something that makes you desperate…”
“My daughter is a ‘problem’ to you?” he snapped.
“She was the way in,” Natalie said calmly. “The illness… the fear… it makes you depend on me. It makes you rush into marriage. Sign things. Change wills…”
“And then?”
She smiled—empty, hollow.
“Then comes the miracle. She ‘recovers.’ You’re grateful. And when I’m done… I leave with half.”
The air turned suffocating.
“How many times?”
Raymond asked.
She hesitated.
“Three.”
“And the children?”
Silence.
“One… didn’t survive.”
Sophia broke down.
Leo clenched his fists.
Raymond felt something inside him shatter completely.
“You’re a monster…”
Natalie started crying.
“I just wanted money… a better life…”
“At the cost of children?”
Leo said quietly. “I have nothing… and I’d never do that.”
That broke her completely.
Minutes later—
the police arrived.
Raymond didn’t hesitate.
“There are things that can’t be fixed,”
he said firmly. “And what you did… doesn’t deserve silence.”
Natalie was arrested.
No grace.
No mask.
Just truth.
Weeks passed.