“Enough!” my mother-in-law snapped, slicing through my words. “I’m done with your performances, Eleanor. You’ve been acting deranged ever since my son passed away.”
Deranged. That was what she called the panic of a mother who saw a child that looked exactly like the baby stolen from her arms.
“I told you I wouldn’t hurt him—”
“Take her downstairs,” Lucinda ordered, her voice glacial as she turned to the staff. “Lock her in the basement.”
The words didn’t register at first. “What did you just say?”
Nathaniel—still hiding behind Harold’s name—hesitated only briefly. I searched his face for the man who once protected me, the one who promised never to let anyone hurt me.
Instead, he murmured, “It’s better this way. She needs to cool off.”
Something inside my chest collapsed.
Two employees seized my arms. I fought, twisting wildly, my screams echoing down the hall. “Please! I didn’t do anything! You can’t do this!” But I was nothing to them. Just another problem to be removed.
The door slammed shut behind me, plunging me into darkness.