Charlotte turned toward me slowly, her lips curling with open disgust.
“You’re nothing but a gold digger,” she muttered coldly. “You trapped my son while he was alive, and now you’re putting on this disgusting performance to rob our family.”
Her words cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
She leaned closer and whispered again.
“You don’t have money. You don’t have powerful friends. You don’t even have family to defend you. You’ve already lost.”
She was right about one thing.
I was alone.
My parents and I hadn’t spoken in almost a decade.
Ethan had been my entire world.
Without him, I felt like I was drifting in open water while Charlotte circled like a shark.
“Order in the court!”
The bailiff’s voice rang out.
“Please rise for Judge Robert Hayes.”
The moment I heard the name, the world tilted.
Robert Hayes.
My father.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
I hadn’t spoken to him in ten years.
Not since the night I packed a bag and climbed out my bedroom window because he forbade me from dating Ethan — the mechanic’s son from the “wrong side of town.”
That night he told me something I would never forget.
“If you leave with that boy,” he had said, “you are no longer my daughter.”
I chose love.