What I couldn’t accept was that ten years of love had been destroyed by a woman who appeared only a month ago.
And I wasn’t about to let her win so easily.
So I sent that video of their kiss to Emily’s parents.
As educators, they were furious their daughter had become a mistress. They dragged her to my house to apologize, insisting they would take her out of Seattle.
Just then, Daniel walked in holding a birthday cake.
And Emily and her parents arrived.
Emily glared at me, eyes filled with venom.
“Sophia, I was only secretly in love with Daniel. I told you I wouldn’t ruin your marriage. You’re truly despicable.”
Before anyone could react, she suddenly leapt out the window.
The cake crashed to the ground, Daniel’s face turning ghostly pale, as if his soul had been ripped away.
He went insane, trying to rush out the window after her, but his parents grabbed him tightly.
Thankfully, it was only the second floor. Emily didn’t die, but she broke a leg.
Daniel dragged me straight to the hospital.
My arm, forehead, and knees kept smashing against the stairwell as he pulled me, blood streaming down my face.
But he didn’t care.
He threw me in front of Emily’s hospital bed, forcing my head down, shoving me to my knees to beg her forgiveness.
Everyone pointed their fingers at me, accusing me of being reckless, of nearly killing Daniel Hughes and that “innocent” girl.
I still remember the look in Daniel’s eyes—disgust, anger, disappointment. So complicated, yet cold enough to chill me to the bone.
On my knees, my voice trembled.
“I only wanted her to leave you… I never meant for it to end this way.”
Margaret Hughes ground her teeth in fury and slapped me several times across the face.
“If anything happens to Daniel, I’ll use my life to make sure you die a miserable death!”
Daniel just stood there, looking at me with no emotion in his voice.
“Sophia, thank you for making me realize just how important Emily is to me.”
“She’s just a young woman, only twenty-three, in the prime of her life, and now she’s disabled forever.”
“You are the cause of all this. You could have handled it better, but instead you chose the cruelest way.”
He gripped my chin hard.
“Atonement! Either you pay with a leg for Emily, or we get divorced. I’ll be her legs, take care of her for the rest of her life.”
All I ever wanted was to save my marriage, protect this family.
But in his eyes, there was only one truth—