LAST STRAW OF BETRAYAL

CHAPTER THREE:IN CONFUSION

What?!” Jenner screamed in disbelief. “Daniel did not die? Oh my God what are we going to do?”

Her words came out in small, sharp breaths, the phone rattling against her ear."

“I told Stanley,” In a frustrating tone. “He doesn’t understand it either. None of us do.”But deep down, something in me had already started to connect the pieces.

That night, everything became clear.I sat in the dark, the silence of the room exploding the roar in my head. Suddenly, the memory of the lawyers signing over my deeds felt different.

I saw the way Daniel’s mother had avoided my eyes in the courtroom not out of grief, but out of a hidden, oily triumph. The 'manslaughter' wasn't a tragedy; it was a liquidation of my life. Why everything I owned had slipped through my fingers without a fight. I had thought it was bad luck or just the consequences of my past.But it wasn’t.

It was betrayal,carefully planned. Patiently executed I couldn’t sleep that night.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face. I heard their voices. I felt the weight of everything they had taken from me, my child, my body, my freedom, my life.

My heart raced so hard it hurt.I was shaking.Sweat was all over my skin even though the night was cold. My thoughts kept racing, refusing to slow down.

They used all of me.Daniel and Cassandra.

I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to steady my breathing, but it did not help.

I needed answers.I needed proof.Before the sun could rise, I made up my mind.I had to go back.The lodge.The lodge loomed out of the mist like a rough tooth. I pressed my back against the damp bark of a cedar tree, the rough texture catching on my sweater.

I moved only when the wind rustled the leaves, stepping lightly on the balls of my feet to avoid the snap of a dry twig.

I became a ghost in the periphery, my eyes adjusting until the darkness turned to shades of charcoal.as I moved closer. Every step felt thicker than the last, but I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t do it anymore.

When I got there, I didn’t go too close. Instead, I stood under a tree, hidden in the darkness, watching.

Observing.

My eyes stayed fixed on the building, searching for any sign, any movement.

A burst of laughter erupted from an upper window bright, melodic, and sickeningly familiar.

It sliced through the quiet night air, making me flinch as if I’d been struck. My lungs seized, the oxygen refusing to go down, as the sound of their happiness settled in my stomach like pilots.

They were celebrating the ten years I had spent rotting in a cell.I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. The pain barely filled .All I could feel was the anger rising inside me.

The betrayal, humiliation and the loss.For a moment, I wanted to run in there. To face them. To scream and demand answers but I didn’t move.

I forced myself to stay still.This wasn’t the time for emotions.This was the time to think but plan.To become smarter than them.I leaned against the tree, my eyes never leaving the lodge.If Daniel was alive, then everything could change.Everything this wasn’t over. Not even close.

The frantic heat in my blood began to subside, leaving behind a stillness that felt like ice. I unclenched my fists, smoothing out the sickle marks my nails had left in my palms. I didn't look at the lodge with tears anymore; I looked at it like a map. I stopped breathing for them and started breathing for the move I was about to make."

But they had made one mistake.They left me alive.And now, I knew the truth.I stayed there in the darkness, watching, listening, calculating my next move.Because this time now I am not the victim anymore.