EMMA POV
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I wiped my face, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to escape. “Natalie, listen, we were just kids back then. I never meant to hurt you like that, and I’m sorry for what happened. But this?” I gestured to my mother, who sat silently with her hands covering her mouth in shock. “This is too much. You’ve crossed a line.”
Her eyes flashed with satisfaction as she looked between me and my mother. “It’s a win-win for me, Emma. Now your mother knows everything—how you paid her hospital bills by sleeping with a married man and how you became a stripper.”
My breath caught in my throat, the humiliation of those words hanging in the air. “Only one night,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “It was just one night.”
“One night doesn’t change what you’ve become,” she shot b
