CHAPTER 7: THE FINAL BARGAIN
1075 Words
Ariel spent five agonizing days confined to a private room in the city’s most exclusive hospital wing, a luxurious prison guarded by Henry’s hired staff. Her body was battered and bruised, but her emotional state was far more fractured. Henry controlled every aspect of her existence: the food, the nurses, and especially the flow of information. He had effectively created a vacuum where only his narrative could exist.
The only good news came from Dr. Chen, who, after several agonizing days of tests, confirmed that the twins, though tiny and fragile, were miraculously unharmed.
"You're very lucky, Mrs. Anderson," Chen had remarked, his voice devoid of real warmth. "Extreme emotional stress, combined with the trauma, is a clear warning. You need total rest and stability. Mr. Anderson insists you must focus only on your recovery and mental health."
Ariel understood the subtext: You are medically unstable. Do not fight Henry, or you will lose your children.
She realized Henry hadn't intended to kill her. He had intended to break her, to leave her in a state of compromised health and psychological terror, making her a compliant witness to her own disgrace.
She knew she couldn't stay. Henry had demonstrated his power, and now he would simply wait for the twins to be born before seizing them. She had to vanish entirely, without leaving a trace that would allow Henry to frame Noel for aiding her escape.
Her only hope arrived discreetly. Betty White, alerted by the original accident report (which Henry had tried, but failed, to completely suppress from local news), arrived in the city. Betty didn't dare approach the hospital directly, knowing the security was too tight. Instead, she used her wits, tracing the ownership of the hospital wing to a foundation Sarah Anderson managed.
Betty, armed with fierce determination, showed up at the manor's gates, demanding to speak to Sarah.
Sarah, who was already suspicious of Henry’s cold, managerial handling of the "accident," agreed to a private meeting in the conservatory.
The meeting between the two mothers was tense, bridged only by their mutual love for Ariel.
“I know what your husband is doing,” Betty stated plainly, cutting through Sarah’s polite reserve. “He hit my daughter and her babies. He is trying to frame her as unstable so he can take those children when they are born.”
Sarah’s face, usually so composed, crumpled with quiet horror. “I suspected... I saw how he dismissed the police report. He wants to control everything, Betty. He's terrifying.”
“He is criminal. And he is going to destroy Noel, too,” Betty insisted. “Ariel told me she saw financial papers—something called 'Lighthouse.' He is using your son as a cover for a criminal operation. Ariel can’t fight him here, Sarah. She has to disappear, now, tonight, before he realizes she is carrying twins.”
The mention of the twins—two liabilities Henry would certainly seize—was the final proof Sarah needed. She had tolerated Henry's emotional cruelty, but this was malevolent, systemic evil.
“I can help you,” Sarah whispered, her resolve hardening. “Henry trusts Dr. Chen, but Chen leaves at midnight. I can divert his private security detail. I can arrange for a non-Anderson car to be waiting at the maintenance entrance. But Ariel must understand: this must look like a complete, final abandonment. It must be so painful, so definitive, that Noel stops searching.”
Ariel, informed of the plan by a coded note slipped to her during a supply change (facilitated by Sarah's private secretary), agreed. She knew what she had to do. The sacrifice had to be total.
In the hours leading up to midnight, Ariel was left alone in her sterile room. She pulled the last pieces of stationary from her bag—the expensive Anderson paper Henry insisted she use for all communication.
She didn't write a lie about money or boredom. She wrote a lie about weakness, the one trait Henry despised and the one she knew Noel would eventually believe. She needed to wound him so deeply that his protective instinct would turn into angry resignation.
She wrote:
“Noel, I can’t do this life. It’s too much. The pressure, your father, the expectations... I am leaving you. I am not cut out for this world. I am too weak to be an Anderson, and I am too afraid to raise a child in this suffocating legacy. Please, do not look for me. I am gone.”
A final, necessary act of self-crucifixion. She chose the wording to align perfectly with Henry’s constant condemnation, giving Noel the justification he needed to accept his father's version of events.
She folded the note and placed it carefully inside the worn, leather-bound photo album of Noel’s childhood—a symbolic place where he would be forced to confront his past happiness with her words of betrayal.
Finally, she pulled the heavy platinum wedding ring from her finger. It felt cold, a relic of a beautiful life that Henry had poisoned. She left it beside the note, a crushing symbol of the vow she was breaking to save their children.
At 12:15 a.m., under the dark cover of a power failure mysteriously affecting the security wing (a calculated diversion arranged by Sarah), Ariel was moved by a nurse she didn't recognize—a woman who was Betty in disguise.
They slipped out the maintenance exit and into the waiting vehicle, a car Betty had borrowed from a colleague three states away. The escape was tense, silent, and successful.
Ariel Anderson was gone. She was now Ellen Smith, a woman with two precious, invisible lives, running toward the anonymity of the coast, protected by the terrible, necessary lie she had left behind.
In her haste, Ariel almost forgot a small detail. Just before stepping into the car, she hastily scribbled a tiny, cryptic message on a slip of paper and shoved it into the hand of Sarah’s secretary, who was still lingering near the exit. It was a vague, simple plea: “Look for the Lighthouse, Sarah. Watch over Noel.”
It was the only sign Ariel left for an ally, a faint warning that one day, might lead to the full truth.
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