Chapter Sixty

Kyla.

His voice carries softly down the hall steady, low, warm in a way I had almost forgotten. It’s the same voice that used to read to me when we were too tired to talk, the one that could calm every storm inside me.

Now it’s reading to our daughter.

I stop just short of the doorway, my fingers curling around the frame as I listen.

Chanel’s room glows dimly under the string lights. Jake’s sitting on the edge of her bed, book open in his hands, his voice wrapping around each word like it belongs there. Chanel’s little head rests against his arm, her lashes brushing her cheeks, her tiny hand holding on to his sleeve like she’s known him forever.

She doesn’t know who he is.

She just knows he makes her feel safe.

My heart cracks right down the center.

This should have been our life.

Our home. Our nights. Our family. We dreamt about this life. 

I should have been the one standing by him, laughing at how he would struggle to braid Chanel’s hair or chase Elias around the living room until they both collapsed on the rug, breathless and happy. I should have been there for the birthdays, the scraped knees, the late night fevers.

But I wasn’t.

Because someone decided I didn’t deserve it. Someone made the choice for my kids to grow up without knowing what it felt like to have a dad around. And what hurt the most was that it was not just anyone, it was my sister, Amina.

Even thinking her name makes my stomach twist. I would have done literally anything for her, despite the fact that we had different mothers, It never really affected how I felt about her, she was my baby sister.

She took everything from me, my husband, my family, my name, my peace. She left me in the shadows while she played mother and lover in my place, pretending to mourn me while building her life on the ashes of mine.

She almost killed me literally and has been threatening my children, my innocent kids and she nearly got away with it.

I watch Jake’s profile in the dim light, the faint furrow in his brow as he keeps reading even though Chanel’s eyes are already closed. There’s something almost reverent in the way he looks at her, like he’s afraid she might vanish if he stops.

For a second, I see the man I fell in love with, not the one who immediately replaced me after I disappeared despite what story he was told, not the one I believed had betrayed me, but the one who used to make me feel like the world could never touch us.

And then it hits me again, how she turned that love into a weapon.

She didn’t just want to ruin me. She wanted to erase me.

My nails dig into the wooden doorframe. I can feel the tears building behind my eyes, burning like acid, but I blink them back. Not yet.

Because now I see it clearly every lie she fed him, every manipulation, every time she made him doubt who I was. She knew what she was doing. She planned it. And the cruelest part? She used love to do it.

My love for him.

His love for me.

She turned both into her playground.

But that ends now.

For five years I’ve lived in fear changing my name, hiding my face, running from shadows that looked too much like her. I told myself it was for survival, that disappearing was the only way to protect my babies. 

But standing here, hearing Jake’s voice, watching him hold our daughter like she’s made of everything good in the world, I realize I’m done surviving.

I want my life back.

All of it.

The family she stole.

The truth she buried.

The name she tried to erase.

I want my kids to sleep to the sound of their father every night as he reads them bed time stories. 

And I will get it back, every single piece even if it means tearing down everything she built with her lies.

My throat tightens. I press my hand against my mouth, trying to steady myself, but the sob still slips through. Quiet, but raw.

I can’t let them hear me. Not him, not her.

I step back slowly, my eyes never leaving the small figure curled against Jake’s arm. He keeps reading, his voice softer now, the story nearly over. Chanel sighs in her sleep, a tiny smile ghosting over her lips.

That sight, that pure, untouched innocence is what finally undoes me.

A tear slides down my cheek. Then another.

I retreat one step, then another, until the hallway swallows me whole.

And when I finally turn away, the tears come freely not weak, not fragile, but furious.

Because I’m not the same woman who ran five years ago.

I’m the woman who came back.

And this time, I’m not leaving, I was going to fight for my family