Abyss

That moment should have ended with Hilary just laughing it off as it should have been, like a misunderstanding that would just pass. Maybe I would have laughed at the funny joke if she had added that she was everyone’s daughter too, or something like that.

Then I would have inhaled shakily and forced a chuckle that didn’t come from my heart just to let that moment pass forever. But it did not.

“Who told you she is your daughter?” Hilary questioned again and I felt my head spin with a heavy weight as I stared at her like my eyes were going to fall out of their sockets, my heart throbbing hard against my rib cage.

“What… did you just say?” My voice came out uneven, barely holding together, and my body was trembling badly because even if what she was saying made no sense, she looked so confident.

Before she could respond, I heard footsteps from behind.

“Gina, what is going on here?” Jerry’s voice came from behind me, and I turned so fast that my vision blurred for a second.

And before I could even say anything in defense and maybe relief that he was there and could access the dreadful situation I could no longer handle, Hilary’s voice interrupted him.

“Tell her, Jerry,” she cut in sharply, her tone no longer restrained as she turned to him, “I think it is time to stop this.”

My words died in my throat instantly, as my gaze trailed from her to Jerry, my brows pulling together as confusion tightened every part of my face.

“Stop what?” I asked, my voice rising without my consent, wondering when they were close enough to speak casually, “What is going on?” My eyes briefly locked with Jerry’s with a desperate need for answers.

However, Jerry said nothing and just stood there with a stern facial expression, his gaze tearing away from mine instantly. His eyes darted briefly to Hilary and then Brittany before settling somewhere else. Anywhere but me.

The silence was deafening and I could feel my whole world crash in the intense trepidation that shook me from my very core at his muteness, and my bones shriveled like I had been cast into a hot drying kiln.

‘Jerry was cheating on me,’ was the first thing that came to mind.

“Gina has done enough already,” Hilary continued, her voice cold and angry, and that voice did not belong to the woman I thought I knew, “There is no need to keep pretending,” she added.

And then, my patience snapped as I yelled angrily, “What are you talking about?!” I demanded, my fingers curling into themselves, “What are you even saying?! This is not funny, and if this is some joke, then it is a very sick one. You had better stop!”

“Brittany is my daughter,” Hilary didn’t wait for me to regain my footing, and instantly, everything inside me went still.

Hearing that, a short snotty laughter rolled out of me, as I stared at Hilary with pure disgust, “Hilary, have you lost your mind? Are you high on something?” I was livid now.

“What do you mean Brittany is your child?! I get that you love and care for her but you have gone overboard! It is sickening to see how obsessed you are with my family and unable to start yours, but it does not give you the right to say crazy things. I carried my child in my womb and I birthed her! She is not yours and would never be!” I was fuming uncontrollably now and my body was quivering with the intent to erupt.

Then I turned to Jerry, “And you seem to be cheating on me with Hilary! Which is why you cannot stop her from saying all this trash to me!” I screamed at him, tears already stinging my eyes, something in me wishing desperately that I was just insinuating.

Seeing how he remained silent still, my heart wrenched with deep pain, and I shut my eyes tight, while trying to stop my tears from trickling, “So it is true?” My voice trembled with the weight of the truth I had been denying all along, “How long?” I wanted to know. Foolishly.

“Are you done shouting? Can I explain to you now why you should know that you have no place here as a mother or wife?” Hilary cut me off coldly, uninterested in my tantrums, I thought my heart would burst out in further shock at what she was confidently uttering. She was not even ashamed.

“The embryo that was implanted in you,” she continued, as I stared at her like I had lost sight of the world, “Was mine.”

My heart slammed violently against my chest the moment I heard that and my stomach sank with a painful drop, like something inside me had been yanked loose without warning. Everything in me began to crumble, as my hands floated helplessly in the hair like I was about to rip my hair out of my head.

“No!” I interjected immediately, too quickly, my head shaking on its own, “No, that is not possible, and you are crazy! They took my eggs and Jerry’s…..”

“All that was needed was to swap the eggs, wasn’t it?” she cut through my words like they meant nothing, “I had my eggs extracted too,” she added just maybe so I could understand the bigger picture she was painting, but my entire body had been to quiver at the most gruesome thing I had ever heard in my life.

My breath became trapped in my chest instantly, and I was unable to pull air into my lungs. My hands began to shake so badly as the trembling traveled up my arms into my shoulder with my whole body feeling loose and heavy at the same time, like it was turning to water.

I gazed desperately into her icy eyes with my pleading as if begging to tell me she was just joking, but my vision went blurry as I struggled to breathe still. I wanted to scream till I could no longer move my body again, but all my stiff neck could do was turn towards Jerry.

“Jerry…” His name broke in my mouth as I struggled to speak, “Please, tell her to stop,” my voice whispered tightly with pain, tears already trickling down my cheeks.

“She is telling the truth,” he said finally, meeting my eyes, and it felt like the room tilted alongside my head, which suddenly floated as if it had detached from my body.

A sharp, dry sound escaped my throat, but no air followed it, as I tried to inhale, because I could not breathe anymore. My lungs tightened painfully, as though they had been squeezed shut, and I began to hit the side of my right hand which had been folded into a ball against my chest instinctively, my fingers trembling.

“No…” I whispered, as I hit my chest harder, “No. Please no.”

“The reason you never got pregnant,” Hilary continued, as if waiting by each minute to divulge each detail to me carefully, with a soft voice that made it worse, “Is because I made sure you could not. I put pregnancy prevention pills in your vitamins, shakes and even your coffee sometimes,” she revealed, while watching me struggle to breathe, her eyes empty of pity.

“What?” It was like my brain could not catch what she revealed instantly, but my mind betrayed me as images of every glass she handed me with a smile, and every meal she insisted I take, flooded my mind. For the past few years, she had been in charge of everything.

“Why?” A sharp gasp broke from me as I tried to pull in oxygen, but it came in uneven bursts that were almost useless, like my body no longer knew how to do something so simple.

“Why…” Why voice shattered into pieces, as more tears streamed down now, my head ringing with a piercing sound, “Why would you do this to me? How could you be so cruel? How, Hilary?”

Her answer came without hesitation, “Because I wanted this life, Gina. I wanted your perfect life. Beautiful family, husband, company, and a grand house. I wanted it all,” she confessed, and my knees weakened as my body swayed.

I turned to Jerry again, desperation clawing its way up my throat as the anger that eroded within me, amid my sheer misery pushed words out of me, “You knew!” I accused, “You knew all this time! You knew and yet you let it happen! You did this to me!” I cried at the top of my voice.

“We are getting divorced,” he said instead with a calm voice that made my stomach twist violently as my ears rang.

“The papers have already been signed too,” Hilary added with a cold smirk.

“No…” I shook my head, “No, that is not possible. You cannot just decide that….”

“Brittany’s records have been corrected too,” she continued, “And since she is now the heir to your company,” she said, her gaze locking with mine, “There is really nothing left tying you here,” she added with a twisted smirk, and something inside me broke completely.

I stared at them, unable to fully process what she was saying, my chest heaving in uneven, desperate motions as I tried to breathe through the crushing weight pressing down on me, unable to even speak anymore.

And then, the cruel realization of everything suddenly flooded my mind the moment she had tactfully mentioned my company. The missing funds. Jerry’s decisions I never fully questioned. The unbalanced accounts. All of it had been them. And they had just waited for me to give Brittany, their child, everything.

The two people I loved in the entire world had killed me. They had stripped me bare.

My gaze landed on Brittany at that cruel moment, wondering if she knew everything too even at her tender age, as she clung to her father’s legs tightly just staring blandly. I could not believe that the child I was looking at, and whom I had loved and wanted desperately all my life was somehow not mine.

I should have known that those big green eyes belonged to Hilary. And the hair. I should have known.

“How could you do this to me?” An inferno of anger swept through me, as I looked straight at Hilary with a dangerous expression, “How could you? How? How? How? How? How?” I began to scream at the top of my lungs as Brittany began to cry.

“How?”

“How? How?” I had probably gone mad as my body began to lose gravity, and the room spun violently, the walls closing in as the last bit of strength drained from me. I tried to hold on, but everything went dark instantly as my knees gave in below me and dug into the ground.

~•~

One month later.

It had been a month since everything ended, and yet it still felt like I was trapped inside that moment. I woke up in the hospital five days after I fainted, but by then, my life had already been dismantled piece by piece, and I was unable to stop anything.

I remembered how the heaviness in my body made it feel like I had been buried under something I could not push off, and how my eyelids had struggled to open for the longest time even after I had been conscious for hours. No one needed to tell me because I saw it in their faces. It was all over the news.

The board of directors whom they had manipulated had voted against me and the company which I had fought tooth and nail to keep away from vultures was taken from me without a fight. Jerry had taken over as the new CEO.

The divorce papers were brought to me not long after I regained full consciousness through a courier service. And I remember staring at them, with each letter of words that formed sentences swimming in my vision. I barely remember signing, but I knew that my luggage was sent to the hospital ward a day after I signed them, and that Jerry paid for a VIP room long enough for me to recover.

And then came the final blow.

Jerry took over full custody of Brittany legally, and I couldn’t even fight even if somehow she had been my child. Some documents and records had been carefully arranged as evidence of my absence which centered around my long hours at work, and every moment I had not been physically present.

After that, I stopped fighting.

The days I spent in the hospital blurred together, with each day, worse than the last, because I had developed something called broken heart syndrome. It was as if the pain had evenly distributed throughout my body, and every day came with a new ailment. Pulmonary Edema, Cardiogenic Shock, and Arrhythmias.

Sometimes I would lie there and stare at the ceiling for hours, my mind replaying everything over and over again from every moment I had overlooked, signs I had missed, and every trust I had given so freely.

Ten years wasted with a man who never loved me, and with a childhood best friend who had always wanted my life, and had been taking everything from me piece by piece.

I closed my eyes tightly, my fingers gripping the hospital sheets as my chest rose and fell unevenly, as I swallowed hard against the tightness in my throat. Maybe it would have been better if I had not woken up. If I had died.

The thought suddenly slipped into my mind since I had lost everything that defined me, and it was the only way I could get out of the pain that endlessly ripped my heart out. And I was not even close to recovering. I could never recover.

A tear slipped down the side of my face and disappeared into the pillow beneath my head, as I let out a shaky breath that did nothing to ease the pressure in my chest. I could not stay in that bed any longer pretending there was still something here for me.

My feet landed on the cold floor, and I walked out the door before I realized it. Walking through the long hallway were a few people whose faces I could not see because I was not looking up, as I walked on, and looked for the staircase without thinking.

I climbed the steps one by one till I was on the very last floor, and by the time I reached the top, I was breathing very hard. I pushed the door to the rooftop open and was met with cold air, as I stared at the city that was before my eyes.

My steps slowed as I began to walk closer to the edge of the hospital building, and my vision blurred as tears filled my eyes, because everything I had built and loved was gone and destroyed by the very people I had trusted the most. I was left with nothing but the hollow remains of a life I no longer recognized.

A broken sound escaped me while my fingers held on to the railings now, and I shook my head with trembling lips as I whispered, my voice barely holding together, “Maybe… in another life,” I swallowed hard, my throat tight as more tears fell freely, “In another life, I will choose better…”

My eyes closed slowly, as though I was holding on to that single thought, and a stronger gust of cold wind brushed past me again. I looked down to catch one glance at the height I was going to be falling below, and without thinking twice, I took a step forward and let go of the railing.

“Bye, Gina Artemis.”