Chapter 3

"Sorry to keep you waiting." Sebastian's voice was unusually gentle, his eyes filled with a tenderness I'd never seen before. The love in his gaze was so unmistakable that it almost hurt to look at.

"You must be starving. Come on, let's eat."

Isabelle pouted playfully. "I've been hungry forever! Mom and I finished preparing everything ages ago. We've been waiting for you two busy men to come home."

"We got held up on the way," my father explained casually as he took his seat. "They found a skeleton at a construction site, so Sebastian and I stopped by to take a look."

The moment he mentioned the skeleton, Isabelle's hand froze halfway to her mouth. She quickly recovered, forcing an awkward smile as she asked, "W-Was it the construction site near where that case happened seven years ago?"

My mother's fork slipped from her fingers and clattered against her plate. A complicated look flickered across her face before anger quickly took its place.

She shot my father an irritated glare. "Why would you bring up something so unpleasant at the dinner table?"

Before my father could respond, Isabelle lowered her eyes, guilt clouding her expression. "It's all my fault, Mom. I shouldn't have brought it up. Did I… make you think of Chloe again?"

Sebastian slammed his spoon onto the table, his expression turning ice-cold. Even in front of my parents, he made no effort to conceal the hatred he'd harbored for me all these years.

"That's enough! Don't you dare say that name. It's filthy coming out of your mouth."

A flicker of triumph flashed in Isabelle's eyes, but she quickly masked it with a look of wounded innocence. "Sebastian, please don't be like that. Mom and Dad are right here…"

"Sebastian is absolutely right!" My mother reached for Isabelle's hand, holding it with a tenderness that made her next words even crueler.

"I've considered that woman dead for years. We never had such a disgraceful daughter! As far as I'm concerned, Sebastian is our only son, and you're our daughter-in-law. That's how it's been for the past seven years, and that's how it'll stay!"

My father wore an equally grim expression. His voice was cold and merciless, like a judge delivering a final sentence.

"She chose to betray everything she stood for just to protect a criminal. She's a disgrace to the entire police force! She should've died at the killer's hands seven years ago. At least then, she would've spared this family the shame!"

The three people I'd once held closest to my heart sat around the dinner table, speaking of me with nothing but disgust and contempt, as though I'd never been their daughter at all. Each word cut deeper than the last, tearing my soul apart until the pain became almost unbearable.

I wanted to scream, to tell them how wrong they were, to make them understand that I'd never betrayed anyone and that I'd given my life trying to protect the truth. But they couldn't hear me. They couldn't even see me.

Silent tears streamed down my face and fell onto the cold floor, disappearing without a trace.

Once my family washed their hands of me, the atmosphere at the dinner table gradually returned to normal, as if I'd never existed.

My parents took turns holding Isabelle's children in their arms, feeding them bite by bite, their faces glowing with the simple joy of doting on their grandchildren. Beside them, Sebastian carefully picked the bones out of Isabelle's fish while chatting with her in a gentle, easygoing tone.

It was the kind of warm, happy family scene I'd imagined for myself countless times. Only now, someone else had taken my place.

Isabelle was sitting in the seat that should have been mine, living the life I'd once dreamed of sharing with Sebastian.

Back then, Sebastian was the youngest captain in the city's Homicide Division, and we met at a case review seminar. I'd presented a bold theory about a decomposed body, only to have nearly everyone in the room challenge my conclusions—everyone except Sebastian.

He'd stood up and supported my theory with sound investigative reasoning, calmly dismantling the objections one by one. In that moment, he'd seemed to shine brighter than anyone else in my eyes. I fell for him then and there, and it took three months of pursuing him before he finally agreed to be with me.

Once we were together, he'd treated me like I was the most precious person in the world. He remembered every little thing I told him, respected my work, and always made me feel that my dedication to forensic science was something to be proud of.

Everyone around us said I'd found the best man in the world, and I believed it, too. I truly thought we'd spend the rest of our lives together, growing old side by side.

Then Isabelle came along.

She was Sebastian's childhood neighbor, the little girl he'd grown up with, and she'd suddenly joined the police force as a criminal profiler. From the moment she arrived, I began to realize that the tenderness and patience I'd once thought belonged to me alone weren't mine to keep.

Back then, all it took was one phone call from Isabelle—claiming she'd been losing sleep over a case and was too scared to stay home alone—for Sebastian to drive two hours in the middle of the night just to bring her a cup of warm milk.