NO ONE BELIEVES ME

The emergency room was chaos.

Doctors and nurses rushed past us in a blur of white coats and urgent voices. Melissa was already being taken deeper into the hospital, away from us, and Damon was following her, his hand on her shoulder, his expression a mixture of rage and desperation.

I came through the sliding doors just as they were disappearing down a hallway.

"Damon," I called, trying to catch up to him.

He turned, and when he saw me, his entire face darkened.

"I told you not to come here," he said coldly. "What the hell are you still doing here?"

"I needed to come," I said, my voice shaking. "Melissa is my sister. I need to make sure she's okay. And I need to tell you the truth about what happened."

"I don't want to hear it," he said. "I don't care anymore, Hazel. Do you understand me? I don't care about your excuses or your lies or whatever story you've created in that head of yours."

"It's not a story," I said. "I really didn't push her. You need to believe me, I'm your wife and Melissa is my sister so why would I..."

"What is wrong with you?" he interrupted, his voice rising so loud that people in the waiting room turned to look at us. "Don't you know when to stop? Don't you know when you've lost? I don't like you. I never liked you. I want a divorce. I want you to sign the papers and get the hell out of my house and out of my life. You're making everyone's life miserable. You're making my life miserable. God, Hazel just sign the papers."

The words were so loud, so public, that everyone around us could hear them.

A nurse looked away awkwardly. An elderly couple in the waiting room pretended not to be listening but they were all listening. They were all hearing him tell me that he didn't like me. That he wanted me gone.

My face burned with humiliation.

"Damon please don't do this to me. It was an accident, I didn't push her." I said again, but my voice was barely a whisper.

He turned away from me like I didn't exist. I stood alone in the middle of the emergency room, completely devastated, when the sliding doors opened again.

Clara and Carlos Rossi rushed in.

Damon must have called them from the car. They looked panicked and furious, and when they saw me standing there, their expressions shifted into something even colder. Clara went directly to Damon.

"How is she?" she demanded. "What happened? Is the baby okay?"

"She fell down the stairs," Damon said, his voice tight with controlled anger. "Hazel pushed her."

Both of my parents turned to me with eyes full of rage.

"You did what?" Carlos asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

"I didn't push her, Dad." I said. "She accidentally fell. She pulled her hand away while I was trying to hold her then she stripped and fell off the stairs."

"Why would you do that to your own sister?" Clara asked, and her voice was sharp as a knife. "Why would you hurt her when she's pregnant with your husband's child? Is it because you're so jealous? Because you couldn't give him a child so you decided to destroy the one your sister could give him?"

"That's not what happened," I said.

"You're so selfish," Clara continued, stepping closer to me. Her eyes were blazing with fury. "You're jealous that your sister is better than you. That she can give your husband what you never could. And when she tried to help this family, when she tried to raise an heir for the Moretti name, you tried to get rid of it."

"I didn't...." my voice broke on the words. At this point I didn't know what else to say, because clearly no one believed me. I was the villian here, instead of the victim. My husband cheated on me with my sister and got her pregnant, instead of my parents taking my side, they were siding with Melissa. I was never their first choice. I was always the last choice to my Dad since mom died. He always took Melissa's side even when she was at fault because he didn't want to have issues with Clara.

"You're terrible," she said. "You're heartless. You're just like your mother. Elena was the same way. Selfish. Ungrateful. Never satisfied with what she had."

The words about my mother hit me like a physical blow. "Don't talk about my mother like that," I said, my voice geting highly defensive.

"Why not?" Clara asked. "She was a disappointment and you're turning out to be exactly like her. A complete disappointment to this family."

I turned to my Dad and he was just looking at me with an expression that was more of disappointment than guilt or regret. Was I really expecting him to say something to my defense or my mom's? Of course he was going to take Clara's side he came to stand beside his wife, and when he looked at me, there was nothing in his expression that resembled love or even basic sympathy.

"You're being heartless and inconsiderate," he said quietly. "Your sister is carrying your husband's child. And instead of accepting your fate and supporting her, you tried to hurt her. You tried to hurt them both."

"So you don't believe me too. You also think I pushed Melissa? Because of what? I'm literally the victim here. I sacrificed so much for this family. I even accepted to be in this god-forsaken contract marriage because I wanted to support this family. I wanted your alliance with the Moretti group to work." I said, but I could hear how desperate I sounded. How unconvincing. "Three years. I endured staying with Damon for three years, he treated me like trash and both of you never said anything. You just told me to stay in this marriage because every marriage had it's own problems."

There was silence, I could see people around staring at us but I didn't care anymore, my family was already messed up and if they're going to blame me like I'm the devil here then I can't sit back and continue crying in pain.

"Did you all plan this? Did you plan for Damon to get Melissa pregnant so he can later throw me out of his house because I wasn't able to give this family an heir? How I'm I supposed to get pregnant when my husband doesn't even touch...."

"Enough." Damon interrupted. 

"You better pray," Clara said, her voice low and threatening, "that Melissa and that baby are okay. Because if anything happens to them, you will regret it for the rest of your life. Do you understand me?"

I just stared at them because I didn't know what else to do.

"And you can forget about being part of this family," Carlos said. "Should anything happen to your sister and that baby."

The words should have devastated me. The words should have broken me completely. But somewhere inside me, something shifted.

Because I realized in that moment that I had never been their daughter. Not really. Not to my father. He had always been more interested in his business than in me. He had let Damon treat me however he wanted without ever stepping in. He had chosen Clara over Elena, and now he was choosing Melissa over me.

I was nothing to him.

And I was tired of trying to be something.

I looked at all of them standing there — Damon, Clara, Carlos — and I realized they were right about one thing. I did need to sign the papers. I did need to leave not because I was guilty but because I deserved better than this.

Because I deserved a life where people believed me. Where people loved me. Where I wasn't constantly fighting to prove my worth to people who had already decided I had none.

"Okay fine," I said quietly.

"What?" Damon asked.

"Okay," I repeated, my voice stronger now. "I'll sign the papers. I'll leave. I'll get out of your lives and you'll never have to see me again."

Clara smiled, satisfied that she had won.

But as I turned and walked out of that hospital, I realized that she hadn't won anything.

Because I was finally walking away from a life that was slowly killing me.

And for the first time in three years, I felt like I could breathe.