Chapter 2

#Aveline

I didn’t leave the foyer right away. My feet felt glued to the cold marble floor, while the echo of the heavy oak door to Rhett’s study slamming shut still vibrated through the grand hallway. The medical report in my hand felt like a sick, twisted joke. Six months to live, my diagnosis was an absolute death sentence, and yet the man I had given my youth to was already executing a plan to replace me.

A sudden, sharp spasm of pain bloomed deep within my abdomen, a cruel reminder of the war being fought inside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing a trembling hand against my stomach, forcing myself to draw a slow, ragged breath through my nose. I couldn't break down here. Not in the open. I couldn't let the staff see me crumble, and I certainly couldn't give Rhett the satisfaction of seeing me look weak.

Before the pain could completely subside, a burst of bright laughter echoed from the grand parlor down the hall, cutting through the suffocating silence of the ground floor.

It was Lyra. But it wasn’t the polite, and heavily strained laughter she usually offered me whenever I tried to engage with her or read her a bedtime story. This laughter was filled with a genuine, unburdened happiness that she hadn’t shown me in over a year.

"Rhett! Come out here for a second, you have to see this!"

The voice that followed belonged to Celine Ardent. It was clear, melodious, and perfectly pitched, calling out toward the closed study door with a casual familiarity that made my skin crawl. She called him by his first name with an ease like she owned him.

A moment later, the heavy oak door of the study clicked open. I didn't turn around, but I heard the rhythmic, confident thud of Rhett’s leather shoes against the hardwood floor. I watched from the periphery as he stepped out into the hallway. His shoulders, usually tense and hunched from the crushing weight of the Calloway food and hospitality empire, dropped instantly at the mere sound of her voice. His expression, which had been a mask of pure irritation and cold disdain when looking at me just moments ago, softened into something entirely different. He didn't even glance in my direction as he bypassed the foyer. He walked right past me, treating me like a piece of dirt, and stepped straight into the parlor to join them.

Driven by a quiet, aching need to see the reality of what my life had become, I followed slowly, stopping just at the entrance of the parlor

Inside, the parlor was bathed in a warm, golden glow from the fireplace and the ambient designer lamps. It looked like a picture-perfect scene from a luxury family magazine except I wasn't the mother in the frame.

Lyra was twirling around the center of the room, her small hands holding the edges of a glittering plastic tiara that I had never seen before. She was laughing breathlessly, her cheeks flushed with excitement. The moment Rhett entered the room, Celine offered him a brilliant, radiant smile from her position on the plush velvet sofa.

Watching them, a heavy, suffocating weight pressed down on my lungs. For eight years, I had meticulously managed this household, ensured his clothes were pressed, arranged his corporate dinners, and kept the peace, all while receiving nothing but cold silence in return. Yet Celine merely had to exist in the room to draw out his warmth.

Taking a deep, shaky breath to steady my racing heart and quiet the roaring in my ears, I took a step forward, breaking the threshold of the parlor and entering the light.

"Lyra," I said softly, my voice cutting through the artificial warmth of the room. "Come here for a moment, please."

I just wanted to hold her. Just once. I wanted to see if the baby I had poured eight years of my soul into the child whose fevers I had broken, whose nightmares I had chased away was still in there somewhere, buried beneath the layers of my mother-in-law's poison and Celine's calculated gifts. I wanted to feel her small arms around my neck, to give me the strength to survive the terminal diagnosis resting in my cardigan pocket.

Lyra froze mid-twirl, her laughter dying instantly as if a switch had been flipped. The moment her amber eyes landed on me, her small face hardened into an icy, detached scowl that mirrored her father's perfectly. There was no warmth, no childhood innocence left in her gaze when she looked at me. She didn't move a single inch toward me. Instead, she stepped backward, away from my outstretched hand, deliberately pressing her small body against Celine's side, she threw her arms around Celine’s waist, burying her face into the woman's cream knit dress in a tight, protective hug.

"No," Lyra said, her voice sharp.

"I don't want to come to you. I don't want you to be my mommy anymore. I want Auntie Celine to be my mommy."

The words were raw, it shot directly into my chest, tearing through whatever dignity I had left and stealing the air right out of my lungs. The pain of her rejection was visceral, far more agonizing than the physical illness destroying my body. I looked at the little girl I had raised from a fragile infant, the child who used to cry if I left her sight for five minutes, and realized she had been completely turned against me.

Celine didn't reprimand her. She didn't tell Lyra to respect her mother. Instead, Celine wrapped her manicured hands gently around Lyra’s shoulders, holding the little girl tight against her side. She looked up at me, letting a superficial, mocking pity wash over her beautiful face. It was a look of absolute triumph masked as concern, a silent declaration that she had won.

Slowly, I turned my eyes away from the child and looked at Rhett. He had stood right there and witnessed the entire interaction. He saw his daughter completely reject the woman who had mothered her for eight years. He saw his mistress holding my child in our family parlor. Yet, his expression remained entirely cold, unbothered, and devoid of an ounce of remorse or reprimand for the blatant disrespect occurring under his roof. He didn't blink. He didn't clear his throat to correct her.

Instead of defending me, instead of upholding the sanctity of our marriage or the respect a child owed her mother, Rhett looked down at the two of them. When he spoke, his voice was completely flat, steady, and entirely indifferent to the way my world was shattering.

"She's right, Lyra," Rhett said, looking directly at our daughter, completely validating her right in front of me. "Celine is going to be your new mommy. And soon, she’s going to give you a little sibling."

The room seemed to spin violently, the golden light blurring into a nauseating haze. He didn't just let her say it; he confirmed it. He didn't just stand by; he actively participated in my execution. He sat there and orchestrated my erasure right before my eyes, using my failing health, my paleness, and my inability to conceive a biological child as the ultimate excuse to hand my life, my home, and my daughter over to another woman.

I looked at Rhett, searching for a single flicker of hesitation, a microscopic trace of the man who had once promised to help my career bloom and take care of me. But there was nothing. There was only a cold, calculating CEO looking at an expired asset.

"I see," I whispered.

My voice was incredibly quiet, yet it carried a strange, hollow weight that caused Celine's smile to falter for a fraction of a second.

I simply turned on my heel and walked away. I left the golden, artificial light of the parlor behind me, stepping back into the shadows of the grand hallway. The heavy, dead silence of the mansion swallowed me whole as I pushed through the darkness, heading directly toward the grand staircase.