All Chapters of MARRIED IN HATRED: FELL IN LOVE AFTER SHE LEFT?: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

JOLENE'S POV"NYU Disciplinary Records, Confirmed Findings."The email came three days later, forwarded from Victor's lawyer with a subject line that made my hands shake before I even opened it. I stood in the hallway outside the study staring at those words on my phone screen for almost a full minute before I could make myself walk through the door.Victor called us into the study again, the same four walls that had held Maya's bracelet on a screen days before. This time Jake sat across from me, his face unreadable, his fingers laced tight in front of him like he was bracing for something he already suspected was coming. I sat down slowly, aware of every eye in the room finding its way to me, and I made myself keep my hands still in my lap even though every part of me wanted to reach for the printout before Victor had even finished sliding it across the desk."The university pulled the original submission logs," Victor said, sliding copies across to me, his movements deliberate, almo

JOLENE'S POV"You're allowed to sit."Maya was gone by morning, her rooms in the west wing stripped bare like she'd never lived there at all, except for the faint trace of vanilla that clung to the hallway for days after, catching me off guard every time I walked past that particular stretch of corridor. I found myself avoiding it without deciding to, taking the longer route to the kitchen just so I wouldn't have to pass the open door and the empty closets inside it.Jake didn't mention her name for a week. Neither did I. The house settled into a strange kind of quiet, not peaceful exactly, more like the stillness right after a storm has passed and everyone is still too tired to assess the damage.I found him on the terrace one evening, the same terrace where I'd once overheard him call me too desperate to make a scene, back when Maya's voice was the only one that mattered to him in that house. I almost turned around when I saw him there, some old instinct telling me this was still hi

JAKE'S POVThe statement went out at 4:52 PM. I know because I watched the clock more than I watched the words leave my own mouth.Victor stood by the window like he'd already won something, arms crossed, waiting for me to thank him for cornering me into this. My mother sat across the desk with her hands folded too tightly in her lap, the same posture she used in board meetings when she'd already decided to lose gracefully in front of witnesses and claw the rest back later, in private, where it counted."You did the right thing," Victor said.I didn't answer him. I was still reading the last line of the statement on my phone, the one about the will, about Logan, about a maid who'd sat at my father's bedside and asked him for money. I'd let Jolene write half of it herself. I'd let her believe I meant every word I signed my name to.That was the part I wasn't proud of. Not the statement. That.My mother waited until Victor finally left the study, satisfied, self-righteous, probably alre

JOLENE'S POVThe statement went out on a Tuesday, plain and careful, exactly the way Jake had promised it would be. I remember thinking, for about six hours, that maybe this was the beginning of something turning.By evening I knew better.Someone leaked the rest before the ink on our version had even finished circulating, a second story dropping within hours of the first, timed too cleanly to be coincidence. It had details our statement never touched. Stacy's surgery date. The exact sum Logan had paid out. A quote, unnamed source, close to the family, describing me as *desperate enough to beg a dying man for money before he'd even stopped breathing.*I didn't have to guess who the unnamed source was. I just didn't have proof, and proof, I was learning all over again, was the only currency that mattered in that house.By morning the story wasn't about a will anymore. It was about me. Grainy photos from the gala resurfaced, captioned with words like *calculated* and *opportunist*, my f

JOLENE'S POVMaya didn't leave quietly.I should have known that the moment Jake told me she would. Nothing about that woman had ever moved quietly in the time I'd known her, not in a lecture hall three years ago, not in that dining room with a fork full of another woman's salmon, not once in all the months she'd spent making sure I understood exactly how small she could make me feel in my own home.It started with a headline, the kind that made my stomach drop before I'd even finished reading it.*SOURCES CLOSE TO THE HENDERSON FAMILY SAY JOLENE HENDERSON ORCHESTRATED HER OWN SCANDAL FOR SYMPATHY.*I read it standing in the kitchen, my coffee going cold in my hands for what felt like the hundredth time that month, and something in me went very still and very cold in a way that had nothing to do with the coffee.The article was careful, clever in a way that made my skin crawl, because it didn't accuse me of anything outright. It simply asked questions. Wondered, in that breezy, deniab