Milk Fed

BLURB: I crossed an ocean to hunt the very person who ruined my grandmother's company. But now I'm entangled in a web of lies, secrets, blackmail and landed in a twisted agreement with my boss. To stay in her husband's bed, be his only lover, so he doesn't make more lovers she isn't aware of. I was supposed to be the hunter but now I'm confused on who is using who.

For five years, I was married to the heir of the Romano family, Italy's biggest crime family. Every night, he'd hold me and whisper, "Just give me an heir, and I'll give him the entire Romano empire." But I never got pregnant, and the Don's disappointment in me grew with every passing month. Until I found out my husband had been secretly swapping my folic acid for birth control pills. I was still reeling from the fury when I saw a post from his ex-girlfriend: an ultrasound photo. Her caption was sweet and smug: “Ten weeks along. Vincent said he can’t wait to meet the baby.” Seeing the flood of congratulations, my mind was made up. I found the contact info for my ex-boyfriend—the one who’d spent the last five years trying to get me back. I sent him a single text. 【Give me one month. Then I’m coming with you.】

I'm at the amusement park with my husband and our daughter when my blouse—still damp from breastfeeding—catches the eye of a father from my daughter's kindergarten class. He secretly takes pictures of me and starts blackmailing me, demanding a taste. My husband and our daughter are close by, but he grows bolder by the minute and orders me to undo his belt.

The Mother That Fed the Dark is a study of inherited guilt, ritual, and the long reach of a mother's choices. Amahle, a woman who practices the old rituals in secret, believes that her younger son , Sipho, was born as a spiritual "door" to be sacrificed for the sake of power and protection. During the ritual she performed , she got interrupted by the older son, Thando, who died instead. While the community believes Thando's death was accidental, Amahle knows better: it was the wrong son who died, and the ritual was left unfinished. Drenched in fear and resentment , Amahle raises Sipho as if he is the love of her life, while at the same time working to destroy him. Behind closed doors, she feeds the supernatural force from the failed ritual, which weakens Sipho, making him fearful and dependent. As Sipho grows, so do the misfortunes that follow him, and an unseen entity begins to present itself-first in dreams and whispers, then in the physical world . What we see is that the ritual did not bind to the house but to Sipho's bloodline. When Sipho leaves home, the haunting grows stronger. After Amahle's death, Sipho finds her secret notebooks , which reveal to him the shocking truth: that his brother's death was a mistake and, in fact, Sipho was never meant to die but to be the vehicle for the ritual, which he indeed is. Setting the family home on fire brings only temporary relief , but the curse does not break. In the final revelation, Sipho realizes that he is not the offering but the keeper, the living portal through which harmony, hardship, and magical power flow. Unlike his mother, he comes to the realization that he has a choice.

During a charity gala, my boyfriend bids on a pair of matching watches but gives one of them to his true love. The media excitedly capture the scene and ask, "You bought a million-dollar watch without even batting an eye, Mr. Loewe. You've been single all these years—is it time for you to make an official announcement on your relationship status?" Everyone off stage applauds him, and I join them. I give him my blessings for his so-called announcement. To make it up to me, he attends my birthday celebration. Yet he pushes me into the cake to make his true love happy. Unbeknownst to him, there's a steel rack in the cake to keep it steady. I end up bloodied and on the brink of death.

I had gained thirty pounds after I was pregnant for six months. My husband, Jordan Smith felt disgusted by me. He would rather stay at work than come home, and he fell in love with his girl best friend, Holly Brown. On our wedding anniversary, they were acting intimately in a private room. Meanwhile, Holly was wearing my wedding gown. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes. She had her arms around Jordan’s neck and said to me coyly, “It’s not what you think.” Jordan was agitated after he was caught cheating on me. “I’ve known her since we were kids. We have been best friends for so many years. If something were to happen between us, it would have happened a long time ago.” However, I saw the hickey on Holly’s shoulder. She said to Jordan, “Your wife looks obese. My cousin didn’t gain a single pound after she had given birth. Instead, she looked even slimmer. Jordan, did your wife secretly eat pig feed?” Jordan felt embarrassed. He instructed someone to lock me in a bedroom and starve me for a few days. I suffered from a miscarriage. Indeed, I lost the weight on my abdomen, but Jordan went insane.