The Altar, The Lies, His Penance

Emery Houston POV:

It wasn't love. It was a searing, consuming hatred that boiled in my veins. Hatred for Carter, for abandoning me. Hatred for Camilla, for always taking what was mine. Hatred for my parents, for selling me like chattel.

I wanted to burn their perfectly curated lives to the ground. I spent every penny I had, every ounce of my shattered energy, hiring a small-time journalist, feeding him every sordid detail of the Barry and Houston families. I wanted headlines, scandal, ruin. I wanted them to pay.

But Carter' s family was too powerful. The Barrys moved swiftly, crushing every rumor, every potential leak. They wrapped him in a protective cocoon of their influence, erasing any hint of scandal. My desperate attempts to expose them were nothing but a pathetic whimper against a roaring tide. My first act of defiance, of fighting for myself, had been a spectacular failure.

That night, I drowned my humiliation in cheap liquor, collapsing into a drunken stupor. I woke up in an unfamiliar bed, a stranger's body beside me. My mother stood over me, her face grim. "You've caused enough trouble, Emery," she hissed, her voice cold. "Carter and Camilla are happy. Let them be. Stay silent. This is your bed now. Lie in it."

My mother, the architect of my misery, had drugged me, delivering me to that stranger' s bed. She thought it would force me into submission, into accepting my fate, into becoming the quiet, compliant daughter she always wanted. She thought it would save her reputation.

Instead, it ignited a different kind of fire. I didn't care about their reputations anymore. I cared about justice. I filed a police report, not against the man my mother forced on me, but against her. I wanted her to see the inside of a prison cell. My mother, the perfect socialite, convicted of drugging and prostituting her own daughter. The scandal erupted, far worse than any wedding-day gossip.

Then I went to my father' s office, a place I had only ever entered with a polite knock and a shy smile. I walked in, wild-eyed and raging, and systematically destroyed everything in sight. Papers scattered, computers crashed, glass shattered. His business, built on flimsy foundations of shady deals and backroom handshakes, crumbled under the weight of the dual scandals. I didn' t care. I wanted them to feel the same pain, the same ruin they had inflicted upon me.

I became a pariah. The Barry family, desperate to protect Carter' s pristine image, spun a new narrative. I wasn't the jilted bride; I was the unfaithful one. A promiscuous woman who had cheated on her fiancé, gotten pregnant, and then, in a fit of rage, tried to destroy two reputable families. The story spread like wildfire, painting me as a monster, a liar, a whore. My trauma, my desperate attempts to find justice, were twisted into proof of my depravity. Everyone believed them. Everyone.

I tried to fight back. I tried to find Carter, to confront him, to scream the truth in his face. I flew abroad, chasing rumors, desperate for answers, for closure. But he was a ghost, vanished into the protective embrace of his family. No one would help me. No one would even tell me where he was. Camilla, too, had disappeared. They had both simply vanished, leaving me to drown in the wreckage of my life.

I was alone, pregnant, and utterly broken. The depression descended, a suffocating blanket that stole my breath, my will, my very self. I lost my job, my apartment. I gave birth to Leo in a haze of despair, holding him, looking at his innocent face, a fresh wave of agony washing over me. I tried to end it all, more than once. Three times, I stared into the abyss, only to be dragged back by some stubborn, primal instinct for survival. Each time, I woke up in a sterile hospital room, alone. No one cared. No one came.

No one, except Joel Charles. The man my mother had unwittingly set me up with. He was the one who paid my hospital bills. He was always there, a quiet presence in the background, a shadow in my darkest days.

One night, lying in that hospital bed, the sterile white walls pressing in on me, I realized something. Death was meaningless. It wouldn't bring me peace; it would only bring more pain to Leo, a pain he didn't deserve. If I couldn't die, I would live. And if I lived, I would make someone else pay.

I stopped trying to hurt myself. Instead, I turned my rage outward, a weapon aimed squarely at Joel. I clung to him, emotionally and financially, a parasitic attachment. I blamed him for everything, twisting his quiet support into another form of captivity. I pushed him, tested him, lashed out at him with every ounce of my remaining venom. I watched him flinch, watched his own demons rise to meet mine. I saw his career falter under the weight of my volatile presence. And in that twisted, dark satisfaction, my depression, slowly, grudgingly, began to recede.

Then, one morning, a small hand reached for mine. Leo. He was a year old, his eyes wide and brown, just like Joel' s. He looked at me, a tiny, tentative smile on his face, and said, "Mama."

The sound pierced through the fog of my despair, a ray of sunlight in the oppressive darkness. It was a new year. A chance to be someone else. Someone better. I remembered the girl I used to be, the ambitious, determined girl who had once dreamed of changing the world. She didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve this.

I started applying for jobs, any job. My reputation preceded me, a stench clinging to my name. No one would hire me. Until, a small animal mortuary, run by an eccentric old woman, took a chance. For four years, I cleaned, I learned, I became a licensed animal mortician. I found a strange solace in preparing the small, beloved bodies for their final rest, in offering comfort to grieving owners. It was a quiet, unassuming life, far removed from the glittering world I had once almost entered.

The woman I had been, the one who had screamed and raged and destroyed, felt like a distant dream, a nightmare I' d woken from. But then, I saw Carter again. And for a split second, the old, raw hatred flared. I still wanted to douse him in a pot of boiling oil. But then I looked at Leo, playing quietly beside me, his laughter a gentle melody. He was my anchor. He was my future. I couldn't risk him.

I was no match for the Barrys. I never had been.