They Destroyed Me, Then Begged Me to Come Back Chapter 01

They Destroyed Me, Then Begged Me to Come Back Chapter 01

I found out the woman carrying Weston Sterling’s baby was the girl who’d bullied me all through high school.

I showed up at Bianca Whitmore’s door with a knife in my hand.

I wanted to end it. One life for another.

But my mom stepped in front of her.

She slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side.

“You’ve already let her destroy your life once. Do you want her to destroy the next one too?”

“A cheating bastard and his trashy mistress aren’t worth your life, Josephine.”

I never got my revenge.

My husband never cut Bianca out of his life either.

The depression that started back when she was tormenting me came roaring back.

New scars appeared on my wrists, week after week.

On Bianca’s due date, news of her death along with her unborn child sent shockwaves through the entire Meridian Bay.

Mom was arrested on the spot.

When the reporters asked her why, she looked into the camera, eyes rimmed red.

“Sweetheart, if you needed that woman dead to finally find peace—”

“—it still shouldn’t have cost you your own life.”

She smiled.

I cried.

After they sentenced her, I tried to jump from our balcony.

Weston caught me and held on, again and again.

“If you jump, I jump with you!”

“I did this to you, Josephine. Hate me if you have to—just don’t punish yourself!”

Three years passed. I finally climbed out of the dark.

That day, I went in for a checkup.

And found Weston there too, with an old woman and a small child.

Mom was holding a toddler who looked exactly like Weston.

“I’m sorry you have to sneak around just to see your own son,” Mom murmured.

“Don’t say that, Mom. You’re the one who’s suffered, forced to live in the shadows because of that lunatic.”

Mom smiled.

“If I don’t handle it this way, Josephine will hurt Bianca and the baby sooner or later.”

“She only trusts me. I have to be the one who dies before she’ll finally stop.”

Weston’s eyes went red. “Thank you, Mom.”

“Just be good to my goddaughter.”

The bag in my hand slipped and hit the floor.

They both turned.

Our eyes met.

…

“Josephine?”

Weston and Mom froze at the same instant.

The child who looked so much like Weston was pulled tight against Mom’s chest.

I can tell just by looking at the child’s brows and eyes that he was Weston and Bianca’s son.

And my own mother had been raising him.

I took an unconscious step forward.

“What are you doing!”

Weston threw himself between me and them.

Mom, almost in the same breath, spun away and clutched the boy closer.

Her gaze toward me was filled with guardedness and tension.

Even my own mother was on guard against me.

Even my own mother was standing with the people who’d made my life hell.

“Mom, take Theo and go.”

Weston stared me down.

Mom glanced at me once. Then walked out through the back door without hesitation.

My hand hung in the air.

She didn’t even give me the chance to speak.

“Let’s go!”

Weston’s grip closed around my wrist.

I drifted along in a daze the whole way.

Was this all a dream?

When I finally sat down on our living room couch and felt tears soaking through my sleeves, I finally accepted that all of it was real.

“You saw what you saw,” Weston said.

He lit a cigarette by the window.

He looked annoyed.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t let it go. The news story was staged—the arrest, the interview, all actors I hired for your benefit.”

He sighed.

“For three years you never noticed, so we got careless. You weren’t supposed to see any of it.”

“After everything, that’s all you have to say to me?”