Beneath the Secret, Behind the Tears - Chapter 10

I saw the denial warring with shame on his face. He opened his mouth to offer another useless apology, but I didn’t let him.

I slapped him.

The sound was sharp and clean in the quiet room. He didn’t flinch, just took the blow, a red mark blooming on his cheek.

It wasn’t about hurting him. It was for me. A final, physical release of five years of pain.

“That,” I said, my voice shaking slightly, “is for making me believe in a fairy tale. And this…”

I held up my left hand, showing him the bare ring finger. “…is for breaking every vow you ever made to me, real or imagined. You are the single greatest mistake of my life, Ivan. Not because you cheated. But because you made me believe I was unlovable without you and my family’s name.”

I took a deep breath. “The old Aliana is dead. You killed her. The woman standing in front of you doesn’t need your love or your apologies. She needs you to leave.”

I pointed to the door. “Never come back here again. If you do, I will get a restraining order. I mean it.”

He stared at me, his eyes full of a despair so profound it was almost pitiful. He saw the truth. There was no going back.

He had broken something irreparable. He finally stood, a ghost of the powerful man he once was, and walked out of my apartment and my life without another word.

The next day, my parents showed up.

They looked older, smaller. My mother was weeping before I even opened the door. My father held a long, silk-wrapped package.

“Aliana… Hope,” my mother cried, reaching for me. I stepped back.

“We are so sorry,” my father said, his voice thick with regret.

He offered me the package. “It’s a calligraphy set. The finest I could find. I want to teach you. For real this time. Just you.”

He tried to smile. “Please, come home. We can be a family again.”

I looked at the expensive gift, at their desperate faces, and felt a wave of profound exhaustion.

“I don’t want it,” I said, pushing the package back toward him.

“I don’t like calligraphy, Dad. Or should say, Mr. Donovan.”

Their faces fell at the formal address.

“I never liked it,” I continued, the words I’d held back for years finally spilling out.

“I hate the smell of the ink. I hate the way my hand cramps. I only ever pretended to be interested because it was the one thing you loved, and I was so desperate for you to love me. I thought if I could master your hobby, you might finally see me. Not as a lost project, but as your daughter.”

I looked from his stunned face to my mother’ s. “I don’t need your love anymore. I don’ t need your approval. And I don’t need your home.”

“I destroyed the flash drive,” I told them, my voice flat.

“The original. The one with the recordings of you planning to drug me. The one with your financial records paying for Kiera’s life. Debi has copies, of course, but I told her not to release them. Consider that my final act as your daughter. We’ re even now. You gave me life, and I gave you your freedom. The debt is paid.”

I saw the flicker of comprehension in their eyes. The horror of what I could have done to them.

“You have no idea what it was like,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Being lost. Being alone. And then you found me, and it was worse. Because I learned that being betrayed by family is a pain so much deeper than having no family at all.”

I opened my door wider. “Goodbye, Mr. and Mrs. Donovan. I wish you a long life. One filled with regret for what you threw away.”

I closed the door on their shocked faces and didn’t look back.

The epilogue of their lives was written by others. Kiera was sentenced to ten years in prison for fraud and embezzlement.

Her son, Leo, was placed in foster care after a DNA test proved his real father was a married socialite Kiera had been seeing on the side.

Ivan sold his company and poured the money into a foundation for orphaned children, a public act of penance.

He was often photographed looking gaunt and haunted.
My parents became recluses.

They sent letters and gifts to my apartment for years. I never opened them. One day, they just stopped.

I threw away the last of the unopened boxes. I didn’t need reminders of a life that wasn’t mine.

That evening, I stood on my balcony, watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks explode over the ocean.

The air was cold and clean. The future was a blank page. For the first time, that didn’t scare me. It was full of hope.

My hope.

THE END