CHAPTER 6
That useless piece of junk betrayed me.
I still don't understand why he would do something like that. I was a good person. I never wronged him in any way. I had loved him, trusted him, and built a life with him.
I never deserved what he did to me.
His betrayal hurt.
But do you know what hurt me the most?
It wasn't the arrest.
It wasn't the humiliation.
It was the baby I left behind.
My son.
He was barely six months old when they took me away.
His first word.
His first step.
His first day at school.
All those moments that a mother waits her whole life to witness…
I knew I would never be there for them.
And that white man, Taylor, was the reason.
I kept hoping that maybe he would at least bring my son to see me.
But he never did.
Not once.
I remained in detention for seven months before my trial finally began.
When the day arrived, I was taken into the courtroom in chains.
The state attorney attacked me relentlessly.
Every single piece of evidence they had was used against me.
The knife was presented in court.
My fingerprints were all over it.
The car registration was also presented.
The vehicle belonged to me.
Everything pointed toward me.
My lawyer tried to defend me, but it was like trying to stop a flood with bare hands.
Nothing he said seemed to matter.
Then the prosecutor called for a witness.
When the door to the witness room opened, I saw someone I recognized.
My stomach dropped.
He walked past me slowly and made his way toward the witness stand.
The entire time, he avoided looking at me.
He wouldn't even meet my eyes.
It was my lawfully wedded husband.
Taylor.
The man I had loved.
The man I had protected.
The man whose crime I had tried to cover up.
And now…
He was about to testify against me.
When the prosecutor asked him why he had reported his own wife, he cleared his throat and said,
"I couldn't let her roam free with the blood of an innocent man on her hands."
He paused dramatically before adding,
"She is the mother of my child, and I wanted to set an example for my son. That's why I turned her in."
Those were his exact words.
The words of a traitor.
My entire body filled with rage.
I felt like the room was spinning.
I wanted to jump across the courtroom and rip him apart with my bare hands.
But I couldn't move.
Then the judge asked me if I had anything to say in my defense.
But what was there left to say?
No one believed me.
No one wanted the truth.
So instead of speaking, I simply gave the judge a thumbs up, letting him know I had nothing to add.
Inside, my blood was boiling.
The moment Taylor mentioned my son with his filthy mouth, something inside me snapped.
Thirty minutes later, the court returned with a verdict.
The judge looked down at me and delivered my sentence.
Eleven years in prison.
In that moment, something inside me died.
Or maybe something new was born.
I felt nothing.
No sadness.
No anger.
No fear.
Just… emptiness.
That day, the woman I used to be disappeared.
And someone else took her place.