“STILL PRETENDING YOU MATTER?” the mistress sneered, before her palm cracked across my face. My husband watched with folded arms as I swayed, seven months pregnant—unaware that my father, the man who owns the very soil they stand on, was watching from the shadows.
This is a story of visceral betrayal and the explosive return of a hidden legacy. It is the chronicle of my own coup d’état against a life of carefully constructed lies.
The fluorescent lights of the Save-Mart hummed with a low, headache-inducing buzz, a sound that seemed to vibrate right through the soles of my worn-out sneakers. I leaned heavily against the shopping cart, my breath hitching as a sharp Braxton Hicks contraction rippled across my abdomen. It felt like a tightening vice, a physical reminder of the precariousness of my existence.
Seven months. I was seven months pregnant, and my ankles were swollen to the size of grapefruits, throbbing in protest against the concrete floor. But the physical pain was a dull roar compared to the bone-deep fatigue that had settled into my marrow. It was the exhaustion of a woman trying to hold up a collapsing sky with trembling hands.
“Mommy?”
