I couldn't stop the tears once they started. They poured down my face in hot streams as I collapsed into Matriarch Genevieve's frail arms. Five years of pain, of being ignored and gaslighted, of watching my daughter suffer and die while her father doted on another woman's child—it all came rushing out at once.
"I hate her," I sobbed, my body shaking with the force of my confession. "I hate Natalie so much I can barely breathe when she's near me. Every time I see her smile, knowing what she did to my baby..."
"Let it out, child," Genevieve murmured, her papery hand stroking my hair with surprising strength for someone who'd just awakened from a five-year coma. "You've held this inside too long."
"And Julian—" My voice broke on his name. "He refuses to even consider that Violet is really gone. He thinks I'm making it all up for attention. His own daughter!"
