I stared wide–eyed, unable to believe what I had just heard. What was Grayson even saying?
“What the hell are you saying?” Liam’s voice was raw with fury, his eyes bloodshot. “She’s my sister–not by blood, sure–but the one who raised me since I was a kid! And you’ve got the gall to bark nonsense like this?”
My mother, just as shocked, looked at Grayson as if seeing her son–in–law for the very first time. “Grayson, Belle never did anything to wrong you. Even though Liam and Belle aren’t blood siblings, you’ve got no right to insult them like this!”
Grayson’s face remained cold, unflinching. “They know full well whether I’m making things up or not. I distinctly remember seeing Liam sneaking out of Belle’s room in the dead of night. If there was nothing improper going on, what was he doing in her room at that hour? And a month later, she’s pregnant? Whose child is it, really?”
His words cut through the room like shards of glass, and I floated there, looking at him- the man I had loved for so many years–as if he were a stranger. That night he mentioned? I’d had a sudden bout of acute gastroenteritis, and Liam had taken me to the hospital. After settling me in, he’d gone home to fetch some clothes and toiletries for me–clothes my mother had helped pack.
When Liam returned to the hospital, he told me he had seen Grayson at home. My heart, foolishly hopeful, believed Grayson had come to check on me, even though we’d been fighting, and I’d stormed back to my parents‘ house in anger. I thought he cared. But even as I lay in a hospital bed, he never came. Not once.
Now I knew the truth. He hadn’t cared because, in his mind, I was someone capable of the same filth he shared with Alice. He’d twisted my desperate cry for help that night into something sordid. I should be grateful I was dead–because if I were alive, I wouldn’t have the strength to face this.
“You bastard!” Liam snarled. “That night, I was in Belle’s room because she was sick-
