Chapter 3 - Erasing a Life
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By the time Charlotte reached her small apartment in Brooklyn, her mind was operating on pure adrenaline.
She didn't pack her favorite books. She didn't pack the expensive jewelry Damian had bought her. She only packed practical clothes, cash she had hidden in a coffee can, and her vital documents.
Her phone buzzed relentlessly on the kitchen counter. Damian.
She stared at the screen, tears blurring her vision. A part of her desperately wanted to answer, to scream at him, to beg him to tell her it was a lie. But the memory of his father's cold voice stopped her. Make it convincing enough that no one thinks she matters.
She couldn't risk the twins.
Charlotte picked up the phone, removed the SIM card, and snapped it in half. She threw the pieces down the garbage disposal and turned on the faucet, listening to the grinding noise obliterate her connection to the man she loved.
She opened her laptop, typed out a brief, generic resignation email to her school’s principal citing a sudden family emergency, and closed the computer forever.
She was thirty-one years old, entirely alone, and pregnant with the heirs of a criminal empire.
Charlotte grabbed her duffel bag and walked out the door without looking back. She took the subway to Port Authority, paying cash for a bus ticket to a small, snowy town in upstate New York that she had only read about in a travel magazine years ago.
As the bus pulled out of the city, the Manhattan skyline faded into the gray winter mist. She placed a protective hand over her flat stomach.
May you like
“It’s just the three of us now,” she whispered to the empty seat beside her. “I won’t let them find you. I promise.”
The engine rumbled, carrying her away from the only man she had ever loved, and straight into an unknown, terrifying future.
