7
Landon Forrester, after exhausting every
possible means to contact me and failing
く
spectacularly, finally descended into a full-
blown panic.
He’d started to feel an uneasy sense of
wrongness, a feeling that intensified when
fresh waves of slanderous stories about me
being a conniving homewrecker began to
flood the internet again.
Puzzled and disturbed, he’d ordered his
assistant to dig into it.
The revelation was a sickening blow: Vivian
Calloway had orchestrated the entire smear
campaign, hiring trolls to spread the
venomous lies.
Landon felt the very foundations of his trust
in her crumble to dust.
Just then, Vivian herself pushed open his
study door.
She was draped in a scandalously sheer
nightgown, and she promptly, and
possessively, plopped herself down onto
Landon’s lap.
“Landon, darling,” she purred, “the Forrester
Corporation’s anniversary gala is the day after
tomorrow. You are taking me, aren’t you?”
Her words had barely faded when Landon’s
hand shot out, his fingers clamping around
her throat like a vise.
Vivian’s eyes bulged in terror. She clawed at
his hand, her gaze flicking to his computer
screen.
And then she saw it.
Laid out in damning detail: her entire
meticulously planned campaign to utterly
destroy me.
“Vivian Calloway,” Landon’s voice was a low,
dangerous growl. “Is there anything else you
feel the particular need to confess to me right
now?”
Vivian froze, her mind racing.
Landon wasn’t really consumed by rage. More
く
than that, he was drowning in a chilling
disbelief.
He and Vivian had known each other for over
twenty years, childhood sweethearts, or so
he’d believed.
In his mind, she had always been his “white
his pure, untainted, idealized
moonlight”
first love.
The woman he thought he loved more than
life itself.
Even three years ago, when she’d callously
abandoned him at the absolute lowest point
of his life, ditching him without a word to run
off abroad, breaking up with him through a
wall of icy silence… even then, he hadn’t
been able to truly hate her.
When she’d waltzed back into his life, he’d
even felt a pang of pity for her, imagining her
years spent drifting alone and vulnerable in a
foreign land.
L
He’d replayed his impulsive decision to marry
me, Stella Miller, countless times, a decision
made in a fit of pique to wound Vivian, and
regretted it bitterly.
So, he’d done everything in his power to
make it up to her, to shower her with
affection, to indulge her every whim.
When he’d found out she was pregnant, he’d
been ecstatic, desperate to divorce me
immediately, to give Vivian and their child the
legitimate status, the respectability, he felt
they deserved.
But these past few days… what had she
done?
She had systematically, cruelly, shifted all
blame onto me, playing the innocent victim.
while actively colluding with him to push me
to the absolute brink.
And now, because of him, because of her
manipulations, his own daughter, Nina, was
106 1
レ
out there somewhere, a fugitive, homeless and hunted.
The gentle, kind Vivian he thought he knew,
the one enshrined in his memory, seemed to have died.
Landon stared at the woman in his grasp, a horrifying realization dawning: he had never truly known her at all.
“All that filth online… you paid people to post it, didn’t you?” he rasped.
“Why? Why would you do that to Stella? What
could she possibly have done to make you
want to obliterate her so completely, so mercilessly?”
Vivian finally snapped out of her shock, panic flooding her features. She reached for his
hand, her voice trembling. “Landon, I… I was just scared…”
Landon recoiled from her touch, but Vivian,
desperate, clung to him like a leech wrapping
her arms tightly around his waist from behind.
“Landon, please! I just wanted to be with you
so much!” she sobbed. “Those three years I
wasn’t by your side… I was so terrified you’d
actually fallen in love with Stella! I was
petrified you’d develop a soft spot for her
and… and abandon me!”
“Please, don’t be angry, please! I really, truly
know I was wrong! Please don’t leave me…”
She wept, her words a torrent of
manufactured remorse, tilting her head up,
her lips seeking his in a desperate, cloying
kiss.
A wave of revulsion washed over Landon. He
tried to push her away, but Vivian, cunning
even in her desperation, grabbed his hand
and pressed it firmly against her flat stomach.
“Landon,” she whispered, her eyes wide and
pleading, “if you don’t want me… surely you
still want your own flesh and blood? Our
baby?”
“I know how much you like children, Landon.
That’s why I’ve always wanted to give you a child of our own, a child that truly belongs to
- us. You can’t be this cruel… not to our
baby…”
Landon’s harsh, unforgiving expression
flickered, softened almost imperceptibly at
the mention of the child.
Vivian saw it. A sliver of triumphant hope
gleamed in her eyes.
The next second, her phone, still clutched in
Landon’s other hand, began to ring.
Before Vivian could make a frantic grab for it,
Landon answered.
The call connected, and a harsh, menacing
male voice crackled through the speaker.
“Ms. Calloway, about that job? We can’t do it.
This Stella Miller bitch is holed up tight in
some family’s mansion. They’ve got
<
professional security crawling all over the
place, inside and out. We can’t get anywhere
near her. No way to take her out.”
The voice paused, then added with a growl of
frustration, “Last time, we were this close. So
damn close to sending that Miller woman and
her brat straight to hell…”
Landon ignored Vivian’s frantic struggles, his
grip on her like iron.
She let out a strangled, furious shriek, but
Landon, his face a mask of cold fury, silenced
her by abruptly ending the call.
His voice was deceptively calm, lethally so.
“You even dared to hire assassins? To murder
my wife and my child?”
Vivian saw the murderous glint in Landon’s
eyes, a look she had never seen before, and
genuine fear finally pierced through her
manipulative facade.
She gritted her teeth, realizing, too late, that
<
this was not the time to completely sever all
ties. “No! No, it’s not like that, Landon! You
have to listen to me! Let me explain…”
Landon shoved her away, his face contorted
with disgust.
“Vivian Calloway,” he snarled, “until I find
Stella and Nina, you will stay right here and
reflect on every vile thing you’ve done. Don’t
you even think about going anywhere!”
8
Hannah Moon approached me with a serious
expression. She had a request.
She wanted a few strands of my hair for a
DNA test.
I was bewildered at first, until she gently
explained her burgeoning, almost unbelievable
suspicion.
Waiting for the results at the genetics lab, my
mind was a chaotic whirl.
I was terrified, my heart thumping with a
mixture of hope and dread.
These past few days, with Susan and Hannah,
I had experienced á warmth, a sense of
belonging, that felt so much like… family.
If it were possible, oh God, how I wished it
were true.
That they were my family.
But I was also petrified that it was all a cruel
illusion, a fleeting, empty dream that would
shatter and leave me even more broken.
I was sitting numbly in the stark white
corridor of the lab when a hand suddenly
clamped onto my arm, yanking me to my feet.
I looked up, my breath catching in my throat.
Landon Forrester.
His face was haggard, etched with sleepless
nights and a desperation that was almost
palpable. He pulled me into a crushing
embrace.
“Stella! My God, Stella, I finally found you!”
<
I shoved him away, hard, and then, with all the
pent–up fury and pain of years, I slapped him
across the face.
The sound echoed in the quiet hallway.
Thanks to Susan’s nourishing care, I’d
regained my physical strength. And thanks to
Hannah, I’d learned a few self–defense
moves.
Landon, shockingly, didn’t react with anger.
He just stood there, stunned for a moment,
then he reached for me again, his voice raw.
“Stella, if hitting me makes you feel better,
then do it. Hit me as much as you want.
These days without you… I’ve had a lot of
time to think. I see it all now. I was a monster.
I was blind. Can you… can you please give
me another chance? Let me start over,
please?”
He gripped my arm, his eyes pleading. “Stella,
where’s Nina? Our child? I miss her so much.
<
Please, can I just see her?”
His audacity, his sheer, unmitigated gall,
made me want to laugh, a harsh, bitter sound.
“Landon Forrester, what kind of sick act are
you putting on now?” I spat. “From the day
Nina was born, through all those nights she
burned with fever, did you ever once, once,
truly look at her? Did you ever hold her?”
“She was so tiny, so helpless, and all you ever
did was call her a ‘nuisance,‘ a ‘burden,‘
practically wishing she’d never existed!”
My words struck home. Landon’s face turned
ashen. He opened his mouth, as if to offer
some pathetic defense.
“Stella, I… I really know I was wrong.” He held
up three fingers, a desperate, childish
gesture. “I swear, I’ll change. I’ll be a
thousand times better to you, to Nina. Please,
just give me one more chance… Let’s take
our child home. Together.”
L
“Impossible!” I cried, my voice shaking with
conviction. “Landon Forrester, don’t you dare
—
forget we are divorced!”
“I regret it!” he roared, his composure finally
snapping.
His expression turned ugly, his grip on my
arm tightening painfully.
I cried out, a sharp gasp of pain.
Just then, Hannah Moon emerged from the
lab, a sheaf of papers clutched in her hand.
Her face was alight with an almost
unbearable joy, an excitement that radiated
from her.
But the instant she saw Landon manhandling
me, that joy vanished, replaced by a fierce,
protective fury.
She moved like lightning, launching herself at
Landon and kicking him hard, sending him.
sprawling to the floor.
“Which damn son of a bitch do you think you
<
are, laying your filthy hands on my sister?!”
she snarled.
She turned to me, her eyes blazing. “Sis, do
you know this scumbag?”
Under Landon’s desperate, pleading gaze, I
looked him straight in the eye and firmly,
unequivocally, shook my head. “No.”
Hannah didn’t hesitate. She expertly snapped
a pair of handcuffs on Landon’s wrists.
“Harassing women in broad daylight, are we?
Filth like you can go rot in a cell!”
And just like that, Landon Forrester was
dragged away, still shouting my name, still
begging me for help.
I turned my back and pretended not to hear a
thing.
A little while later, the DNA test results lay on
the polished coffee table in the Moon family’s
elegant living room.
As we stared at them, the phone rang. It was
L
Officer Davies from the South City PD.
“Ms. Miller? Stella? The preliminary data
comparison is complete. It’s… it’s highly
probable. Your biological parents are Mason
Moon and Susan Holland…”
Susan let out a small, choked cry and then,
overcome with emotion, she fainted dead
away.
