Betrayal At My Parents Wake

Start Reading

I fainted from sheer grief at my parents' wake, only to be jolted awake in the dead of night by a rhythmic, sickening sound.

I opened my heavy eyes, the room spinning, and my gaze landed directly in front of my parents' memorial portraits. There, bathed in the dim candlelight, was my husband, Carter. He had Maddiethe girl my parents had taken in and raised as my own sisterpressed hard against the mahogany table, driving into her with a desperate kind of violence.

Maddie gasped, her hands tangling in his hair. "Carter... aren't you afraid she'll wake up?"

Carter's voice, usually so measured, was thick with breathless apathy. "She hasn't slept in three days trying to investigate the crash. She's dead to the world. We could scream and she wouldn't stir."

Ice instantly crystallized in my throat. My lungs stopped working.

Then, Maddies face twisted into a mask of fretful innocence. "But what if she finds out the truth about the accident? What do I do then?"

"She won't. Relax. I've already paid someone to take the fall. She'll never know." He kissed the hollow of her neck. "Besides, it's not like you meant to run them off the road."

My heart tore open, a visceral, bleeding rip straight down the center of my chest.

I dug my fingernails so deeply into my palms that the skin broke, the sharp sting of my own blood the only thing keeping the bile from rising to my mouth, keeping the scream locked behind my teeth.

This was the orphan my parents had pitied. The girl they had loved.

This was the man I had worshipped for five years.

A chilling clarity settled over the devastation. If this was how it was going to be, I would not let their blood-soaked betrayal go to waste.

1.

Just when I thought the truth couldn't possibly get any uglier, the floor gave way completely.

Maddie reached down, guiding Carter's hand to the slight, barely-there curve of her lower stomach. She looked at him like she was presenting a crown jewel. "But I don't have a ring, Carter. What are we going to do about our baby?"

Carter frowned, the silence stretching into something suffocating.

Then, he uttered the most venomous words I had ever heard in my life.

"Your due date is right around Camilla's. When the time comes, I'll switch the babies. I'll give yours to her."

"And her baby?" Maddie whispered.

"I'll drop it off at a fire station or an orphanage. I told you our child would be the sole heir to this empire, Maddie. I'm not letting anyone stand in his way." Carter said it with the casual dismissal of someone throwing out junk mail.

His eyes darkened then, intensely serious. "But Camilla can never know. I can't lose her."

With that, he pulled Maddie flush against him again, his movements turning punishing and rapid.

My heart felt like it was being beaten with a blunt instrument, the pain radiating outward until I was entirely numb. He was never the perfect gentleman I thought he was. He was just saving his passion for someone else.

But how could he be this deeply evil? To throw away our own flesh and blood?

Hot tears slid down my cheeks into the dark carpet. Instinctively, my hands moved to cover my stomach, shielding the three-month-old life growing inside me.

By the time the first light of dawn crept through the windows, the sickening noises finally stopped.

Carter dressed himself, adjusting his cuffs before walking over to the sofa where I lay feigning sleep. He dropped to his knees, his touch impossibly gentle as he brushed the stray hairs from my forehead and wiped a dried tear from the corner of my eye.

"My sweet girl," he whispered softly. "I'll love you forever, just like they did."

Those hands. Those same hands that had just been all over another womans body.

A few minutes later, he led a trembling-legged Maddie out the front door.

I dragged myself up from the sofa, my entire body shaking. The sorrow had evaporated, leaving behind a frost so absolute it burned.

I pulled out my phone and dialed my best friend, Brooke, a corporate attorney. "Brooke. Draft the divorce papers."

If this was Carter's definition of love, I was going to burn it to the ground, and him along with it.

An hour later, I was sitting in a sterile, white hospital room.

"Doctor. I can't keep the baby."

As the cold instruments did their work, my vision blurred with fresh tears. I had prayed for this child for five long years. I had begged the universe for a family with Carter. But now? Now, I loved this baby too much to bring her into a world where her father would discard her like trash.

When I opened my eyes again in the recovery room, the sky outside the window was exploding with brilliant, cascading fireworks.

A young nurse walked in to check my vitals, her eyes glued to the window, sighing with dreamy envy. "Can you believe that? The CEO of Carter Enterprises bought out the bay for his girlfriend. They've been going off all night. Rumor has it he even bought her a hundred-million-dollar custom yacht to celebrate her pregnancy."

Even the muted TV on the hospital wall was flashing the headline: Tech Billionaire Lights Up the City for Mystery Girlfriend.

On the screen, grainy paparazzi footage showed Maddie leaning into Carter's chest on the deck of a yacht, smiling a sickly-sweet, triumphant smile.

We had been secretly married for five years to protect his corporate image. In all that time, he had never bought me a single extravagant gift.

Once, years ago, I had gently hinted that I wanted to watch the New Year's fireworks together. He hadn't even looked up from his laptop. "It's just burning money for five minutes of noise, Cam. What's the point? I'm not into all that performative romance."

He wasn't allergic to romance. I just wasn't the woman he wanted to be romantic for.

Two days later, I buried my parents.

That evening, Carter finally came home after a two-day "business trip."

"Cam, baby, I've been working the police chief non-stop these past two days," he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. "The guy who hit them finally confessed. He's locked up. Your parents can rest in peace now."

A heavy, suffocating wave of designer perfume hit my nose.

It was Maddies signature scent.

My body trembled violently, a physical rejection of his proximity. Swallowing the bile in my throat, I dodged his lips as they moved toward my neck. "I don't feel well... the baby..."

Carter stiffened. He pulled back, a flicker of genuine panic crossing his features.

"Cam... did you see the news? The fireworks?"

2.

I opened my mouth, struggling to form the words to confront him.

Before I could, his phone buzzed. It was a custom ringtonethe one reserved just for Maddie.

He flipped the screen face down with lightning speed, but not before I caught the contact name: My Little Trouble. The words stung my exhausted eyes.

"Carter... I just had a nightmare," her voice whined through the speaker, breathless and needy. "I'm so scared. Can you come over?"

Without a second of hesitation, his voice melted into liquid velvet. "Take a deep breath. I'm on my way."

He hung up and turned to me, already grabbing his keys. "Don't listen to the tabloids, Cam. Maddie was just having a breakdown over your parents' death. I took her out to distract her. She's like a little sister to me, you know that."

What kind of brother fucks his sister on a mahogany table and gets her pregnant?

And they were my parents. I was the one who had lost everything.

"You've been running yourself ragged with the funeral preparations. Get some sleep," he said, already halfway out the door. "Maddie's having a panic attack. I need to go check on her."

As he rushed out, his wallet slipped from his coat pocket, landing on the hardwood floor. I picked it up. Through blurry, bloodshot eyes, I saw the photo in the ID window. It used to be a picture of us on our college campus. Now, it was a Polaroid of him and Maddie, kissing against a sunset.

I walked into the living room, took down our framed wedding photo, and methodically smashed the glass, taking a pair of shears to the canvas until it was confetti.

I slipped off the wedding band I had worn for five years and dropped it into the coffee grounds in the trash can.

Then, I went upstairs and started packing. Halfway through folding a sweater, my phone buzzed with an incoming text from an unknown number. It was a photo.

A man standing in a steamy bathroom, his perfectly sculpted torso bare.

A woman's manicured hand was tracing the jagged, faded scar across his abdomen.

It was the scar Carter got five years ago when he took a knife for me during a mugging. He had been covered in his own blood, gripping my hand with trembling fingers as we waited for the ambulance. "I'll always protect you, Cam," he had whispered.

The boy who had slain dragons for me had become the monster tearing me apart.

I stood there like a ghost, letting the tears fall in silence, until the sudden shrill of my ringtone shattered the quiet.

It was Maddie. I answered. Her voice was husky, languidthe unmistakable sound of a woman who had just been thoroughly satisfied.

"Did you ever actually satisfy him, Cam?" she purred. "He took me three times today, and all it took was one phone call for him to drop you in the middle of the night and come running back for more."

When I didn't answer, she laughed. It was a sharp, grating sound. "Cat got your tongue? Still crying over those old fossils? God, you should have seen it, Cam. The way the semi-truck just crushed them into ground meat. It was so... messy."

Pure, unadulterated hatred spiked through my veins, turning the blood to ice.

Ten years ago, my parents found her freezing by the side of a highway, covered in infections, half-dead. They took her in. They raised her. Five years ago, they even paid out of pocket for her to study abroad.

But when she came back last year, everything shifted.

Jewelry went missing. When my parents caught her stealing and gently reprimanded her, she threw a hysterical fit, screaming that they always treated her like an outsider, and threatened to slit her wrists.

Strange men started sneaking out of her bedroom window. When my parents tried to talk to her about respecting herself and offered to set her up with decent, hardworking guys, she went to the country club and told everyone they were trying to sell her off to old men for money.

At first, Carter thought she was out of line, too.

But then, one night after he came back from a VIP club downtown, his tune changed. "I think you guys have Maddie all wrong. She's not a bad kid."

"She's working bottle service to pay for her master's. Some trust-fund kid offered her ten grand to sleep with him, and she dumped a bottle of champagne over his head."

I remembered the faint, intrigued smile playing on Carter's lips when he told me. "The kid's got fire."

Later, when my parents realized Maddie was beyond saving and threatened to cut her out of the will, she poisoned our elderly golden retriever.

When my father, blind with grief and rage, finally raised a hand to discipline her, Carter had stepped in, taking the blow to his own shoulder.

Maddie had collapsed against his chest, sobbing beautifully. "It's okay, Carter. If they think I'm that toxic, I should have just let the dogs kill me on the streets. I shouldn't have fought back..."

I used to look at Carter, fiercely defending this broken girl, and think it was a testament to his kind heart. I didn't know they were already sleeping together.

"You can have Carter," I said into the receiver, my voice dead flat. "But I am going to watch you rot in a cell for what you did to my parents."

The second the sun came up, I drove to the precinct.

They had murdered my family. I was going to make them pay.

3.

As I pulled back into the driveway later that morning, Maddie was strolling up the walkway, a sickly-sweet smile plastered on her face.

"Where have you been, sis?"

I ignored her, stepping around her toward the front door.

Suddenly, she let out a dark, mocking chuckle. "What are you going to do now, Cam?"

She reached out to grab my arm. The second her manicured fingertips brushed my sleeve, she violently threw her own weight backward, stumbling and collapsing hard against the stone pillar of the porch.

"Ahhh!" she shrieked, clutching her stomach as she crumpled to the concrete.

I stared at her in shock. Before my brain could even process the performance, a massive force slammed into my shoulder. I was thrown backward, my head cracking sickeningly against the edge of the stone steps. Warm blood instantly gushed down my temple, blinding my left eye.

Carter was on his knees, pulling Maddie into his chest, his face pale with a kind of terror I had never seen him direct at me. "Maddie! Are you okay?!"

She buried her face in his shirt, hyperventilating.

"I... I just wanted to comfort her, Carter," she sobbed hysterically. "But she called me a whore and said she wanted me dead to avenge them."

Carter's face turned to absolute granite. When he looked at me, his eyes were black with disgust.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!" he roared. "She lost them too! She's grieving just as much as you are. Apologize to her. Now."

"I didn't even touch her!" I gasped, clutching my bleeding head. "She threw herself"

Maddie wailed louder. "Carter... my stomach... it hurts so bad!"

Carter's pupils dilated. He scooped her up effortlessly. "I've got you. We're going to the hospital."

Of course he was panicking. She was carrying his precious heir.

Blood dripped steadily off my chin onto my blouse. Watching him carry another woman away, the pain in my chest finally eclipsed the physical agony of my fractured skull. I literally forgot how to breathe.

Carter knew I was a germaphobe. He knew I hated anyone else driving my car. But he kicked open the door to the Range Rover my parents had bought me and laid her in the backseat.

As he reversed, his eyes finally caught my reflection in the side mirrorthe sheer amount of blood soaking my clothes. The SUV jerked to a violent halt.

"Get in," he barked through the window. "We'll get you patched up."

He practically shoved me into the passenger side, but my eyes immediately caught the state of the leather seats. They were scratched and scuffed.

And crumpled on the floor mat was a pair of pink lace underwear.

Carter snatched them up instantly, his jaw tight as he refused to meet my eyes. "It's Maddie's time of the month. She changed in the car the other day and forgot them. Don't be crazy."

Looking at his handsome profilethe face that used to make my heart skip a beatknowing he had defiled my car with her, all I felt was a rising tide of physical nausea.

Maybe the guilt was eating at him, because out of nowhere, his tone softened. "Cam... once the mourning period is over, we're going to have the wedding. The biggest, most beautiful wedding you can imagine."

Carter came from nothing.

When we got our marriage license, he insisted we keep it quiet. He wanted to wait until he was successful enough to give me a wedding fit for a queen.

For five years, I pulled every string my family had to get him investors. I stayed up with him through all-nighters until he ended up in the ER with a bleeding ulcer. I helped him build his empire from a garage startup to Carter Enterprises. And the wedding was always pushed back. Always "next year."

Now, he was finally offering it.

I sat completely still, my eyes empty. "I don't want it anymore, Carter."

His face hardened instantly. "Fine. Suit yourself."

He didn't look at me again, slamming his foot on the gas and speeding toward the emergency room.

The house was empty again. I sat in the driveway, raising a shaking hand to wipe the sticky, cooling blood from my cheek.

He wanted to play dirty. Fine.

I reached into my pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper I had found under the floor mat while he was distracteda wire transfer receipt from Maddie's bank account to a known offshore fixer. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in years.

That night, squad cars rolled up to the private hospital.

Standing at the end of the sterilized corridor, I watched the detectives walk into Maddie's VIP suite, arrest warrant in hand.

4.

But the satisfying image of Maddie being led out in handcuffs never materialized.

A few minutes later, Carter escorted the detectives back into the hallway, shaking their hands with a smooth, apologetic smile.

"We'll consider it a misunderstanding, Mr. Carter. Have a good night."

"Thank you, officers. My wife is just completely unhinged by the grief. I apologize for the false alarm."

"Totally understandable. We're sorry for your loss."

What the hell was happening? I stumbled forward, dizzy from the concussion, pointing a shaking finger at Maddie, who was peeking out from behind Carter's broad shoulders. "I didn't make a false report! She paid someone to run them off the road! She's a murderer!"

Maddie pressed a delicate hand over her mouth, shrinking against Carter. "She's completely lost her mind, Carter... she's scaring me."

"You sociopathic bitch, you're going to burn in hell!" I screamed, lunging at her.

Before I could reach her, Carter's private security detail grabbed me by the arms and threw me to the linoleum floor. The stitches on my temple tore open. My knees slammed into the tile so hard they went entirely numb.

Carter looked down at me, his eyes entirely devoid of warmth. Just cold irritation.

"Your parents are dead. The drunk driver who hit them confessed. What does any of that have to do with Maddie? Look at yourself, Cam. Look how ugly your jealousy makes you."

I held up the crumpled bank receipt, my voice hoarse. "This is the wire transfer! She hired the driver!"

"You're going to waste the department's time over a receipt for a designer handbag?"

The lead detective sighed, looking at me with pity. "Ma'am, Mr. Carter already provided us with the toxicology report. Your father was driving under the influence. It was a tragic accident. Please stop harassing this young woman."

A freezing terror shot straight from my heels to the crown of my head.

Carter knew my father had been sober for twenty years. He didn't even keep wine in the house. Carter had fabricated the autopsy. He was pinning my parents' murder on my dead father to protect his mistress.

The detectives disappeared around the corner. I curled up on the freezing hospital floor, every ounce of fight draining out of me.

Mom... Dad... I'm so sorry.

Carter sighed heavily, crouching down and reaching for my arm. "Are you done throwing this tantrum? Get up. The floor is cold, you're going to hurt the baby."

He still had the audacity to pretend he cared?

"I know you don't like Maddie. But I am not going to let you frame her to soothe your own grief." He brushed his thumb over my knuckles. "I promise, as long as you behave, I'll take care of you forever."

Take care of me? By letting my family's killer walk free? By helping her cover it up?

And as for my baby... she was already gone. Gone the morning I heard them laughing about tossing her in the trash.

The last thread holding my heart together snapped. I violently shoved him away.

"Don't touch me! I want a divorce! I am going to see you both rot in federal prison if it's the last thing I do!"

Carter froze. A dark, terrifying shadow crossed his face. His jaw locked.

"You think you can just leave me, Camilla?" he hissed. "You have no one left. Where the hell do you think you're going to go?"

Maddie stepped out from the doorway, crossing her arms with a smug, victorious smirk. "Revenge? Who's going to help you, Cam? Nobody in this city is going to cross Carter."

The pure, unfiltered hatred boiling in my chest made me want to vomit blood. I scrambled up and lunged, aiming a slap squarely at her perfectly contoured face.

"You monster!"

But my wrist was caught mid-air.

Carter gripped my arm with bone-crushing force. His face contorted into something genuinely demonica brutal, violent rage I didn't recognize.

"If you want to act like a rabid animal, you'll be punished like one. Whichever hand you try to use to hurt Maddie, I'll take it from you."

He didn't even have to speak. At his look, one of the bodyguards unclipped a tactical combat knife and pressed the hilt into Carter's palm.

Carter slammed my right hand onto the tile floor, pinning it beneath his knee. I thrashed wildly, screaming, the terror finally breaking my mind.

"No! Carter, please, no! Don't do this!"

But his eyes were dead. He raised the heavy steel blade high above his head.

As Maddie's hysterical laughter echoed down the hallway, I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the agony.

Crack.

A heavy combat boot came flying out of nowhere, colliding with Carter's wrist. The knife spun through the air, clattering harmlessly against the wall, missing my fingers by a millimeter.

"Who the fuck thinks they can touch my little sister?"