Chapter 7

James' face drained of color. "Where are you?"

But the line had already gone dead.

His expression turned frantic. He called back immediately but got no answer. He tried again and again, but the phone wouldn't connect.

His gaze snapped to Natalie. She watched the emotions cycle through his eyes. Panic gave way to suspicion, and suspicion hardened into barely contained rage.

"Talk." He seized her jaw in a bruising grip. "Where is Sophie?"

Pain shot through Natalie's chest. Blood from her throat seeped past her lips.

She forced the words out, her voice shaking. "It wasn't me."

Before James could respond, Andrew grabbed her wrist. His grip was so savage it felt like her bones might shatter.

"Tell us where you hid her. Now."

Natalie summoned every ounce of strength she had left. "I don't know."

Mabel's palm cracked across her face. Pure hatred dripped from her voice. "I regret the day we ever brought you home. If I'd known you'd hurt Sophie, I should've left you to die in that slum."

The sting on her cheek was nothing compared to the pain in her heart. Mabel's words drove into her chest like shards of ice, and every breath that followed burned.

The people closest to you always knew exactly where to sink the knife.

They didn't even bother to verify anything. In their minds, she was already guilty.

James wrapped his hand around her throat. "Ruining a girl's innocence is the lowest thing a person can do. I don't have time for your games. Tell me where Sophie is."

Natalie's face went pale, but her voice held steady. "I don't know. You can ask me a hundred times. The answer won't change."

James lost all control. "Natalie. I should've fed that bread to the dogs instead of you."

He shoved her away with brutal force.

The impact sent her stumbling backward. Her abdomen slammed into the corner of the table, and the wound tore open instantly. Blood soaked through the white fabric of her dress.

They walked out without a single glance back, barking orders into their phones. "Pull up the security footage now. Find out where Sophie was last seen."

The moment they left, Sophie's men slipped inside. They knocked Natalie unconscious and dragged her away in a burlap sack.

When she woke, she found herself bound alongside Sophie at the edge of a cliff. A masked kidnapper held a knife to the rope.

Theodore and Mabel stood below, tears streaming down their weathered faces as they called out Sophie's name over and over.

The abductor glanced at the three million dollars in cash that Andrew and James had pushed forward. Then he spoke. "You can only save one. Choose."

Sophie gazed at them with tear-filled eyes. "Dad, Mom, Andrew..." Her voice trembled. "I'm so scared. James, Save me."

Natalie watched the touching performance unfold before her and felt nothing.

When someone loved you, they would give you everything without you ever having to ask. When someone didn't love you, it didn't matter how hard you tried. There would never be room for you in their heart.

The three of them answered without a moment's hesitation. Sophie's name left their lips in unison.

The abductor cut Sophie free immediately and pushed her toward them.

James pulled her into his arms and held her tight. Sophie cast a frightened glance at Natalie, playing her role perfectly. "I heard the abductors on the phone with Natalie..."

The three of them looked coldly at Natalie, who was covered in blood. James' voice dripped with contempt. "Natalie, you're disgusting."

He turned without another word, swept Sophie into his arms, and carried her away.

Once they were gone, the abductors cut Natalie's ropes.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt light. The words left her lips before she could stop them. "James, I wish I'd never met you. Never saved you. Never fallen in love with you."

James stopped walking.

But Sophie chose that exact moment to go limp in his arms. Her voice came out weak and breathless. "James. I feel so sick."

James tore his gaze away from the voice behind him. Panic flooded his face as he clutched Sophie tighter. "I'm taking you to the hospital right now."

The Bennetts hovered around them, urging James to hurry.

James' voice turned cold as ice as he threw one last warning over his shoulder. "The act ends here, Natalie. Our wedding happens when Sophie decides to forgive you. Not a moment before."

They strode away and never looked back.

Natalie watched their retreating figures grow smaller in the distance. And then she laughed.

She laughed until tears mixed with blood rolled down her cheeks.

If only they had been willing to look into it, just once, that was all it would have taken for them to see Sophie's true colors.

But they never did. Sophie had blinded them all.

The pain from her stomach and the surgical wound tore through her soul.

Then the abductor spoke, "Go after the person who did this, not me." The rope snapped completely.

Wind rushed into her throat as she plummeted. Her organs lurched violently upward. The light at the cliff's edge shrank to a tiny dot in the blink of an eye, and the sensation of weightlessness wrapped around her limbs like a rising tide.

From this moment forward, she would never abandon herself again just to beg for scraps of love from people who would never give it.

She was finally free to begin a new life.