What Peanuts Cannot Kill
At his company’s grand annual gala, Malcolm Thorne humiliated me in front of everyone. All because I’d accidentally spilled coffee on an important investor.
"Why are you always so clumsy?"
Instead of defending me, my five-year-old son, Leo, stood to the side, giggling with his father's assistant.
Then, the assistant, Kristen, draped herself over his arm. She was wearing a deep red gown Malcolm had custom-made for her. "See, Odessa?" she hissed, her voice a low, scornful murmur only the three of us could hear. "The one who isn't loved? That's the real other woman."
I met the raw annoyance in Malcolm’s eyes, then watched the way he doted on the woman beside him. I once thought I had a family. But Kristen's arrival, coupled with the blatant disloyalty of my husband and son, proved that fantasy was a world I had built for myself, and I was its only resident.
In that moment, something in my heart just... stopped. I dialed a number I hadn't touched in six years.
"Dad, I want to come home."