The first day began not with comfort, but with poison.
My stepmother was the first to visit. For a second, I thought she might have come
out of concern. But the words that slipped from her lips were colder than the
hospital air.
"When will you remove him from this family?" she asked my father, voice dripping
with venom.
My father's hands trembled. His eyes filled with tears as he snapped back:
"Never. I will not abandon my son. I love him too much."
And with that, he turned and left with her, shoulders hunched under grief too heavy
to carry.
But that was only the beginning.
Next came my biological mother, hand-in-hand with my stepbrother… and my
fiancée.
She was beautiful—too beautiful for a man like me, I had always thought. But when
I saw her gaze, I realized the truth I had been too blind to face. She wasn't looking
at me. She was looking at him. My brother. With eyes that shone with a love she'd
never once shown me.
Then my mother's eyes turned toward me. Hatred burned there. Her voice was
sharp, cutting deep into my soul.
"I should have killed you the day your mother died. She was my dearest friend…
but my jealousy poisoned her. And you—" she spat the words—"you stole
everything from me."
The confession shattered me. Suddenly, my whole childhood rearranged
itself—moments of cruelty that once felt random now aligned into a single picture
of hate. Even her fleeting acts of kindness twisted into knives.
I remembered that night at the restaurant when she smiled and told me she loved
me… only to leave me there, abandoned. If not for the truck drivers who found me
and fed me for three months, I would have disappeared without a trace.
But even worse was yet to come.
My fiancée stepped forward, her lips trembling not with sorrow but with contempt.
Her eyes—cold, like pearls reflecting no light—met mine.
"I was never yours," she said flatly. "I've always loved your brother. And you? I
want you dead. The poison in your veins… that was me."
The words slammed into me harder than any truck ever could.
The room spun. Betrayal piled upon betrayal until I could barely breathe.
And then—through the storm of despair—one name pierced the chaos like a blade
of light.
Cha Velora.
An old friend. A wild card. Perhaps the only one who could save me now.