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ELENA CARLSON
“Let us raise a toast to the newly engaged couple,” Mr. Grant, my husband’s father, announced and everyone raised their glasses with smiles plastered on their faces.
The clinking of glasses was the last thing I heard before my head started spinning and my eyelids became heavy with a sudden drowsiness. My legs wobbled and I slumped to the ground just as my vision went black.
I blacked out.
At my husband’s engagement party. He was getting married. To another woman that wasn't me.
A few hours later
“I love you, Elena. I will bring down the world for you. I will swim through oceans and move mountains for your sake ” The words of Braden echoed in my ear once again. Those words kept me sane.
I slowly opened my eyes, and the world around me was a blur. My head was pounding and my mouth felt dry and sticky. I tried lifting my hand to my forehead, but it felt like a wobbling leaf so it fell back onto the pillow.
What happened? I thought to myself.
I tried to remember, but my memories are foggy and unclear. I struggled to sit up, but a wave of dizziness washed over me and I fell back onto the bed. Where was I? This didn't feel like my bed. It was too soft and comfortable.
Was I back in that prison cell where I had spent the last seven years of my life?
Okay, think. What was the last thing that happened?
“Oh, you are awake,” a voice echoed in the background. A voice I knew all too well. My husband, Luke Grant. The man I had just walked in on his engagement party.
I frowned, my head was still a lightweight from the blackout. I lifted my body from the bed and that was when I was able to make out my environment. I was in a familiar room I never thought I would be in again. it was a room I knew all too familiar.
It was a holding cell.
What the actual fuck!
“What is going on Luke?” I asked, still trying to wrap my mind around the absurdity that happened to be my life.
“Sit down, Elena,” He instructed, gesturing for me to sit on the chair in front of an iron desk. His gesticulation drew my attention to the middle aged man at the far end of the room. My heart skipped at the sight of the man. He was familiar.
Mr. Sanchez, my lawyer, or rather, the legal representative of the Grant family, served as my lawyer when I was charged with second-degree murder.
I dragged my legs to the chair, staggering a few steps before I finally made it. I collapsed on the chair, breathing heavily. Luke and his Lawyer strode to the opposite chairs and settled down, his gaze stern. It was almost like I wasn't staring at the man I had known and married for the past eight years.
“Why didn't you inform me that you were getting out?” Luke asked in a cold, almost robotic tone.
I gazed at him with a blank face. I wanted to surprise him. I had been very excited when I got out but I didn’t tell him even when every part of me wanted to. I got out a few months early on good behavior and I wanted to surprise my husband.
Guess I was the one being surprised now.
I did not respond as my mind was still trying to comprehend all that was going on here. The Lawyer, Mr. Sanchez drew out a folder from the briefcase and handed it to me.
I glanced at it with a racing heart. My entire world literally crashed when my eyes caught the content of the file he handed to me. I swallowed nothing, my heart beginning to race.
DIVORCE PAPERS.
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