Chapter 2 - The Hotel Room
I drove almost an hour before I pulled into the parking lot of a cheap hotel across town. I sat in the car for ten minutes before I could make myself go inside.
I cried until there was nothing left to cry with.
By morning, Marcus had called twelve times. Kayla had sent three separate messages, each one somehow managing to make herself the injured party. My mother-in-law left two voicemails I didn't listen to past the first ten seconds.
I ignored all of it.
Instead, I called my older sister, Denise.
She showed up an hour later with two coffees and a face like thunder.
"Start talking," she said, dropping into the chair across from me. "All of it. Now."
So I told her everything. The $60,000. The years of arguments I'd swallowed. The divorce announcement in front of his entire family. The pregnancy.
By the time I finished, Denise looked like she wanted to drive straight to that house and throw every plate off the table herself.
Instead, she helped me move a bag of clothes into her guest room that same afternoon.
Over the next week, I finally sat down and went through our finances properly — really looked, instead of trusting whatever Marcus told me.
The $60,000 was only the beginning. There were other withdrawals buried in there — Kayla's medical bills, her car payments, her son's school fees, even a family vacation deposit. Marcus had been quietly bankrolling his sister's entire household for years, all while telling me, to my face, that we couldn't afford fertility treatment.
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The same man who said IVF was "too expensive" had somehow found sixty thousand dollars for someone else's family.
I hired a lawyer. I scheduled my first prenatal appointment. And for the first time in months, I stopped orbiting around Marcus and started focusing on my child.
