BETRAYED

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. 

“What is this Luke?” I asked as tears began to well up in my eyes. Everything was suddenly beginning to make sense to me but I don't want them to. 

“I am sure you can read, Elena. What does it look like?” he retorted, his voice very cold. 

“Was this why you didn't come visiting for the past one year? Because you are engaged to another woman?” My lips wobbled as I belt out the words to him, sounding unintelligent. Luke made a mocking sound that not only broke my heart but made my fingers tremble.  

This was too much. This was way too much for me to bear. 

“You foolish bitch!” He began to say before I could start talking again. “Did you ever think for a second that I would stay married to an ex-convict like you? I am a fucking Grant!” He snapped, sending cold shivers down my spine. 

An ex-convict. That was all I was to him.

I didn't know which hurts more; his words or what he was about to make me do. But everything hurts. My chest hurt so bad. 

“I went to prison because of you Luke, or don't you remember?” I asked, using my palm to wipe away the droplets of tears that were flooding down my cheeks.

“You are so dumb, Elena. Can't you see it? Even after all these years, you are still this gullible and naive. It was so easy to convince you to take the fall for me because you were so blinded by love,”

“You are my husband, and you were drunk. You would have gotten life imprisonment,” I muttered, glancing at the man who I had sacrificed my life for in the worst possible ways. Yet, he sat there and dared to make fun of me like that. 

“As I said, ever so gullible. The same way you foolishly signed all the properties my brother gave to you over to me,”

My heart began to race, as it was all becoming clear; he used me. 

“Just so you know, Elena. I never loved you. I was just supposed to marry you because my mom made me," he revealed.

“What do you mean?” This time, I snapped.

“My brother's inheritance, he willed it to you. I was just supposed to get it back and divorce your sorry ass. And then, the accident happened. That was a perfect avenue for me. You took the fall for me, I get to keep his property,”

I was once married to Luke's brother, Braden. He was the love of my life until cancer stole him away from me, and he willed all his property to me, the poor girl from the suburb whom he had married. 

“You are wicked and cruel,” I spat, realizing I was just a pawn in Luke’s game. 

“Yes, now sign the fucking divorce papers before I lose my patience,” he snapped, banging his fist hard on the table, sending a jolt of fear through my spine. 

“And if I refuse to?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, as fear began to creep all over me. I didn't even know why I was hesitating after hearing everything he had done to me.

Suddenly, he yanked me by the collar of my shirt from the other side of the table towards him, strangling me and draining the air from my lungs.

“Don’t you dare me, Elena. I can easily kill you and get rid of your body, and no one will fucking know because you have no one. No one fucking cares about you, so stop being a bitch and sign the fucking paper, Elena,” he yelled in my face.

The tears wouldn't stop running. He was right, I had no one. He shoved me back to the chair and I let out a deep exhale, I stared at the papers as tears streamed down my cheeks even more. And with trembling hands, I picked up the pen and appended my signature to the file.

A devilish grin formed on Luke’s face, as he stood up from the chair, “Good girl. You can still reach out to me if you want to get fucked,”

“I will rather fuck the devil than let you ever touch me again,” I snapped back.

He grinned, “Your loss, bitch,” he turned around and made his way to the door with his Lawyer who had just sat there as a loyal spectator. He was about to pull the doorknob when he paused, swerving his face around to glance at me, “Elena, if you ever think of telling anyone…” he trailed off for a moment as if to make the words sink in. And then, he continued.

“I will kill you and bury your body in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere,” he swore.

I swallowed,  knowing fully well, that he could do all that and more.  I collapsed to the floor as soon as the door clicked back in place, letting all my hurt and pain flow through my tears as I wailed at the predicament of my life.

 I was so fucked.