Chapter 5 - The Woman at the Hospital
Skylar drove three blocks before her hands began shaking too badly to hold the steering wheel.
She pulled into a gas station and called the only person whose number Derek had never managed to remove from her life.
Maya Ellis.
Her mother’s former attorney.
Maya answered on the first ring.
“Skylar?”
“I need help.”
Maya heard something in her voice.
“Tell me where you are.”
Twenty minutes later, Maya found Skylar sitting inside her locked car with dried blood near her mouth.
She did not ask why Skylar had stayed.
She did not ask why she had ignored earlier warnings.
She simply opened the passenger door and said, “We’re going to the hospital.”
At the emergency room, a nurse photographed the swelling, the wrist bruising, and the cut on Skylar’s lip.
A doctor examined her shoulder and ordered imaging.
Skylar held herself together until he asked one question.
“Do you feel safe going home?”
Her eyes filled.
“No.”
The police were called.
The older officer, Lieutenant Samuel Hayes, listened without interrupting. His younger partner collected the spare phone as evidence and copied the recording in Skylar’s presence.
When Derek’s voice played through the hospital interview room, Skylar closed her eyes.
You are going to sign.
Then Suzanne’s voice followed.
Don’t leave marks.
Lieutenant Hayes’s expression sharpened.
“This is not your fault,” he said.
Skylar almost laughed.
Derek had spent so long teaching her the opposite that the truth sounded foreign.
Maya sat beside her.
“There’s something else we need to discuss.”
She placed a sealed envelope on the table.
Skylar recognized her mother’s handwriting.
“I thought Derek destroyed everything from the estate.”
“He destroyed copies,” Maya said. “Not the originals.”
Skylar stared at the envelope but did not open it.
“Why do you have this?”
“Your mother instructed me to release it if Derek ever tried to force a property transfer.”
Skylar’s breathing stopped.
Maya continued quietly.
May you like
“Your mother was afraid of him long before you were.”
👉 Inside the envelope was not merely a warning—it was a legal safeguard Skylar’s mother had created against the exact betrayal unfolding now.
