He Gave Our Baby To His Mistress Then I Was Reborn Chapter 10
Tony throws Preston fifty thousand and a warning. Behave, or next time they’ll dump him in the harbor.
I watch it all coldly. Roll the window up. My Ferrari eases into traffic.
Preston is admitted to the hospital. Three broken ribs, internal bleeding. He has to stay put.
Sierra takes a beating too. Face swollen, lying in her apartment.
Preston is alone in the hospital. Washing his own clothes. Trudging down to the cafeteria. Word gets around he hasn’t showered in days. Patients avoid him in the halls.
I think about my last life. He scraped his knee once and the hospital director personally arranged a VIP suite. Four private nurses. A nurse checks on him every hour. I was there too, pregnant and swollen, hand-carrying chicken soup.
I wonder if he regrets it now. All that love. All that ruins. For nothing.
Preston checks himself out after a week to save money. He didn’t heal right. There’s a hard lump swelling out of his chest like an inverted bowl. Grotesque. Wrong.
By the time he’s out, Tony’s fifty grand is almost gone. He’s picking wilted vegetables out of dumpsters.
He starts calling me from different numbers. Begging.
“Yvonne, I know I don’t deserve forgiveness. Just give me twenty thousand. Enough to start something small. Anything.”
“Yvonne, no matter what, I’m still Lucky and Pearl’s father. If I starve to death, they’ll never forgive you when they grow up.”
Eventually I can’t take the harassment. I agree to meet him at a café downtown.
Twenty thousand? No. Two thousand. Beggar money.
I arrived. He’s already there, standing outside. The doorman won’t let him in.
Six months. He looks ten years older. Skin dark and weathered. Hair plastered in strings against his scalp. Clothes hanging off him. The lump in his chest bulges under his shirt, warped and ugly.
The doorman spots me and rushes over, holding the door.
“Ms. Sinclair, your room is ready. Right this way.”
I slipped him a hundred.
“Thank you, Ms. Sinclair. Thank you.”
Something dark flickers through Preston’s eyes. He lowers his head and follows me in.
I don’t waste words.
“Preston. Two thousand. Take it and leave Boston. I don’t have time for you.”
He looks up at me, pleading.
“Yvonne, my chest hurts so much. Can you give me a little more? I need to see a doctor.”
I glanced at the lump. He notices, hunches his shoulder to hide it.
“Preston. Two thousand. Take it or I walk with it.”
“After what you did, trying to have me killed, two thousand is more than you deserve. I’m here to warn you. Stop bothering me. Or one day they’ll find you in a ditch.”
He grabs the money. His eyes fill with tears.
“Yvonne, we used to be happy. How did we end up here?”
“I know I was wrong. But I never actually hurt you. Why can’t you let me live?”
I looked at him for a long moment. Then I speak, quiet and slow.
“Preston. In this life, no, you didn’t hurt me. But in the last life, you sold me and Lucky and Pearl to an underground organ farm. You watched them cut us open. You watched them harvest us and sell our organs for cash.”
Preston’s face goes white.
I tell him everything. Every detail. His cruelty. His cold, empty eyes.
“So tell me, Preston. How am I supposed to forgive you?”
He’s staring at me, mouth open, stunned.
“Yvonne, was I really that monstrous? I killed my own kids?”
I laugh, bitter.
“Preston, you did the same thing this time. If I hadn’t caught you in time, Lucky would already be dead. Murdered by your girlfriend.”
“You think you don’t know how the little bastard died?”
“Preston. You belong in hell. Right next to Sierra. Only then have you paid what you owe him.”
I stand up and walk out. I don’t look back.
I step outside into the sun, blinking against the light. Then a shadow flies at me from the side.
“Yvonne! This is all your fault! I’ll kill you!”
Someone slams into me from behind. Blood sprays across my face.
Preston turns to me, slow. He gives me a small, painful smile.
“Yvonne. I was wrong. Let me give my life back to you. Okay?”
“Next life, I won’t be a bastard. I’ll love you right. I’ll love Lucky and Pearl.”
His breath fades.
Someone calls 911.
The ambulance comes. The police come. They take Sierra away.
Turns out Sierra had contracted an STD. Pain unbearable, no money for treatment, and she blamed me. She’s charged with attempted murder. Twenty years.
Three days into her sentence, she hangs herself with a rope in her cell window.
Preston is dead too.
The lump in his chest was a blood mass pressing on his heart. It ruptured. Internal hemorrhage.
I cremate him and scatter his ashes into the harbor. I hope the water washes his soul clean. Maybe in some other life he can come back as someone decent.
Preston. You gave your life back. We’re even.
Next lifetime, I hope we never meet again. I hope we both find our own kind of happiness.