I Knelt For Three Years For A Lie. Now I’m Back For Blood Chapter 08
The Intercontinental. White light. The smell of expensive perfume and money.
Every seat was filled with press and industry vultures.
On the big screen, I was three years old, crawling across the snow on my knees.
I looked at the footage and felt the phantom ache in my joints. That wasn’t a journey.
It was a commercial. My bones were just their raw materials.
Owen stood at the mic. He’d rubbed his eyes until they were red. A perfect, grieving mask.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice cracking with practiced precision.
“The girl on the screen is my ex. Her name is Mia.”
“Three years ago, a tragedy broke her mind. To pray for me, she set out on this pilgrimage. And for three years, I searched for her. I supported her from the shadows.”
Flashbulbs exploded. I saw reporters dabbing at their eyes. I wanted to vomit.
Jenna sat in the front row. A silk dress. The kid in her lap. The picture of the ‘supportive friend’ who had stepped in to help the broken man.
Marcus was in the wings. He looked at the crowd like a man who’d just won the lottery.
“Every cent we earn will seed a foundation in Mia’s name. In memory of the love we shared…”
I kicked the ballroom doors open.
The sound was a gunshot in the silence. Every head in the room snapped back.
I stood there, soaked. Mud and dried blood were baked into my skin. My hospital gown was a rag.
The cast on my leg had turned into a soggy mess of gray plaster.
I leaned on a heavy branch I’d found in the rain. I looked like something that had crawled out of a mass grave.
Dead silence.
I dragged my leg across the red carpet. I watched the mud stain the pristine fabric. Every step was a smear of reality on their lie.
“Security! Get this lunatic out of here!”
Marcus was the first to move. His face didn’t hold grief anymore—just pure, white-hot panic.
Guards rushed me. I didn’t fight. I didn’t have the strength.
I just let my voice cut through the air, raw and jagged.
“Owen! You said you were looking for me? Well, I’m right here. Why won’t you look at me?”
The press went rabid. The clicking of the cameras sounded like hail.
Owen’s mask shattered.
He gripped the podium so hard his knuckles turned into white bone.
“Mia… how are you here? You’re supposed to be—”
He choked on the words. He tried to pivot. “You’re not well. You’re confused. How did you get out of the hospital?”
He scrambled off the stage, trying to block the cameras with his body.
“I’m so sorry, everyone. My ex… she’s lived with severe psychosis for years. She’s not in her right mind. We’re trying to help her—”
“Not in my right mind?”
I laughed. The sound was a cold, dry rasp. I wrenched my arm away from a guard.
I pulled the recorder from my gown and held it up. The little red light was a tiny eye, watching them.
“Am I out of my mind? Or did you just buy that diagnosis so you could bury me in a ward?”
Marcus lunged at me, his hands like claws.
“Mia, stop this! You’re sick! Get her out of here!”
I didn’t let him touch me. I swung the branch and caught him hard across the shins.
He hit the floor with a howl.
I looked at Owen, frozen on the stage.
I looked at Jenna, who looked like she was about to faint.
In the end, I pressed ‘Play.’
Owen’s voice filled the ballroom. Clear. Cold. Merciless.
“So she lived. Whatever. Like this, drooling and stupid, she’s less trouble than before.”
“The donations alone could buy us another house out here.”
The room went so quiet I could hear the rain hitting the windows.