Chapter 7
Alaric was taken away by the police.
I was lounging at a high-end postpartum care center, nibbling on fresh fruit, when the news reached me.
“What are you going to do now? Alaric and Calla are completely finished.”
My best friend sat by my bedside, her eyes reddening with grief as she glanced at the healing scar on my abdomen.
“I’m getting a divorce,” I said calmly. “There’s no way I’ll spend the rest of my life with a man like him.”
“But things have gotten so complicated. Alaric won’t agree to a divorce. Once he does, he’ll have no excuse to avoid prison. If he stays married, he can still try to claim mutual affection or marital misunderstanding.”
I set down my fork and glanced at the documents on the table beside me.
“Oh, he’ll agree,” I said with certainty.
–
“But… the videos you uploaded they hurt him, sure, but they’ve hurt you too. Aren’t you even a little regretful?”
She still couldn’t bring herself to watch the footage.
Even here, in the city’s most luxurious confinement center, I could feel people’s stares – curiosity, judgment, veiled contempt.
I shook my head.
“Women shouldn’t be defined by their bodies. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I let others’ opinions control my life?”
Once my body had healed a bit, I visited the police station.
Alaric was sitting behind the glass, unshaven and pale. As soon as he saw me, he fell to
his knees.
“Seraphine… I know I was wrong. I-I lost my mind. It was all Calla’s doing, she manipulated me. Can you forgive me? Just this once.”
He looked up at me like a broken man grasping for salvation.
“Forgive you?”
I pulled a document from my bag and tossed it at his feet.
“Ask the child if he wants to forgive you.”
Alaric froze. Slowly, he picked up the paper and opened it.
After just one glance, it was like something inside him snapped. His legs gave out, and he
sank to the floor, shaking.
“This… this can’t be true.”
It was the report confirming that Alaric’s vasectomy had failed.
11:35
TUE, 29
He scrambled closer, desperation in his eyes.
“Then the baby…”
He didn’t dare finish the sentence. His lips trembled as if pleading with me not to say what he already feared.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I pulled out another folder and opened it in front of him paternity test.
“The child was yours,” I said coldly.
Alaric stared at the report as if struck by lightning.
“It was mine…? That child… was mine?”
His voice cracked, and then he looked down at his own hands in horror.
“I killed my own child… with my own hands…”
He sat there, murmuring to himself like a man on the verge of madness.
I looked at him without pity.
“The child is gone now. My only request is this-”
I took out the divorce agreement and tossed it in front of him.
“You owe me this.”
He looked at the papers as though they were venomous.
“No,” he whispered. “I won’t divorce you.”
I sneered.
–
the DNA
“If you refuse, I’ll keep filing appeals. What you did during our marriage is enough to put you behind bars for years. I can charge you with more than just abuse.”
Then I slowly squatted down, my gaze level with his.
“But if you sign the divorce agreement now, I’ll also sign a letter of understanding – I won’t push for further charges.”
Alaric stared at me in silence, eyes hollow, heart broken.
Eventually, his hand trembled as he reached for the pen.
He signed his name.
–
Then, like a man drowning, he grabbed the hem of my pants and held on tightly as if it could undo everything he’d destroyed.
