Chapter 49 - 0049: The Sinclair Family Made You

Chapter 49: Chapter 0049: The Sinclair Family Made You

Elena’s Point Of View

"You evil, ungrateful child!"

I winced, holding the phone away from my ear for a beat, letting her screech echo off the guest room walls before bringing it slowly back to my cheek. Even at a distance, her voice carried the same power it always had over me... the power to make me feel six years old again, small and wrong.

"Mama..." I muttered, my voice raspy and drained.

"Don’t you dare ’Mama’ me!" she spat, her tone trembling with self-righteous rage. "What is all this absolute nonsense I’m hearing from Graham?! What is wrong with you, Elena? Have you finally lost your mind completely?! Is this how we raised you? To throw your sacred marriage away like cheap garbage? To embarrass this family in front of the entire city?!"

I squeezed my eyes shut, my knuckles turning stark white as my fingers dug into the frame of the phone, fighting down the violent urge to scream into the receiver until my lungs bled.

A part of me wanted to hurl the phone across the room right then, to silence her voice before it could carve any deeper into me. But some old, obedient part of me... the part she’d spent more than twenty years building, kept my hand steady and the phone pressed to my ear.

"You don’t know what’s happening, Mama," I choked out, trying to keep my voice steady. "You don’t..."

"I don’t want to know!" she spat, her words slicing through the line like a serrated blade. "I don’t need to know your pathetic excuses! That man married you! He elevated you! He feeds you, clothes you, and pays for every breath you take! Do you want to return to the mud we dragged you out of and beg on the streets for scraps?! You better behave yourself, Elena, and fall back in line before he casts you out once and for all!"

Her words weren’t just harsh... they were lethal. Each syllable landed like a physical blow, driving straight into the open, bleeding wound in my chest. I had known, calling her, that there would be no comfort waiting on the other end of the line. And yet some desperate, foolish sliver of hope had convinced me to try anyway, had convinced me that this time might be different, that this time she might simply ask if I was okay.

"Mama..." I whispered, my voice trembling so violently I could barely form the words. Tears spilled over my eyelashes again, hot and blinding. "He cheated on me... with his so called ’cousin.’ He brought her into our house, Mama. He put her in my bed. I’ve been so deeply humiliated..."

"I said I don’t want to hear it!" she bellowed, cutting me off with absolute, ruthless coldness.

"He hurt me..." my voice cracked into a soft, broken weep, pleading for just one drop of motherly comfort, just one shred of empathy from the woman who gave me life. "Mama, please... he hurt me so bad..."

"Good!" she shouted back, the word hitting me like a slap across the face. "You deserve it! Maybe if you weren’t so useless, he wouldn’t have had to look elsewhere! Maybe next time you’ll actually be fruitful! Your only job as a woman in that house was to give that family a child, and you failed at that one basic thing!"

A gasp of pure, agonizing shock tore from my throat. My heart pounded furiously against my ribs as the woman who was supposed to be my shelter tore my soul to ribbons. I sank slowly onto the edge of the bed behind me, my legs no longer trustworthy enough to hold me upright, the phone still clutched against my ear like a lifeline that was actively drowning me.

"Mama!" I cried out, my voice breaking into a ragged sob. "I said he hurt me! How can you say that to me?!"

"And whose fault is that?!" she barked back, her tone dripping with ice and disgust. "You’ve been married to Graham for five years! Five years! And where is your child, Elena? Where is his heir?! Did you expect a powerful man like Graham Sinclair to wait around forever while you waste his time? Haven’t you heard?! A man is only as loyal as the woman he marries! You failed him as a wife! You failed the entire Sinclair family! They made you who you are today, Elena! The least you could have done was give them an heir!"

The tears blinded me completely now. My chest heaved as I fought for air, suffocating under the weight of her cruelty. It wasn’t just my husband who had betrayed me... it was my own flesh and blood. I pressed a fist against my sternum, as if I could physically hold myself together, as if enough pressure might keep my ribs from caving in around the void she was carving into me.

"Mama..." I choked out, pushing back the sobs, trying to grasp onto whatever little dignity I had left in my shattered body. "Why are you talking like I’m a beggar? I could have made it on my own, Mother! I have my own company! It might not be a billion-dollar empire like Graham’s, but I built it myself! Why are you acting like you sold me to him?! Why?! Am I not your daughter?! Shouldn’t you care about my well-being first?!"

A harsh, ugly burst of laughter erupted through the line, cold and mocking.

"Made it on your own?!" she laughed, a sound so cruel it made my stomach twist into sick knots. "With what, Elena?! With what your father left us?! What did that man leave us when he died, huh?! Nothing! Absolute trash and debt! The Sinclair family gave you your life! They fat-cheeked your bank accounts and gave us a name! And you think your little inventory business makes you independent? Don’t be foolish!"

"Not giving him a child does not make me worthless as a woman, Mother!" I screamed into the phone, the raw, bleeding anguish finally bursting out of me. "It doesn’t make me garbage! You didn’t even ask what he did to me! You didn’t ask how many times I cried myself to sleep, how many pills I took, how many doctors tore my body apart trying to give him what he wanted! You only listened to whatever bullshit he fed you just because he’s fattening your bank account every month! I am your daughter, if you’ve fucking forgotten!"

A thunderous, suffocating silence stretched across the phone line. For a moment I almost believed she had hung up, that even she couldn’t summon a response cruel enough to follow what I’d just said. I almost let myself hope.

When she spoke again, her voice wasn’t loud. It was soft, quiet, and poisoned with absolute condemnation.

"Well, what else would I call you?" she said coldly. "A daughter with no baby, no legacy, and no shame. You are nothing without that man’s name attached to yours."

"Mama," I pleaded, my voice dropping into a broken, desperation-laced whisper. "I’m not a mistake... I’m not a failure. Please..."

"You are whatever you choose to be," she replied flatly, utterly devoid of warmth. "But I will not sit by and watch you embarrass this family and ruin your own life over your pathetic ego."

"Why do you always talk like I’d die without him?" I wept, my hand shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone against my ear. "Why do you care more about him than your own child? Why, Mama? Why don’t you love me?!"

"Because he has power, Elena," she stated with brutal, unvarnished honesty. "He has wealth, he has prestige, and he controls our future. And you... you have womb problems and too much damn pride."

Click.

The line went dead.

The silence that followed was terrifying. It rushed into the room like a tidal wave, heavy, cold, and absolute. Even the air itself seemed to hold still, as though the walls of the guest suite were bracing for what might come next.

I stood there frozen in the center of the dark guest suite, the phone pressed against my ear, listening to the hollow dial tone beep repeatedly until the screen finally went dark. My arms fell limp to my sides. My heart was no longer just broken... it was ground into fine dust. I don’t know how long I stood like that, unmoving, as though time itself had abandoned me along with everyone else.

It had always been like this. From the time I was a little girl to the moment I stood in my wedding dress... I was never enough for her. Never smart enough. Never quiet enough. Never obedient enough. And now... never fertile enough. Every version of myself I had ever tried to become had eventually failed some invisible standard only she could see, some ledger of worth she alone kept and updated at will.

I looked down at the dark screen of my phone as if it were a bloody weapon that had just run me through.

"I have to go," I whispered softly to the empty air, as if she were still listening.

I stared at the pale wall in front of me, my vision blurred by a fresh layer of hot tears. The silence engulfed me completely, suffocating every breath in my lungs. In the stillness of the grand room, her final, venomous words began to repeat in my head, echoing in my mother’s harsh, judgmental voice:

"You better behave. Before you end up barren and useless... barren and useless... barren and useless..."

I pressed my hands against my ears, but the echo wouldn’t stop. It vibrated in my bones, tearing through my self-worth until there was nothing left to salvage. I sank to my knees on the plush carpet, my whole body trembling, folding in on itself as though I could somehow make myself small enough to disappear entirely.

"Maybe she’s right," I whispered aloud to the empty, quiet room, my voice cracking with pure, unadulterated devastation. "Maybe I was cursed from the start. Maybe I really am barren... useless... empty..."

I took a slow, agonizing step forward, my eyes locking onto the ten-thousand-dollar designer bag sitting on the floor where I had dropped it. Graham had given it to me on our third anniversary, back when I still believed the gifts meant something more than guilt wrapped in packaging.

The gold handles caught the sunlight. The silk wrapped inside looked so pure, so pristine... so fake, exactly like every promise that had ever been made to me by the people who claimed to love me most.

Something deep inside the darkest, most broken corner of my soul snapped. A tiny spark of white-hot, unadulterated rage ignited in the ashes of my grief, and for the first time in hours, I felt something other than the crushing weight of shame.

I walked over to the bag. I lifted my foot and kicked it gently.

Then harder.

Then I bent down, snatched the heavy designer bag by its gold handles, lifted it above my head, and hurled it across the room with a raw, blood-curdling scream that shattered the silence of the entire wing.

BANG!

The bag smashed against the gilded mirror on the vanity, cracking the glass into a spiderweb of jagged lines before tumbling onto the floor in a ruined heap.

My chest heaved violently, gasps tearing through my throat as I stared at the shattered mirror. In its broken reflection, fractured into a dozen distorted pieces, I could just make out my own face... swollen, tear-streaked, and unrecognizable even to myself.

If they wanted a show... I was going to give them a fucking massacre. If they wanted a war, I was going to bring the goddamn flames and burn their precious world to the ground. Let Graham pretend I was his property to control. Let my mother pretend my worth as a human being began and ended with my womb.

I was done pretending. I was done begging for scraps of love from people who treated me like garbage.

I wiped the wet tracks of tears from my face with the flat of my palms, scrubbing until my skin burned raw. I took one long, deep, shuddering breath, locking every ounce of pain, heartbreak, and agony deep down in a dark vault inside my chest.

Let me mourn this broken heart right now. Let me feel every single drop of this agony one last time. Because once I wipe these tears away... I swear to God, I will never shed another tear for a man... or a mother who didn’t deserve me.