Page 11 of Cutthroat

She tried to hide the tears forming in her eyes, but the tears fell before she had the chance to wipe them away

“Ok Eden. I’m going to step out while you get dressed. I’ll be back in a couple minutes, then we’ll go upstairs.” Dr. Young said somberly as she stepped out of the examination room.

Brenda said a silent prayer for her friend. She prayed that this chapter of Eden’s life wouldn’t leave her mentally broken.

“I wish you’d reconsider, but I know you won’t.” Eve sighed.

“It’s for the best. I can’t miss a man that was never mine and I can’t miss a baby that I don’t want.” She lied.

Her voice cracked as she spoke. She turned away from Eve, because she knew her sister would be able to tell that she didn’t mean what she was saying.

Eden’s heart ached. In the past she believed that when she became pregnant, she and Jermaine would be in the doctor’s office listening to the heartbeat of their baby together. But he had altered those plans.

“We’re ready Eden.” Brenda said as she cracked the door open and poked her head inside.

Eden cried silently. She was walking into the operating room with two heartbeats and walking out with one. Envy and Jermaine would pay dearly for that.

CHAPTER 5

“An abortion,” Eden thought to herself as she lay in the middle of her childhood bed.

She was in so much pain that she couldn’t think straight. The cramps that ripped through her body were unlike anything she ever experienced. In addition to the cramps, resentment now resided within her.

Never in her wildest dreams did she think she’d have her first child vacuumed from her womb. But she had. She was a married woman. In normal circumstances, the thought of a wife aborting her husband’s child didn’t seem right, but this situation wasn’t normal, and she didn’t think that she had done anything wrong.

“I thought you were asleep. How are you feeling?” Eve asked when she felt the wetness from Eden’s eyes on her thigh.

Eden opened her mouth to tell Eve that she felt like shit, but before she could her mother’s thick Louisianian accent floated in from the doorway.

“I never get tired of watching you girls love each other.” Marie said proudly as she admired her daughters.

Though she hated the circumstances that brought her children home, she was glad to have her girls staying under her roof again.

“Ma, I swear you’re like a cat skulking around. You move around without making a sound like you’re trying to catch someone off guard. How long have you been standing there eavesdropping?” Eve joked.

“I don’t skulk or eavesdrop in my home. I just walk up and listen,” Marie joked.

She was hoping the quick and witty response would bring some sort of smile to Eden’s face. But the grim look that covered her daughter’s normally angelic face let her know that she didn’t have the energy to laugh.

Marie sighed.

“How are you feeling Edy? Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally?” Marie asked as she crossed the threshold of the room that her daughters shared as children.

The question made more tears fall from Eden’s eyes. On the day she witnessed her husband deep dicking her sister, she hadn’t shed a single tear. Now she couldn’t keep the tears in her eyes to save her life. Jermaine had cut her too deeply for her to even pretend that she was ok. She couldn’t cry in front of him, butin front of her sister and mother, she didn’t have to pretend.

She could never use the“I’m fine”lie with her mother. Marie had always been able to read her daughter’s true emotions like a bestselling book. Marie was born to be a mother. And a lie, no matter how small, would be easily detected.

“Ma, I’m devastated. No scratch that. Devastation isn’t strong enough to describe how destroyed I am. Of all the females in the world, he had an affair with my sister. Envy has always gone out of her way to make our lives hell. I know she busted it wide open for a few of my exes, but somehow, I never thought she’d have sex with my husband,”

Eden was in mental hell. Feeling the thick maternity pad between her legs tormented her psyche in a way she didn’t think was possible.

“I swear Envy is adopted. No one else in this family acts the way she does. Envy can’t be a real Merci,” Eve said as she sucked her teeth.

Marie diverted her eyes. Her fair light skin turning lobster red.

Both Eden and Eve noticed. They stared inquisitively. The look on Marie’s face was a dead giveaway to a secret. Whatever the look on Marie’s face was, it had the girl’s attention. They couldn’tunderstand what they said to make her react that way because they’d called Envy worse names than adopted in the past.

“What’s wrong?” The sisters asked in unison.

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