She Quit Her Family and Found Herself novel Chapter 6

"Miles... I'm your mother..." her voice trembled violently.

"I don't want you to be my mom! I want Sylvie to be my mom! I hate you! I don't like you!"

Hulda stopped breathing. She never imagined that the child she had nearly died bringing into this world would look at her with such visceral hatred.

Valery stormed over, her face like a sheet of ice. She pulled the screaming boy back. When she met Hulda's devastated gaze, she looked momentarily uncomfortable and averted her eyes, but her words were razor-sharp.

"Why are you doing this to yourself? Just go home. Stop embarrassing yourself like this. I'm telling you this for your own good."

"I'm embarrassing myself?" Hulda scoffed, her gaze shifting past the older woman to lock onto her husband. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she swallowed hard, refusing to let a single drop fall.

She thought that after surviving the agonizing betrayal of her family seven years ago, marrying him and building a home together meant she would never be abandoned again.

But as it turned out, she had been entirely alone this whole time.

"Herbert, I want a divorce."

Her voice was hauntingly calm. No screaming, no hysterics, no desperate demands for answers.

With that, she turned on her heel and walked away.

Watching her rigid back disappear, Herbert felt his heart violently seize. In seven years, he had never seen her look like that.

"Hulda..." he muttered, instinctively taking a step after her.

Smack!

A vicious slap echoed through the room.

Dante had backhanded his daughter across the face. "Sylvie Sinclair, what the hell is going on?!"

Clutching her stinging cheek, Sylvie looked at Herbert with absolute, helpless despair. The toxic whispers and glaring eyes of her entire hometown made her dizzy, stealing the air from her lungs. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed in a dead faint.

By the time she fully registered what was happening, a sleek black sedan had slid to a dead stop barely two inches from her body.

She just stared blankly at the metal hood. She was completely drained—too exhausted to fight, argue, or care. Without a single word, she pulled herself up, stepped around the front bumper, and kept walking.

Inside the car, Dylan was still recovering from a near heart attack when his eyes widened at the woman walking away. "Boss, the woman who just walked past... wasn't that Ms. Atherton?"

In the back seat, the fiercely handsome man stared expressionlessly at her retreating figure. His dark, unfathomable eyes were like a serpent lingering in the shadows.

Confident he hadn't mistaken her, Dylan glanced in the rearview mirror. "Boss, she looks like she's in a bad way. Should I go check on her?"

Caspian Sterling pulled his gaze away and slowly closed his eyes. After several suffocating seconds of silence, he spoke, his voice glacial. "Do you have too much free time?"

His tone was feather-light, yet it carried an incredibly terrifying edge.

Dylan didn't dare say another word. He immediately put the car in gear and drove off, brushing past Hulda without a backward glance.