The Verdict on My Husband the Judge: GUILTY novel Chapter 26

Chapter 3

Of course it wasn’t food poisoning.

They pumped Blair’s stomach in the ER. Ran a tox screen.

Sleeping pills. A lot of them.

When she came to, she spilled everything. The phone call. The “vitamins.”

Mom’s hand came out of nowhere–cracked across my face so hard my ears rang.

“You tried to kill your sister!”

I just stood there, stunned. She’d never hit me before. Not once.

Blair had put me in the ER three separate times. Split my head open on the coffee table. Knocked a tooth loose when

I was nine.

And every time, aunts and uncles would corner Mom at family dinners: “You need to do something about Blair.

That child’s a menace.”

Mom always waved them off.

“Kids fight. It’s normal.”

“Better she learns now that nobody’s going to hold her hand in the real world.”

But I slip Blair some pills once and suddenly I’m a monster?

I touched my face where it still stung.

“This is such bullshit.

“Blair beats the crap out of me for years and you don’t blink I take back my own money and you slap me?!”

Mom’s jaw tightened. “That’s completely different-”

“How?” My voice cracked. “How is it different?”

I’d wanted things too. Wanted to eat a meal without someone’s fist in my face. Wanted to keep a birthday card from Grandma without it being stolen by morning.

Every time I came to them crying, they said the same thing:

My Huchad the Judge: GUILTY

20.8%

Chapter 3

That’s your problem. You’re just not strong enough.

So I got smarter instead. And now that’s wrong too?

“She was stupid enough to swallow random pills I told her were vitamins,” I said, barely holding it together. “That’s

on her.”

Mom’s face went red. “Your sister was playing. Taking snacks, roughhousing–what’s the big deal? She’s just a kid. You really think she was trying to hurt you?

“And I told you a million times–you could’ve hit her back! Nothing was stopping you!

“You just didn’t. Because you’re too weak. So you went for poison instead?”

Mom yanked off her belt and swung.

I couldn’t even scream anymore–just curled up, sobbing, while she kept going.

Blair, propped up in her hospital bed with an IV in her arm, started laughing. She looked half–dead but she couldn’t stop grinning.

“Hell yeah, Mom! Teach her a lesson!

“Beat her ass so she never touches my stuff again!”

Something inside me snapped clean in half.

“Go ahead,” I screamed back. “Kill me! I don’t care anymore. I get beat up every single day in that house anyway. You don’t kill me? Fine. I’ll just poison her again.

“So pick one. Me dead or her dead. Which daughter do you actually want?”

Mom stopped mid–swing.

I shoved her backward, tears blurring everything.

“You knew I couldn’t beat her. You knew, and you told me to fight back anyway!

“You’re worse than regular shitty parents. At least they’re honest about playing favorites!

“But you two? You pretend. You act like you’re being fair while you let her destroy me!”

My throat burned. “If I was the one throwing punches every lay, you’d stop me in a heartbeat. But because it’s Blair, you just let it happen.”

Mom opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

1 turned and ran

Dad’s voice echoed down the hallway, “Stella, stop-”

1 didn’t.

I was done

Done pretending this was normal. Done believing they’d ever protect me.

If they wanted me to survive Blair, they shouldn’t have taken away the only weapon I had!

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the hyder GUILTY