The Weight Of Leaving by Riven Kade novel Chapter 68

Chapter 5

Everyone in the detention center froze.

Theresa was the first to snap out of it.

Like a lioness gone rabid, she lunged forward, snatched the contract from my hands–and tore it to shreds.

“You wish!” she screamed, pointing a trembling, venom–laced finger at me.

“My daughter’s safe now! You’re not getting a single cent!”

“Rot in this damn cell, you heartless bitch!”

I watched the paper fragments scatter in the air like confetti–and laughed even harder.

No one knew.

I had been here before.

In my past life. I’d piloted the rescue vessel into the crushing depths of the ocean–only to be sabotaged from within.

Aubrey and Nathan had worked together to trap me inside the cockpit and sink me alive. I watched my oxygen run out

inch by inch, unable to escape the ice–cold dark.

And after I died?

They pinned everything on me.

Said I’d deliberately sabotaged the mission to eliminate my competition for the chief designer role. Said I’d tried to kill

my own sister–and paid the ultimate price.

Every one of my students came forward to condemn me, too.

1. Rowan Carter, once hailed as a national hero, became the villain of the century.

While they-

One rebranded as the grieving, resilient sister–turned–savior.

The other became the genius scientist who saved them all.

Glory. Fame. Untouchable status.

And me?

I came back from the dead to collect what they owed me

That was why the first thing I did after returning to this life… was lock myself in a holding cell.

I needed to watch it unfold from the front row.

Chapter 5

The rescue operation, led remotely by my dear husband Nathan, was a roaring success.

Thirty–six hours after contact was lost, the Neptune–X miraculously rebooted. It surfaced intact.

Aubrey and the other twenty crew members were rescued, alive.

Nathan Hale became a global icon overnight.

Every major outlet ran his face on the front page, calling him the miracle worker who rewrote the history of deep–sea

rescue. The scientific genius. The savior.

And me?

The villain.

The traitor.

The woman who turned her back on her family, her country, her students.

No one remembered the fifty–three researchers I once pulled from the wreckage of a collapsed trench.

No one mentioned that the success of that mission was my work–not Nathan’s.

The investigation into me?

Dismissed. “Insufficient evidence.”

Of course it was. I had staged the entire thing myself.

There was never going to be any proof.

I was released without charges.

The day I walked out of that cell, the sun was almost too bright to bear.

It stung my eyes.

Not long after, I received an official invitation from the Oceanic Research Center.

A ceremony to celebrate the heroic rescue.

I replied quickly: ‘I’ll be there.”

They wanted to see me humiliated–ruined.

But me?

I wanted to drag them into hell with me.

Chapter 5