Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Melinda
While Connor was sinking into financial ruin, Melinda Travis was facing her own personal hell. Julian Vance had completely severed her access to the downtown apartment, froze the credit cards linked to his firm, and secured a temporary emergency custody order that prevented her from coming within five hundred feet of little Leo.
Two weeks after the hospital incident, I received an unexpected visitor at my residential home—a beautiful mid-century property I had bought with my own savings after the split.
Melinda stood on my front porch. She wasn't wearing her usual designer clothes or her expensive jewelry. She wore a plain grey sweatshirt, her hair pulled back into a messy bun, her face completely stripped of the high-society elegance she had weaponized against me for years.
"Kirsten," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Please don't shut the door."
I stood behind the screen door, my expression unreadable. "You have exactly sixty seconds to tell me why you're standing on my property, Melinda. After that, I call the police."
"I just... I wanted to say I'm sorry," she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "Connor was the one who pushed for the scene at the hospital! He wanted to hurt you. I told him we shouldn't go to that wing, but he insisted because he knew you were on shift! I didn't want to humiliate you!"
"You didn't want to humiliate me?" I laughed, a sharp, humorless sound that surprised even myself. "Melinda, you slept in my guest bed while I was on a twenty-four-hour trauma shift. You drank my wine, you listened to me cry about my marriage, and all the while, you were plotting with my husband to siphon my assets so you could play house with a billionaire in Chicago. You didn't care about my feelings. You only care now because you got caught."
"Julian is taking my son away from me!" she screamed, her desperation turning into a sudden flare of ugly anger. "He has teams of lawyers! He’s going to make sure I never see Leo again! You know what it’s like to want a child, Kirsten! Please, talk to Julian. His sister works at your hospital. Tell him I'm a good mother! Tell him to let me have joint custody!"
I looked at the woman who had been my best friend since medical school. The woman I had trusted with my deepest secrets, my deepest flaws. I felt a profound sense of pity, but absolutely no desire to help her.
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"The difference between you and me, Melinda," I said quietly, "is that when I couldn't have a child, I accepted the grief with dignity. I didn't steal another man's genetics to trap a fool, and I didn't destroy a family to pay for my rent. You chose this path. You used that innocent little boy as a paycheck, and now his real father is protecting him from your toxicity. Your sixty seconds are up."
I closed the heavy wooden door, turning the deadbolt with a solid, definitive click. Outside, I could hear her fists pounding against the wood for a few minutes before her strength gave out, and her footsteps faded down the driveway into the night.
