Chapter 1
“If you can still breathe, then you can get up and cook!”
Ice-cold water splashed violently against my face before I could even manage to open my heavy eyelids.
I sat up abruptly on the damp mattress, coughing uncontrollably as my heart hammered wildly against my ribs. My fever was soaring near one hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit, and my soaked pajamas clung uncomfortably to my trembling body. Beatrice Dupont, my mother-in-law, stood at the edge of the bed while holding a large empty bucket with a look of utter disgust.
“The whole family is waiting downstairs, and you are lying here like an absolute queen,” Beatrice sneered bitterly. “Today is the official memorial anniversary for Charles’s grandfather, so we need to prepare roasted meats, savory pies, sides, and dinner for more than forty guests.”
My name was Serena Caudill, a thirty-year-old woman who had been married to Charles Dupont for four long years.
Earlier that very morning, I had desperately begged my husband to take me to the local emergency clinic. Ever since the previous evening, I had been battling a burning fever, severe dizziness, and sudden chest palpitations.
Charles had simply tossed a small bottle of pills onto the wooden desk without a second thought.
“Just hang on until tomorrow, Serena,” Charles had told me coldly. “If you run to the hospital today, my entire family will say that I cannot even control my own wife.”
Then he turned around and slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.
Now, his cold-hearted mother had just drenched me in frigid water to force me out of bed.
“I expect you downstairs in the kitchen in exactly five minutes,” Beatrice ordered harshly before turning around to leave the room.
From the wide back patio of that sprawling estate on the outskirts of Savannah, I could hear loud laughter, cheerful music, and the sound of clinking glass mugs.
Suddenly, I heard Charles speaking loudly to his visiting relatives outside the window.
“My sweet Serena is an absolute master in the kitchen,” Charles boasted warmly to the crowd. “She will bring out the special roast that she learned to make from my mother in just a moment.”
A bitter laugh escaped my dry throat.
It was not because anything was funny, but because I finally understood the brutal reality of my marriage. To this entire family, I was neither a beloved wife nor a genuine relative.
I was nothing more than an unpaid maid.
For four years, I had contributed most of my hard-earned income to cover the massive daily expenses of that house. I paid for Beatrice’s expensive medical bills, lent thousands of dollars to my sister-in-law Violet, and allowed Charles to manage the interior design firm that I had founded long before we ever tied the knot.
Whenever money came up, Charles always repeated the exact same phrase to me.
“In a true family, there is no such thing as yours and mine,” Charles would say with a convincing smile.
Yet when I desperately needed help, everything suddenly belonged entirely to me.
It was my personal illness, my exhaustion, and my own isolated problem.
I slowly pushed myself up from the bed, leaning heavily against the painted wall so I would not collapse onto the floor.
I chose not to change my soaked clothes.
I walked downstairs completely drenched, shivering intensely, and with my lips turning a faint shade of blue.
The moment I stepped out onto the sunlit patio, the lively conversations dried up one after another until the entire yard became dead silent.
Charles immediately stopped smiling as his eyes widened in utter shock.
Beatrice turned completely pale as she dropped her serving spoon onto the grass.
“Serena, what on earth are you doing out here looking like that?” my husband whispered nervously under his breath.
I took two unsteady steps forward and fell straight to my knees right in front of Uncle Thomas, the oldest and most respected patriarch of the family.
“Please help me,” I managed to gasp out with great effort. “I have a terrible fever, Charles refused to drive me to the doctor, and his mother threw cold water over me because she said I had to cook.”
Beatrice rushed forward with a panicked look on her face.
“She is completely exaggerating everything, Uncle Thomas!” Beatrice shouted desperately.
Uncle Thomas gently reached down to touch my forehead, only to pull his hand back instantly with a horrified gasp.
“This poor girl is burning up like a furnace!” Uncle Thomas shouted at the crowd.
“I cannot breathe,” I whispered softly as my vision blurred completely.
My body went completely limp, and I collapsed onto the stone tiles.
When I finally regained consciousness, I was lying inside a bright hospital room in Atlanta.
A few hours later, an attentive nurse finished reading my latest lab results and wiped a deep frown from her face.
“Mrs. Serena, we found something quite strange in your blood work,” the nurse said quietly. “Your physical breakdown does not seem to be caused solely by a standard viral infection.”
A sudden chill ran straight down my spine.
“What exactly did you find in my blood?” I asked anxiously.
The nurse lowered her voice so no one outside the room could hear.
“There are clear traces of a chemical substance in your system that likely came from a medication you took recently,” the nurse explained.
My mind instantly flashed back to the bitter herbal tea that Beatrice had personally forced me to drink two nights ago.
“Drink this natural blend, Serena,” Beatrice had insisted back then with a fake smile.
The nurse then added an even more disturbing detail to the revelation.
“The gentleman who admitted you here asked our staff multiple times if this severe reaction could cause permanent confusion, memory loss, or a severe mental disorder,” the nurse said.
The man who had asked those suspicious questions was my husband, Charles.
In that terrifying moment, I realized that no one in that family was actually trying to help me heal.
They were systematically preparing a way to officially declare me legally incompetent.
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What I still did not understand was why they were so eager to push me into insanity.
When I eventually uncovered the dark secret behind their actions, I could hardly process the extreme lengths they were willing to go to ruin my life.
