Chapter 4

04

Two weeks after the divorce.

Patrick was still texting me every few days to make my life difficult.

One message asking where I'd put some suit of his, the next one moaning about how exhausted he was, worn down by Stella's morning sickness.

I couldn't stand it, so I just blocked every way he had of reaching me.

That day, I had just listed the condo for sale.

The agent had only just finished taking the photos and left.

My phone buzzed with a string of messages.

They were from an old friend the two of us used to share, sending me a link.

"Lucretia, look at this. Your ex-husband and that mistress are livestreaming and trashing you!"

I opened the link.

On the screen, Patrick and Stella sat side by side in front of the camera.

Both of them in tears.

Ranting away about how vicious and heartless I'd been as an ex-wife.

Patrick's face was flushed and glowing, not a trace of a terminally ill man about him.

He held up a hospital form and announced it loudly to the camera.

"Everyone, there is justice in this world after all!"

"I don't have late-stage liver cancer at all. The hospital mixed up the paperwork. It was a misdiagnosis!"

"But my ex-wife, she knew all along it was a misdiagnosis!"

"She hid it from me on purpose, used the excuse that I didn't have long to live, and tricked me into signing a divorce agreement that left me with nothing!"

Stella sat beside him, one hand on her belly, eyes brimming, chiming in.

"That's right, Patrick has been through so much."

"That woman cared more about money than her own husband's life. She threw him out of his own home."

"If I hadn't taken him in, he'd be sleeping on the street right now."

Then, of all people, Ferris showed up on camera too.

He appeared in the role of the loyal friend speaking up for justice.

"I've been Patrick's buddy for decades. I can vouch for this."

"That Lucretia Henson always looked down on people without money. She never had any respect for us, his friends."

"This time she schemed the whole thing out to swallow up every last bit of Patrick's assets."

The live comments in the stream caught fire in an instant.

All of them calling me vicious, a scheming bitch, saying I deserved to die badly.

Some even started stirring the crowd up, digging out my private information.

In under five minutes, my phone was buried under an endless stream of harassing calls from out-of-state numbers.

Patrick shouted into the stream, righteous as anything.

"Lucretia Henson, if you're watching, I'm giving you three days. Return my house and half my savings, right now!"

"Otherwise, I'll take you to court for fraud!"

I watched the two clowns leaping around on my screen without a flicker of feeling.

They really wouldn't rest until they'd dug their own graves.

Using my real account, my own selfie as the profile picture, I walked straight into their livestream.

In the middle of the wall of abuse, my fingers flew, and I dropped three live comments one after another.

"Patrick, did you read the medical report I mailed you?"

"Is your good buddy really so reliable?"

"Do you actually have a child?"