Chapter 4

I hung up on him.

Calling him damaged goods must have bruised his fragile ego, because my phone blew up with calls.

When the calls couldn't get through, texts flooded in.

I ignored every single one.

In ten days, I was going to marry Ethan.

None of these people mattered anymore.

I had planned to spend the remaining days quietly avoiding them. I never imagined Chloe would smash the urn containing my father's ashes.

His ashes were scattered all over the living room floor.

Instead of showing any remorse, she let her cat use the pile as a litter box.

Then, she turned to me with an innocent smile.

"Look, Serena! The ashes actually make great cat litter!"

Every ounce of grief and rage that had been buried inside me erupted like a volcano.

I grabbed the baseball bat from behind the door and swung it violently at Chloe.

The bat clipped her shoulder, and she let out a bloodcurdling scream before scrambling away.

"Serena! Have you lost your damn mind?! How dare you hit your sister!"

My mother walked in, and Chloe acted as if her savior had arrived.

She ducked behind my mother, trembling from head to toe.

"Mom, I'm scared! Serena is trying to kill me!" she sobbed.

My mother shielded her like a protective hen, shrieking at me, "I let it slide when you picked on her before, but this is too far!"

This woman was my biological mother, yet she constantly took the side of an adopted daughter who didn't share a drop of her blood.

Nothing in this world felt more tragic.

Tears blurred my vision as I screamed at her, "She smashed Dad's urn!"

"That was Dad! That was my father! Why?! Why would she do that?!"

Why, after everything I had endured, did she have to destroy the only piece of my father I had left?

Why didn't my own mother love me?