The moment the cameras went dark, chaos erupted backstage. Zara pushed through the stunned crew, reaching Lyra just as her legs gave out. She caught her, shielding her from the disbelieving stares of producers and stagehands.
The adrenaline that had held Lyra together evaporated, and she finally broke. Sobs tore through her, a raw, ragged release of weeks of terror and pressure. She clung to Zara, her body shaking uncontrollably. The truth was out. She was free, and she was more exposed than ever before.
***
In a cheap motel room on the edge of the city, Caspian Hawthorne stared at the frozen image of Lyra’s face on his laptop before the screen went to black.
The words echoed in the stale, quiet air.
…still pregnant with Caspian Hawthorne’s child.
He physically staggered back, his legs hitting a cheap wooden chair and sending it crashing to the floor. His mind reeled, a maelstrom of shock and dawning horror.
Pregnant.
Still pregnant.
Every lie Isolde had ever told him about Lyra incinerated in that single, white-hot instant. She’s cold, Caspian. She doesn’t want a family. She told me she was barren.
Lies. All of it.
He had divorced a woman carrying his child. He had publicly vilified her, stood by while she was slandered, all for a woman who had built their entire relationship on a foundation of poison and deceit.
The last sliver of doubt didn’t just crack; it was annihilated. It was replaced by a horrifying, gut-wrenching certainty that left him gasping for air. This was his point of no return.
***
In her immaculate room at St. Jude’s Medical Center, surrounded by bouquets of funereal flowers, Isolde Finch watched the broadcast on a large, wall-mounted television.
Her serene mask of victimhood did not just crack. It shattered into a thousand pieces.
Her face twisted into a mask of pure, undiluted rage. When the screen cut to the car commercial, she let out a guttural scream. She grabbed the nearest object—a heavy glass of water—and hurled it at the screen. The glass exploded, showering the floor in glittering shards as the television fizzled and died.
Her perfect plan. Her flawless, vicious, beautiful plan.
It had not only failed. It had backfired in the most spectacular, catastrophic way imaginable. She hadn’t just lost the narrative. She had handed Lyra the one weapon that could destroy her completely.
She had lost control.
***
Online, the world pivoted in a fraction of a second.
The #JusticeForCaspian hashtag was instantly drowned under a tsunami of new, frantic speculation. #HawthorneHeir. #LyraPregnant. #StarlightBombshell.
The story was no longer about a spiteful abortion. It was about a secret heir. A child conceived before the divorce. A child whose existence rewrote the entire sordid history of the Hawthorne separation.
The power dynamic had been completely, irrevocably inverted.
Lyra, sobbing in Zara’s arms, was vulnerable, exhausted, and terrified. But she now held the moral high ground with a truth so shocking it could not be spun.
Caspian, reeling in his motel room, was now armed with the absolute emotional conviction he needed to tear Isolde’s world apart.
And Isolde, screaming in her hospital room, was no longer a puppet master. She was a caged animal. And a cornered animal is the most dangerous of all.
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