Chapter 4 - Walking Out into the Dallas Rain with My Real Daughter
“Valerie! Wait! Stop!” Alex shouted, sprinting across the marble foyer as I turned toward the heavy mahogany front doors.
He reached out to grab my arm, but I spun around with such sudden, icy fury that he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Touch me, Alex, and I will have the Highland Park police remove you in zip-ties before the sun sets,” I whispered.
Theresa came hobbling after him, her designer heels clicking frantically against the floor. “Valerie! Be reasonable! We are a family! Think of the boys! Think of Santiago, Matthew, and Eli! You can't just abandon them!”
“You spent ten years telling me they were Salgado heirs who didn’t need an outsider’s touch,” I said, looking back at her with unvarnished disgust. “You have their biological mother right there in your hallway. Let Marisol pack their lunches. Let Marisol take them to their asthma treatments. Let Marisol teach them how to treat women like human beings.”
Marisol was slumped against the wall, weeping hysterically into her apron, realizing the catastrophic weight of what she had helped create.
Lucy wrapped her little arms tightly around my neck, burying her face into my collarbone. “Mommy, are we going to our new home?”
“Yes, baby,” I whispered softly, kissing her soft curls. “A home where nobody will ever make you feel small again.”
I opened the heavy wrought-iron double doors. Outside, a cool autumn rain was sweeping across the sprawling front lawn.
Alex followed me onto the covered portico, his face drenched in panic. “Valerie, please! Let’s talk about this! We can tear up the divorce papers! We can go to counseling! I’ll fire Marisol right now—I’ll send her away! Just don't execute that trust!”
“You didn’t want counseling when you gave me six months of rent and tried to buy my silence, Alex,” I said, stepping down the stone stairs toward my modest SUV. “You wanted a victim. You just realized too late that you married your executioner.”
I secured Lucy into her car seat in the back, making sure her stuffed rabbit was tucked safely beneath her arm.
As I got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, Alex slammed his open palms against the driver’s side window, screaming through the glass: “You won't survive out there without my money! My lawyers will bury you! I will crush you, Valerie!”
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I didn't even look at him. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the circular driveway, and accelerated through the golden gates of the Salgado estate.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Alex standing in the pouring rain, his tailored suit soaked, clutching his head in both hands as the gates slowly swung shut behind me.
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