17
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“Mom!” Julian shouted, his face as pale as his father’s. Both men rushed to Mrs. Wren’s side.
Amid the chaos, father and son exchanged a grim look-cold, sharp, and devoid of the slightest tenderness.
Once Mrs. Wren was settled, the two men turned. With a silent, shared fury, they seized Delilah by her carefully styled hair, as if handling something vile and contaminated. She shrieked and struggled, but they ignored her, dragging her across the marble floor like discarded trash.
They hauled her to the farthest end of the Wren family estate-a secluded basement, damp and windowless, more tomb than room. The heavy iron door groaned open, releasing a wave of rot and mold so foul it made the air unbreathable.
Darkness consumed the space inside.
The walls were slick with condensation. Rats scurried through the shadows. The rustling of cockroaches and the distant, high-pitched squeaks of vermin gave the place a nightmarish hum. “No! Let me go! Dad! Brother!” Delilah’s voice cracked with raw panic. “I was wrong, I really was Don’t lock me in here-please! I’ll apologize to Ava myself! Don’t do this to Delilah!”
Her desperate cries were met with silence.
The door slammed shut behind her. The iron lock clicked-final, absolute.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
The only sound that followed was the scurrying of rats-like mocking laughter echoing through a crypt.
From that moment forward, the only contact with the outside world was a small hatch in the basement ceiling, flung open once a day to dump in a bucket of vile slop-greasy leftovers, sour waste, and bits of foul-smelling, unidentifiable scraps.
There was no light. No sense of time. No sound, except for her own breathing and the ceaseless scratching of creatures she could not see.
Delilah screamed for hours, days, until her voice broke. The hysteria gave way to ragged, broken sobs. Eventually, only the occasional animal-like whimper escaped her lips.
Within two weeks, her spirit shattered.
When Daniel finally came, he nearly reeled from the stench. The woman before him was barely human-matted hair, wild eyes, skin caked with grime, and the sour rot of unwashed flesh clinging to her like a curse.
‘Daniel! Daniel! You came! I knew you’d come!” she cried, crawling forward on all fours. “You love ne, don’t you? Please… please get me out of here!”
The smell hit him like a wall. Daniel staggered back. One of the bodyguards stepped forward and kicked her away with brutal force.
Dragged back into daylight, Delilah collapsed in the Wren family courtyard. Surrounded by reporters and guards, she broke under the pressure. The truth spilled from her lips in a flood of trembling confession.
The car accident. The stolen kidney. The prison sentence.
Even her terminal illness had been a lie.
She had orchestrated everything-to monopolize the Wren family’s love, to manipulate Daniel into staying.
“I was wrong… I was wrong! Mom, Dad, Brother, Daniel… can I take a shower now?” she asked with a weak, naive smile, as if her honesty had earned her a clean slate.
But the approaching footsteps of the bodyguards told her otherwise.
“No! No-please! Don’t put me back in there! I’ll go to jail, I’ll go to jail, just don’t send me back!” The basement door shut once again.
The lock snapped closed.
As summer faded into autumn, Hollywood buzzed with unexpected headlines:
“The fallen ‘villain’ makes her return?”
“Director Jake Easton backs former inmate in breakout comeback project.”
The news spread like wildfire.
Critics scoffed, accusing it of whitewashing, of calculated marketing.
But others, especially online, began to question the original Wren family narrative-especially after a humiliating clip of Delilah’s wild confession surfaced, exposing the truth behind the lies.
At home, Julian stared at the newspaper for a long moment. Then he shot up from the sofa, heart racing.
“We found her… Ava is alive!”
He burst into Mrs. Wren’s room. She had been bedridden for days, haunted by nightmares of her daughter suffering in prison. Now, at last, light flickered in her dull eyes.
‘Go,” she rasped, gripping his hand. “Bring my daughter home.”
