Her Last Call Was to Me, Her Brother Made Me Pay Novel – Elena Hawthorne, my husband Nathan Hawthorne’s sister, leapt to her death when she was pregnant. I was the last person she called. When the police questioned me, I kept my mouth shut. Nathan’s parents clung to my hands, begging desperately for me to talk. I turned them away stone-faced. But Nathan didn’t leave me. If anything, he was sweeter than he’d ever been. Everything changed the day I got pregnant. Nathan strapped me to the bed, dragged strangers in from the street, and had them rape me, over and over. He said he wanted me to know what real despair felt like. *** I kept getting pregnant and losing the babies, again and again.
Within a year, my body was ruined. I was left barren and crippled. Nathan paid a small fortune to fly in a team of top specialists. They were going to extract my memories. The hatred in his eyes was absolute. “You should’ve seen this coming, Maya. The moment you let Elena die like that, you sealed your fate.” “She treated you like family. I never thought you’d turn out to be a monster and conspire to kill her. This is what you deserve.” I lay there like a corpse, watching Nathan fall apart. It tore me apart. I forced the words out, my voice barely there. “No… that’s not what happened.” Nathan seized me by the throat, his eyes bloodshot and wild. “Then what was it? Tell me!” The truth died in my throat. “I can’t tell you. Please don’t make me.” Nathan’s face went completely still.
Then something ugly and vicious settled over his features. He turned to the extraction team, his face like stone. “Put it on her. Get the memories out now. I don’t care if it kills her. I just want the truth.” Nathan locked me in a glass chamber. His hatred had become bottomless. He had me brought to Greybridge Plaza in the heart of downtown. He invited hundreds of media outlets to watch him tear me apart in public. Dozens of people had watched Elena jump to her death at five months pregnant. The case had gripped the entire city. The fact that the police still hadn’t solved it only made things worse. Word of the spectacle spread fast. The plaza filled within minutes, voices rising in waves. Nathan’s father held his wife steady as they made their way to their seats, both of them walking as if their legs might give way. What I’d done two years ago, the silence I’d kept, had broken something in them. They’d begged Nathan to leave me. He’d refused, and they’d hated me for it ever since. Seeing what Nathan was about to do, his mother broke down crying, almost hysterical. “Two years! Do you have any idea what these two years have been like?!” “You monster! I want to rip you open and see if you even have a heart!” Nathan’s father held her tight, his eyes hollow and lost. A close friend had entrusted Elena to them to raise. She wasn’t related to them by blood, but they’d loved her more fiercely than their own flesh and blood.
I watched it all through the glass, sobbing without sound. Nathan gave the signal. They lowered the helmet onto my head. Hundreds of tiny needles shot out and punctured my scalp. It felt like hundreds of leeches burrowing into my skull, and I screamed until my throat was raw.
Nathan watched me scream, something bright and eager sparking in his eyes. “Mr. Hawthorne, she’s too weak. We need to get fluids into her first or this could kill her.” The technician had seen the state I was in. He couldn’t keep quiet. Nathan’s glare withered him. “Don’t stop. Pump her full of adrenaline. I don’t care if she dies, so long as we get the memory first.”