Chapter 2: Forty-One Calls and a Folded Note
Part 2 ⬇️
Derek called forty-one times before sunrise.
I know because Rachel counted.
She sat beside my hospital bed with Emily asleep on my chest and read every notification out loud in a flat, quiet voice.
"Forty-one calls.
Six voicemails.
Fourteen texts."
She set the phone face-down on the tray table.
"He found the ring."
I didn't answer.
I just looked down at Emily.
Her tiny fingers had curled around mine sometime in the night and hadn't let go.
The sixth voicemail was the one that mattered.
Rachel played it on speaker without asking me first.
Derek's voice came through sharp and cold — not frightened, not sorry.
Just angry.
*"I don't know what you think you're doing, but this is not happening.
You come home right now.
Whatever little plan you and Rachel cooked up — it's over.
You hear me?
It's over."*
Rachel looked at me.
I looked at Emily.
Neither of us said a word.
But that wasn't the part that changed everything.
Three hours later, a nurse came in holding a folded piece of paper.
"Someone left this at the front desk," she said.
"Asked us to give it to the woman who came in last night from Columbus."
My hands went still.
Nobody was supposed to know where we were.
Rachel took the note before I could reach it.
She unfolded it slowly.
Read it once.
Then she looked up at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before.
"You need to read this."
---
What was written in that note — and who left it?
What Derek did next will leave you speechless.
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