The man who threw away his wife.
The man who celebrated too soon.
His reputation cracked in public.
His pride bled in private.
And for the first time, the shame he once handed to Nyla came home and sat beside him.
But the humiliation of that DNA test was only the beginning.
The next blow would not just shake Ivonne.
It would drop her to the floor.
Three days after the DNA test, the Grant house looked nothing like the place that once celebrated Sabrina.
No music. No loud laughter. No smug speeches from Ivonne.
Just silence.
Heavy silence—the kind that sits in corners and reminds everybody what happened.
Sabrina was gone. Rico was gone.
And the lies they left behind were still hanging in the air like smoke.
Terrence barely slept.
He sat awake at night staring at the same wall, replaying every moment—the announcement, the bragging, the way he threw Nyla out, the way he stood there while Ivonne called another woman real.
Now all of it was rotting inside him.
But Ivonne was taking it even worse.
She moved around the house like a woman trying to outrun embarrassment. She snapped at everybody. She cursed Sabrina’s name. She cursed Rico’s name.
And when nobody was around, she even cursed Nyla’s name.
Because some people would rather blame the innocent than face themselves.
“She brought bad luck into this family,” Ivonne muttered one morning, pacing the kitchen.
Terrence looked up from the table, exhausted.
